Motivating the Unmotivated

Mike Sorohan

Eight years ago, I got to cover both the Democratic National Convention in Boston and the Republican National Convention in New York. This year, I probably won’t watch a single minute of either convention on TV.

I never would have expected this of myself. I’ve been a political junkie ever since my days as an undergraduate at Kent State University—itself a laboratory of politics and American history. From the time I was a kid, the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite was a staple of our post-supper ritual. The party conventions were high drama and compelling television for a sponge like me as I shaped my own political philosophy.

In 2004, my newspaper sent me off to cover both party conventions. This was like sending a heroin addict into an opium field. I considered the assignments to be singular honors, a reward for years of hard work and incisive newswriting. I was pumped, primed and eager.

The Democratic Convention came first, in Boston. I filed nearly a dozen stories, spent time on the floor, watched as Michael Moore wandered about with a gaggle of reporters following his every word, got treated to an impromptu John Mellencamp concert, met some guys from a band I’d never heard of (Maroon 5), saw Larry King wander through the press room like some mechanical cadaver and passed a young state senator named Barack Obama on his way to delivering a keynote speech that rocked the house—and America. And I walked away from that convention knowing that John Kerry would lose the election.

From there, it was off to New York for the Republican Convention. The conditions could not have been more different. No celebrities wandered the corridors; the media were treated like children; access to the floor all but prohibited and the speeches formulaic and sterile. I ended up covering much of the proceedings from my hotel room, watching it on TV.

I didn’t know it at the time, but those conventions were my political apex. To be sure, my wife and I had plenty of enthusiasm in 2008 and were thrilled with Obama’s rise and election. But the past four years have been taxing. The political polarization that appeared to reach a zenith in 2008 before the election has only gotten worse.

This hasn’t left me unmotivated—I still plan to vote in November—but for the first time I’ve sensed that others have simply had it. They want a reason to vote, but they’re tired of the two-party system that only seems to favor the two parties.

The polls show that Romney and Obama are virtually tied as of this writing (early September). There do not seem to be very many “undecided” voters at this point. The differences between Romney and Obama are stark enough, even as Romney attempts to recast himself as a “conservative’s conservative.”

The problem facing both candidates at this point are not the “undecideds,” but rather the “unmotivateds.” These are the people who are sick of the politics, sick of the polarization and sick of the two-party system. They are the “swing” vote, and the goal of either candidate is to convince these unmotivated voters that they have a reason to vote.

Both Obama and Romney have been rolling out one negative ad after another, and this is the wrong strategy. If so many voters are already decided, one more smear is not going to change their minds. And the unmotivateds are only going to feel reinforced in their notion that neither candidate is worthy of their vote.

The key to victory for Obama and Romney is to give these unmotivated voters a sense of optimism, a feeling that their vote will count. Yes, it’s about the economy; yes, it’s about health care; yes, it’s about jobs. But it’s also about that “hope and change” notion that Obama used so well in 2008; the “we are still strong” message that George W. Bush delivered so effectively in 2004; and even the “it’s morning in America” that carried Ronald Reagan to a landslide victory in 1980.

In any given presidential election, history has generally shown that 40 percent of the voters will always vote Democratic and 40 percent will always vote Republican. The 20 percent independent-leaning voters always make the difference. This year, the 20 percent is more like the 6 percent, with both Obama and Romney carrying about 47 percent each. But the swing vote also appears to be disappearing, as more and more Americans simply throw up their hands and opt out of the political process.

That 6 percent is not going to be persuaded to vote for Romney because of Obamacare or for Obama because of Bain Capital. They’re going to vote because they want to. To both candidates, I say: give them a reason to vote.