Forget soccer mom and NASCAR dad - the hot voter du jour is: the strategist. Democratic primary and caucus goers are picking their candidates less on the basis of who they like best than on the basis of electability - that is, who they think everybody else will like best.

The pundits say voters are becoming more sophisticated. What they really mean is, voters are becoming more like pundits. Voting, like so many things in this media age, is becoming a post-modern hall of mirrors - not “what do I think of candidate X”, but “what do I think you’ll think of candidate X”. It’s crafty. It’s pragmatic. But is it actually a good way to pick an electable candidate?

It’s incredibly condescending, for starters. Essentially, it assumes that you’re smarter than every other voter. The electability arguments for Kerry and Clark, for instance, boil down to the assumption that all those other idiots will be hypnotized by their shiny medals. John Edwards? All those hillbillies out in hillbilly land just love those southern accents! Howard Dean? Hey, those kids nowadays can’t get enough of that Internet!

At heart, this is really a loser’s philosophy. You’re tacitly saying that the rest of the country does not share your beliefs. That, if you chose the candidate who best represented you, the electorate would reject you. You’re saying that politics is a con game, and you just want to make sure your con artist is better than theirs. Of course, politics isn’t about honor - it’s about winning.

But the problem with voting like a pundit is that pundits have spent the better part of the last decade mispredicting the results of elections. Someone who is agonizing over the 2004 election in 2002 is the last person who can read the mind of a typical voter, who tends to make his or her own decision in between picking up the dry cleaning and dropping off last night’s videos.

That’s the problem with the electability strategy: it pretends you can understand the hearts of people whom you could not possibly fathom. Few democrats, especially hardcore primary voters, actually understand why over 50 million people voted for George W. Bush. Or rather, they think they do, but essentially they believe that people voted for President Bush because they’re stupid, greedy or gullible. Likewise, Republicans spent eight apoplectic years sputtering over why people kept supporting the theoretically “unelectable” Bill Clinton. That’s not just arrogance; it’s bad politics.

I still don’t know who I’m voting for, if anyone, come primary time. But I do know this - I’m barely smart enough to make my own political choices, much less guess yours. Call me old-fashioned, but I’d rather vote for someone I like. And who knows? I could just be stupid enough to pick a winner.

The contributor of the transcript concluded his post with the following commentary of his own:

It’s so simplistic - that it makes sense. What are we doing pretending to know the pulse of the nation, when our time would be much more productively spent evangelizing our chosen candidate to others?

It’s been shown time and time again in polls that every candidate is electable come November. So get out there, spread the word about your candidate, vote with your heart - and may the best man win. Kucinich said it best: “I’m electable if you vote for me.”

I think he has a good point. After all, selecting the person who you think best represents you and then working to get them elected is really all you can do. Doesn’t that help to make that candidate more electable than if you hadn’t supported him?

Editor’s note: one of the reasons for using an IRV voting system is that it does away with the electability dance. You can vote for your favorite candidate without fear that you’re throwing away your vote. I doubt Richard Mack, the Libertarian candidate, would be doing as well as he is right now in our strawpoll if not for the IRV system. Political parties don’t usually like the idea of IRV voting for general elections for this very reason. It makes third party candidates more viable. -pjw-