BEHIND THE BATTLE LINES
As disheartening presidential mud fight winds down, voters wonder if we will ever be able to have confidence in our electoral system again
In another political universe just four short years ago, the two leading candidates for president shook each other’s hands before debating, never referred to one another by their first names and kept their Twitter feeds G-rated.
Now with perhaps the most disheartening presidential election in modern American history winding down, the question of who will win is being eclipsed by an even bigger concern: Is our democracy in real trouble — and might the next election be even worse than this one?
No doubt, Donald Trump’s sudden emergence as the Republican torch-bearer set the stage for the reality show tenor of this year’s campaign. But politics have gradually been getting nastier for years as loyal Democrats and Republicans continue withdrawing into separate echo chambers.
And those left in the middle see increasingly little reason to have confidence in a system that produced a Republican nominee who once used his own charitable foundation’s money to commission a 6-foot-tall selfportrait and a Democratic nominee who, according to leaked emails, told real estate investors that in politics “you need both a public and private position” on
“I just feel really sad about the way the politics of this election have gone. It seems corrupt, shady.” — Charles Manuel, Gilroy “(Hillary Clinton beating Bernie Sanders) was a fix; the deal was already done.” — Fernando Carpenter “The things Trump says, the things he does ... it makes me want to cry sometimes.” — Dolores Machado, Pleasanton “I lost faith in the American public that so many people can back that guy. He’s despicable.” — Ken Pattee, Livermore “I’m in a city that is extremely liberal, and I don’t think it’s fair what they’ve done to Donald.” — Roy Mejia, Oakland “Suck it up and live with it for four more years until someone else jumps in and takes office.” — Tuan Phan, Santa Clara
issues.
“I just feel really sad about the way the politics of this election have gone,” said Charles Manuel, a 45year-old Gilroy resident who is considering voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. “It seems corrupt, shady.”
And it’s especially hard for partisans to be optimistic about a country where they see tens of millions of people who are backing a candidate they despise.
“The things Trump says, the things he does ... it makes me want to cry sometimes,” said Dolores Machado, 86, of Pleasanton.
Another Clinton supporter, Ken Pattee, of Livermore, still can’t believe Republicans nominated Trump.
“I lost faith in the American public that so many people can back that guy,” he said. “He’s despicable.”
Roy Mejia, a conservative Oakland bar owner, hears those kinds of comments all day long. And he says he’s fed up with defending Trump to barflies who insist he’s a narcissistic racist. He’s also angry at the news media because he thinks coverage of the race is slanted toward Clinton.
“I feel like a drowning man,” Mejia said. “I’m in a city that is extremely liberal, and I don’t think it’s fair what they’ve done to Donald.”
Where it began
The nation’s political battle lines were drawn long before Trump descended an escalator in his Manhattan skyscraper last year to announce his bid for the presidency and suggest that most illegal immigrants from Mexico are criminals and rapists.
Two decades ago, only 16 percent of Democrats and 17 percent of Republicans thought the opposing party was a threat to the county’s well-being. By 2014, those figures had soared to 27 percent of Democrats and 36 percent of Republicans, a Pew Research Center study found.
The same survey found that half of “consistently conservative” voters — and just over one-third of “consistently liberal” voters — wanted to live in communities of like-minded people.
Making matters worse, the deepening DemocraticRepublican divide has come at a time when Americans are getting their information from increasingly partisan news sources and are becoming more skeptical than ever of pillars of Democratic governance, said Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
In a Gallup survey taken this year, only a third of respondents expressed confidence in the presidency. Thirty-six percent expressed confidence in the Supreme Court and 9 percent in Congress. Confidence in newspapers and television news dropped from 30 percent to 20 percent over the past decade.
“You put all that together and it doesn’t bode well for our institutions,” Perry said. “And you put someone like Trump into that mix and it turns toxic.”
Tom Campbell, Silicon Valley’s last Republican congressman, said he saw politics grow increasingly ugly as competition to control the House became fierce and GOP activists lost patience for politicians who couldn’t deliver total victory on their party’s agenda.
“The sort of politics we used to have were tied to a time when we respected public service and we respected experience,” said Campbell, who quit the GOP this year in protest of Trump’s nomination. “Those are times that are going to be hard to recapture.”
Not everyone, however, is apoplectic about the future of American politics.
Morris Fiorina, a political science professor at Stanford, acknowledges that political parties, as well as their donors and activist bases, have moved away from the center. But, Fiorina said, most voters haven’t.
Defining voters
Numerous polls have shown that 40 percent to 50 percent of voters have consistently refused to define themselves as liberal or conservative going all the way back to the 1970s, Fiorina wrote in a recent study. And, he noted, partisan news anchors like Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow have audiences that amount to less than 2 percent of all eligible voters.
“The saving grace is that 80 percent of the country doesn’t feel as strongly as they do,” Fiorina said. “They’ll accept the results of the election and move on.”
But that doesn’t mean their faith in political institutions hasn’t suffered.
Even though scores of Bay Area voters interviewed by the Bay Area News Group this past week weren’t buying Trump’s claims of a giant conspiracy to throw the election to Clinton, several — like Fernando Carpenter, a former Bernie Sanders supporter — remained skeptical that the playing field is truly level.
“It was a fix; the deal was already done,” he said of Clinton’s primary victory, pointing to emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee that showed her campaign coordinating with party officials.
Jeannie Stefanski, of Pleasanton, insists the fix is in again — for Trump and the Republicans. “They’ve done it before; they’ll do it again,” she said.
Whoever wins, one of the next president’s first tasks will be to try to heal the wounds deepened during the presidential race and restore confidence in American democracy.
For his part, Fiorina thinks the politics are in store for a big shift, but the system itself will hold.
“This feels like the ’60s again,” he said. “Things are coming apart, and you can’t tell what the new order will be.”
Perry pointed to the aftermath of the contested election in 2000 as a hopeful sign that the country can pull together.
“The system survived the Civil War,” she said. “It survived the Great Depression . ... I think it will survive again.”
And so do many Bay Area residents.
Kenneth Stanley, a Richmond resident, said the country could use someone like Oprah Winfrey to appeal across the political and racial divides.
“When we had that hour in the midday, it seemed like it allowed people to talk more,” he said.
Healing starts with accepting the results on Election Day, said Tuan Phan, 34, of Santa Clara.
“We can’t change that,” he said. “Suck it up and live with it for four more years until someone else jumps in and takes office.”