candidacies that flicker and fade

Today’s electoral universe, with its 100 million member “party of nonvoters”, took shape after 1896 and from its sequel — the demobilization of the mass electorate of the nineteenth century.  The legal barriers to voting imposed then have since come down, but not the major procedural one […]
The party of non-voters haunts democracy.  “The present situation perpetuates a standing danger that the half of the American electorate which is now more or less entirely outside the universe of active politics may someday be mobilized in substantial degree by totalitarian or quasi-totalitarian appeals,” Walter Dean Burnham warns.  Strong attachments to party tend to “immunize” voters against extremist appeals.    Less-partisan or independent voters are more exposed.  Nonvoters are ripe for contagion.  Burnham uncovered that pattern in an analysis of the behavior of independents, weak partisans, and white working-class nonvoters drawn into the electorate in 1968 by the presidential candidacy of the segregationist governor of Alabama, George C Wallace.  Events in another democracy disclosed the same pattern — in the context of social polarization, weak partisans and nonvoters rallying to an extremist party.  In one sample constituency the percentage of nonvoters fell from 43.2 in one election to 28 in the next to 7.1 in the last — a 36 percent surge that went almost totally to the extremists. The elections took place in 1928, 1930, and 1933.   The constituency was the town of Westersteade in Oldenburg.  The democracy was

Oh, you know the rest. From The Age of Betrayal:  The Triumph of Money in America 1865-1900, Jack Beatty, published 2007.

A fun thing to do: go through the archives of the NY Times, looking up “Adolf Hitler”.  People who know their nazi history in any depth  know this, but it fades past most people’s historical awareness.  The funniest articles are those that tell of a split in the ranks, where some nazi publication was taken over by a faction that brandished broadside attacks against Adolf Hitler — a splinter on tactics — the more moderate Hitler wanted to bide his time a little longer, not rush the capital, remain in electoral politics.  Anyway, the more radical (or at least impatient) Nazi Party faction was summarily dismissed, that printing press regained by the Hitlerites, and all Nazi publications all over Germany published lavished praise for the soon to be Fuhrer.
Also amusing to see that the “Third Reich” was originally translated in American press as the “Third Realm”.

[…]

Once upon a time, I posted a reference to the “ghost” of this guy.  I am not going to dare mention his name, as I don’t want to see him pop in again for a comment to clarify his continued pulse.  But this political run passed right by me:
took out an advertisement in the Warsaw Times-Union, in order to announce his intention to challenge U.S. Representative Mark Souder, a Republican from Indiana’s 3rd congressional district. “I’d go to Washington and get into Congress, and have a fistfight every day,”
A publicity stunt.  Gets your name in the news.  Barely.

Meantime, in other news — I think it’s safe to mention Tony Zirkle’s name, as his neo-nazi backer (another person whose re-appearance here I wish to avoid) won’t likely surface:

You may or may not recall the controversy that his 2008 campaign for Congress engendered:
In the 2008 election he garnered national attention by appearing at a Neo-Nazi celebration of Adolf Hitler’s birthday.
Figures.  His personal website currently focuses on this personal strife:
Zirkle’s license to practice law in Indiana was suspended in 2009 for multiple instances and types of misconduct, including counseling his client in a dissolution case on how to evade a court order not to remove the couple’s children from the county, falsely telling the court that his client continued to reside in the county, and many instances of over-billing clients. Zirkle will be eligible to apply for reinstatement in October 2011.
He did run for Congress in 2010 on this platform:
There’s no constitutional right for Porn Pimpery.
Full of bible quotes.
I’M ARGUING THAT OUR PORN-PROSTITUTION CULTS ARE THE MODERN EQUIVALENT OF ANCIENT ISRAEL AND JUDAH’S BAAL FERTILITY SEX CULT WORSHIP.

A steady drop from 2006 to 2008 to 2010 on down to 3 percent of the primary vote.  This is devastating, if you consider in 2010 he avoided giant pictures of Adolf Hitler.
In other news of other candidacies from the Political Graveyard — there’s this item of predictibility.

There are a lot of these “Flavor of the Moment” candidates.   Some a bit more sympathetic than the three I just passed out.   Here’s the one well talked about last week.  The Internet is hyping them up and giving them national exposure.
Most notable is he stands against the “Gold Fringed Flag” problem, which is a fringe position that floats out there — next time you’re in court, try to argue that the case against you is illegitimate and this court has no jurisdiction over you because it’s being held under the “Gold Fringed Flag”, and see where that takes you.
Had the South Carolina television media run these profiles, the Democratic Senate nomination would have turned out differently.

I can’t say whether they provide a decent enough spark against Extremism.  I want to note something, though.  This book — Mark Halperin and  John Heilemann’s Game Change?  First, wade through the pure cynicism of politics and the mass marketing that makes policy meaningless and turns everything into “signifiers” for politicians to appease blocks of the electoral market.  Then go to the index page.  Look up “Mike Gravel”.  John Heilemann and Mark Halperin have erased Mark Gravel out of the 2008 election campaign, those bastards!
Hypothetical Presidency here.

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