Basically Everything Is "Political." And That's Okay.

“Some things should be beyond politics, like funding the post office,” Pete Buttigieg tweeted over the weekend. Similarly, Sara Nelson, the president of the union that represents flight attendants, said, “Let’s take the politics out of it. We need our USPS funded right now. We need DeJoy fired.” (Louis DeJoy is the postmaster general.) Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler said recently, “What I see is politics coming into sports. No one has asked politics to come into sports.” Loeffler, who is also the co-owner of Atlanta’s WNBA team, is frustrated with the league’s strong support of the Black Lives Matter movement, which includes having that phrase on the court during games and players on teams, including Atlanta’s, wearing shirts with pro-BLM messages during pre-game warm-ups. 

These comments are not unusual--I regularly hear people say that they wish things were less “political” or that we should “keep the politics” out of something. But the comments above are a bit off (and odd), if you think about it. When you look up “political” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the first definition given is, “of or relating to government, a government, or the conduct of government.” The Macmillan dictionary says that political can also mean, “relating to relationships of power that exist between people in an organization.” Politics, per Merriam-Webster, can be defined as, “the art or science of government,” or “competition between competing interest groups or individuals for power or leadership.” So basically, the terms political and politics often refer to the government, but also power dynamics more broadly--I bet you have “office politics” where you work, even if it’s not Capitol Hill. 

So think about the first paragraph, and then the second. A person who earlier this year was running to be the head of the U.S. government (Buttigieg) and another person who runs a group trying to increase the power of employees vis-à-vis their managers (Nelson) are demanding that a huge government agency (the Postal Service) get more money from the overall government and that the head of that government agency be fired. But they want to take the politics out of it?  Buttigieg and Nelson are of course talking about political issues and taking political action by sending these tweets--and their words matter because they are major political figures. Pete Buttigieg can no more call for keeping the politics out of post office funding than a doctor can call for keeping health out of debates about hospital funding. 

Loeffler holds a powerful seat in the U.S. government, is currently campaigning to keep that seat and her idea is for all WNBA players, instead of embracing BLM on the court, to have the flag of the United States government on their jerseys. That all sounds pretty political to me. 

Buttigieg isn’t dumb---he speaks six more languages than I do. Neither are Loeffler or Nelson. But either intentionally or unintentionally, they are using the terms politics and political in ways that in my view create confusion--and this misuse of terminology around issues of American governance is widespread. When people say they want to keep issues away from “politics,” I suspect that they really want to keep issues from being dominated by 1. Partisanship 2. Ideology and/or 3. Electoral considerations. That’s an important distinction and useful one. Let me explain. 

Right now, we have a postmaster general (DeJoy) who was appointed by a GOP-controlled board of governors and who is an ally of President Trump. And he is making all kinds of changes to the Postal Service that seem designed in part to make it harder to vote by mail, which Trump opposes. DeJoy seems to be executing a partisan agenda--and ideally mail delivery would not be a partisan issue. 

The debate over mask-wearing amid COVID-19 is similar. It is certainly a political act when officials like Gov. Andy Beshear and Anthony Fauci encourage everyone to wear masks--these are top officials of the government, using their powerful roles to encourage or even mandate behavior. But since there is virtually universal agreement among health experts that more mask-wearing would limit the spread of the virus, it’s strange and unfortunate that mask-wearing has become a partisan issue, with GOP-leaning officials less likely to encourage their use and GOP-leaning voters expressing more wariness than Democrats about wearing them. 

The phrase black lives matter is a statement of ideals and values and tied to a movement to push U.S. government policy toward being more favorable to black people. It is a political movement. It is not intended to be a partisan movement--and many BLM leaders speak as negatively about the Democratic Party as they do about the Republican Party. But BLM is trapped in America’s partisanship, where black people are very associated with the Democratic Party and distancing yourself from the political causes of black people is in some ways part of being a Republican elected official. 

So if Buttigieg and Nelson said they want to take the partisanship out of post office funding, that would at least make sense--although I would argue a one-time Democratic presidential candidate isn’t an ideal figure to make that argument. And I think that ideal extends beyond the post office--way too many things in America are not just political but partisan. 

I think the second most common misuse of “political” is really when people mean “electoral.” Did Trump for political reasons send in federal law enforcement officials who basically acted as troops to stop some protests in Portland? Yes--but I’m not sure that tells us much. I would argue that since Trump is the elected president of the United States, most of his actions are somewhat political in nature--almost all of them involve the administration of government and the distribution of resources and power. What I think is the more important and useful question is whether he sent federal officials to police Portland for electoral reasons--to boost his sagging poll numbers by being perceived as taking on out-of-control left-wing protesters. It would be really bad, in my view, if the nation’s president was using law enforcement purely for electoral reasons. 

Finally, I suspect both Buttigieg and Loeffler want to keep ideological considerations out of post office funding and the WNBA, respectively--and they are (either intentionally or unintentionally) using the term politics as a stand-in for ideology. (Dictionary.com defines ideology as, “the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group.”) Nearly every political debate in America reflects underlying ideological differences--what you think about Black Lives Matter probably depends on your views of how much equality society should have more broadly. 

But often when someone says that they want to keep the politics out of something, they really want to stop consideration of the underlying ideology of something. That instinct is usually not great--because it’s a way to cut off conversations and debates and to preserve the status quo. LeJoy and many GOP elites generally seem to want a smaller USPS and more privatized mail delivery. Buttigieg wants to maintain the pre-LeJoy postal service. So it’s not that LeJoy is being political and Buttigieg is not, but rather that they have different ideological visions for mail delivery in America--and it might be worth debating those visions instead of Buttigieg implying that LeJoy is somehow wrong to even have an alternative vision. Similarly, in casting the WNBA’s embrace of BLM as political, Loeffler is trying to avoid a discussion of the substance of the players’ stances and why she disagrees with them. In reality, embracing BLM is a political and ideological act--and so is not embracing BLM. 

My bottom line: American politicians focus too much on electoral considerations and too much on being aligned with their parties. You shouldn’t be able to predict politicians actions simply by figuring out which party that they are in or reading the polls, knowing that they will do whatever is popular. But debates over policy are inherently political and often unavoidably ideological--and it would probably make more sense to be honest about such differences and debate them, as opposed to suggesting that we keep the politics out of politics. 

Kentucky’s 2020 election system and the problems of extolling bipartisanship

Gov. Andy Beshear, who is a Democrat, reached an agreement on Friday with Secretary of State Michael Adams, a Republican, for a voting system for November’s elections. Essentially, in addition to in-person voting on Nov. 3, any Kentucky voter who says that they are afraid of getting COVID by voting in person can vote-by-mail. And Kentucky will have early in-person voting starting on Oct. 13 that will last basically up to Election Day, including the three Saturdays before Election Day. Kentucky traditionally doesn’t have widespread vote-by-mail or any weeks of early voting. So this is a big shift and one that is likely to make it much easier and safer for Kentuckians to vote in November. 

Much of the reaction to this agreement has been to hail the bipartisanship of Adams and Beshear. With a huge partisan divide in politics both in Kentucky and nationally, I understand the instinct to celebrate bipartisanship. But I wonder if it’s misguided. Bipartisan agreement, on its own, is not the sign of a good policy--most notably, the Iraq War was supported by leading members of both parties. There are other ways to think about policy, such as the formulation from the writer Ben Spielberg, who argues that the ideal policy is both “evidence-based” and “power-balancing,” as opposed to policies that are “privilege-defending” and “unsupported by evidence.” 

In this context, the ideal policy (to allow people to vote and minimize potential COVID-19 exposure) was probably one that allowed for both more early in-person voting and more vote-by-mail. That’s what experts in voting policy have been calling for. A bipartisanship agreement that basically limited voting to in-person and on Election Day would not have been a great policy amid COVID-19, while a provision ensuring that people could vote early in-person and by mail would have been preferable even if either Beshear or Adams had basically imposed that on the other person and it was therefore partisan. 

What’s really generating the surprise in Kentucky is that Adams pursued an evidence-based policy instead of 1. Aligning with Trump and many others in his party who are falsely claiming that more vote-by-mail will end up resulting in a lot more voter fraud 2. Being aggressively opposed to anything that Beshear suggests, as many Kentucky Republicans have been this year. 

McGrath replaces her campaign manager 

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Amy McGrath announced on Friday afternoon that Dan Kanninen is replacing Mark Nickolas as her campaign manager. Nickolas, who ran McGrath’s unsuccessful 2018 House campaign, will now be a senior adviser overseeing her television ads. Kanninen runs a DC-based political firm and has no Kentucky experience, at least from my brief research on him. That’s not necessarily a bad sign--Eric Hyers, who ran Beshear’s successful 2019 gubernatorial campaign, isn’t a Kentuckian either. Kanninen has a good resume: he ran Obama’s campaign in Wisconsin in 08; then was a senior adviser for Obama 2012 in Virginia; a senior adviser for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign in North Carolina; and earlier this year was national states director for Michael Bloomberg’s campaign. Democrats in the state tell me that this isn’t that much of a shakeup--Nickolas may not have been the most important figure for McGrath’s campaign and Kanninen may not be either. McGrath’s most important adviser may be Sannie Overly, the former state House member, state party chair and 2015 candidate for lieutenant governor. 

The conventional wisdom is that it’s never a good sign to be replacing your campaign manager, particularly this late in a cycle. In this case, I’m not sure it matters too much--McGrath has always been a very longshot to defeat McConnell. 

Thanks for reading. 

If you have tips for future stories, you can reach me at perrylbacon@gmail.com. If you see any typos or errors, please alert me and I can fix them for the online edition of this newsletter.