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hmm...well, first thing is thanks for posting that.
with a political spectrum as narrow as that of the states, the lack of fit between individual voter positions on issues and those of the organizations that "represent" them is bound to be greater than they might be in a more diversified pool of parties/organizations/ideologies. given that folk who think within the american frame of reference generally think that the two-party system serves some greater function--i do not agree with that, but tant pis, there we are---it seems that if you think about how people interact with the actors within this narrow band of options, you'd probably find a lot more instrumental uses of votes than in the past--people figure out any number of ways to split their support between different candidates.
however, even if you found more people voting straight tickets now than say in the 1930s, during which point there was a real difference between republicans and democrats, you still could not make the argument that the way in which people understand what it means to vote straight ticket in 2004 indicates that they are simply voting party first. it is entirely possible that a whole range of caculations (based on increasingly superficial information, but such is the way modern poltics goes) would sit behind such decisions, and it is somewhere between naieve and patronizing of you to assume that the situation is otherwise.
i find it curious that you directed your premise toward people who oppose bush, as if opposition to bush could be linked to some kind of group think, that there are not many many reasons why many many reasonable, thoughtful people would oppose this guy.
i mean it is not as though the american political spectrum suddenly reduced itself to such a narrow charade, like it was wine being boiled off in a frying pan, or like for years we had been watching one tv channel only to find that one night while we were asleep someone changed it to another featuring programming that looks like the first but with arguments between two almost identical characters as opposed to two different characters--this has been a process going on for at least 20 years, and i think people have adapted to that. if they didnt adapt, there would be real legitimacy problems for the system as a whole.
the only thing that surprises me is that the framework itself is not more often and more seriously called into question--if you relativize the american situation, the competition between the parties looks less like a democratic process and more like a rotation of factions within an oligarchy that uses the rhetoric of democracy to keep itself legitimate.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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