Changing the electorate...lightning war

David Plouffe utters every politico's pipe dream; rather than sit idly watching the electorate change, change the electorate with massive voter registration. Since newly registered voters (purportedly) turn out more than others, massive registration equals massive turnout. Get the citizens of Gary IN to turn out, and Indiana breaks for BHO by 2 points, and the rubes down south are left scratching their heads.

Let's leave aside a few questions, but state them up front: By how much do new-registrees outvote old-registrees? Plouffe didn't say. Doesn't the candidate's identity make it easier to recruit new, once-disenfranchised voters? That is, isn't the registration blitz just a follow-up to Barack's innate crossover appeal? Is any Democrat registering new rural white voters, for instance? What does a candidate owe the newly-enfranchised? Why should the newly-enfranchised trust this candidate more than others? Why, if you're so confident in the power of grass-roots democracy, would you sponsor such a top-down action? Hasn't the GOP already figured out how to screw with that key disenfranchised poor-urban-black vote that Plouffe wants to turn out?

But my real problem with this plan is its implicit laziness, its complicity in preserving the same old remarkably profitable politics.

Ideally, a candidate changes the electorate -- that is, the people -- through his powers of persuasion. Blitzing the registrar is a tacit admission that not enough people are going to be persuaded. When you can't change heads, change the head count.

Registration blitz inverts the relationship between people and their elected. In this scenario, the candidate selects his people and imagines or demands their allegiance.

Registration blitz elides historical and social reasons for disenfranchisement, presuming that everyone who doesn't vote has been manipulated/discriminated/coerced out of it. Black precincts in Philadelphia have half to a third of the registered voters that white precincts have, and even those voters turn out at just over 35% on average. Philadelphia gets news coverage for having separatist movements, but the real story is that America has been engaged in a low-grade secession/quarantine action ever since 1968. It's protest by dropping out. Why should Plouffe expect to skip his history lesson?

(A side note on social reasons for disenfranchisement: When I had jury duty in February 2007, the presiding judge came to tell us all to get our friends to register to vote. "Don't disenfranchise yourself just to get out of jury duty." My white ass was shocked that anyone would consider not registering just to get out of jury duty...for an instant. Then I remembered what the rest of Philadelphia looks like, how voting hasn't changed shit, and how very much jury duty sucks...and I began to understand. I think it's a lazy, shiftless response, but not totally unwarranted.)

So Plouffe should make a deal: for everybody who registers this cycle and then gets called for jury duty, an Obama volunteer should take their spot. Civic responsibility needs an examplar. You can't hector people into enacting democracy, any more than you can choose who votes for you...
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