Politics and Pigeonholed: The Relationship Between Protest and the American Electoral Process

In a series put on by the Center for Ethics at Muhlenberg College entitled “Civility and Disobedience”, the college invited UMass Amherst Professor Barbara Cruikshank to discuss ethics and politics as pertaining to social theory. Cruikshank’s main point was that social theorists try to aid in the success of protests, but according to her findings the results are very different and protests end up being silenced as a result of their actions. A large part of her talk discussed how social theorists in their research trivialize protest by calling it political or by pigeonholing a protest to only concern one specific aim, which greatly reduces the amount of creativity surrounding a protest. Interestingly, both of these instances that apparently stifle protests have similar effects when applied to electoral campaigns, most notably the candidates themselves. For candidates, being attached to the current political structure is usually consequential due to the negative connotations surrounding the word: politics. However, as Cruikshank points out, the only way to change what is going to happen is through politics, making it difficult for elected officials or protesters to find a way to facilitate real change. A similar problem arises for politicians if their campaigns are classifying under a specific topic, because the end result is a focus on a candidate’s opinion on one issue and not focusing on his entire platform. Thus, in any campaign or protest, one must avoid being titled as political because of the negative connotations surrounding the word, which leads to distrust for your cause. Furthermore, having your campaign or protest being categorized by the media on one topic will also cause damage because it will suppress the amount of your ideas that will gain the public’s attention.

The clear goal of protesters as well as electoral candidates is to insure that they can avoid politics as much as possible because of the negative connotation associated with politics, but the Catch-22 is for your protest or campaign to have any chance of causing change, politics are necessary.  A driving force behind not having your event or campaign platform labeled as political is because the lack of public trust in the government as well as political protests often leads to waning support. Thus, people are much more willing to support protests for economic inequality, the altering of environmental standards, or a moral issue such as gay marriage or abortion, as it does not deal with taking on government, but merely voices an opinion about an issue. Unfortunately, if a candidate for a federal office makes the comment that he is not like others in Washington, and tries to persuade people that their platform is right for them, without involving politics they will probably win, but will not accomplish very much. An example of this is Dave Brat, a little known Tea Party candidate who defeated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the primary because Brat campaigned on the fact that he was not a Washington political insider, however if Brat becomes elected he will soon realize that by avoiding politics, he will continue to be a part of the Washington gridlock. The same argument exists for those participating in, if a protest avoids being called political, support will usually grow, but without taking on the political machine that actually creates laws, no changes will take effect, and no changes will result. Thus, in order for a candidate to succeed in not only becoming elected but also taking on government, he must offer a fresh idea on how government should be run. For a protest, as Cruikshank states, the issues that the protesters are fighting for must resonate with enough people for the government to not only notice, but to act. This is why there are so many protests and candidates and so little change, they both push platforms of issues that people agree should work, but without involving politics for fear of loss of support, the status quo remains intact, and the political machine continues without missing a beat. 

One of the greatest elements of protests and campaigns alike is that their platforms offer a plethora of different issues for which they have specific opinions about, but like Professor Barbara Cruikshank argues the act of pigeonholing by the media or for a candidate by an opponent can destroy the creativity of ones ideas, and ruin its grander purpose. From a protest standpoint, the events in Ferguson are a great example of pigeonholing, where the media solely focuses on the role of race in the incident. What is not being discussed but could are ways to prevent what happened through education, increased discussion about guns role in society, and even the demilitarization of the police. Despite this, the story remains “a white cop shot a black kid” and once again another “discussion” of racial inequality will come out of Ferguson, and all other ideas or solutions are swallowed up as unimportant or uninteresting by the media. For a candidate in an election, being classified under a specific issue will hurt them as well, especially if a person has a very different view on a certain issue than the rest of his party. An example would be if a Republican wanted to increase the size of the federal government, or if a Democrat wanted to increase the size of the military, these would be taken as strange and be the main media focus for these candidates campaign as well as fuel for an opponent especially in a primary, when they are facing other candidates from their own party who will bash on their unorthodox view. There are some notable political parties who base their entire campaigns around a single issue like the environmental platform of the Green Party, the Prohibition Party of the early 1900s, and The Rent is To Damn High Party whose goals are relatively self-explanatory. However, there is a noticeable similarity between all these parties, they rarely if ever win. Thus, in protests as well as campaigns a winning strategy is to not allow yourself to be categorized, but instead utilize your platform to having clear stances on many issues allowing for all sorts of ideas to be discussed and debated, not just one.

The failure of protesters to challenge the government as well as the media’s constant efforts to turn candidacies into one memorable view on a topic, or one topic of discussion are both very unfortunate instances in our current American culture. It is understandable why government, especially the current one in Washington is bad to associate with, as Congress sits on an approval rating hovering around ten percent. Also, the media condenses topics of discussion to fit sound bites, and right now race is the issue American’s care most about, so that is what is being discussed. However, what I learned from Dr. Barbara Cruikshank’s talk more than anything is that it is our job as political scientists to not cringe at the term politics, but embrace it, and look past the media’s classified portrayal of the news, but instead look at all the sources to try and gather the full story.