What If Voters Don’t Want to Be Superheroes?

Americans want to be saved, not be the ones called upon to do the saving.

Like many of you, I am waiting with bated breath for today’s election results. These results will likely not be completely tallied (and some will surely, in this post-2020 era, be contested) for days, if not weeks. For Democrats—and anyone on the side of women’s reproductive rights, children’s education, Black and Latino rights, LGBTQ rights, Medicare, Social Security and, you know, basic democracy—things aren’t looking great. This election is a suspense-thriller and horror movie all at once; candidates in crucial races remain neck and neck in the polls where all logic and common sense indicate they really shouldn’t be. So why, I keep wondering, are these contests so close?

I keep coming back to a message that has been touted again and again by Democrats since the 2016 election. From candidates’ stump speeches to media appearances to the (innumerous) fundraising emails that I’m sent each and every day: “Our democracy is in peril” this election, and the “stakes have never been higher.” It is absolutely, completely true. Every election cycle since the era of Donald Trump’s America began has been led with a bat signal from the Dems: America as we know it is at stake, and the only way it can be saved is by reasonable Americans donning their capes, heading to the polls, and voting blue.

But here’s the issue, and my worry. Although this approach may have been enough to eke out a Biden presidency to help hold down the fort for a while—despite the conservative Supreme Court’s dismantlement our country as we know it, and despite all the evidence that a near coup unfolded at our Capitol on January 6 of last year—this message doesn’t seem to be connecting.

Americans, even in liberal urban enclaves, are nervous about rising crime and feeling unsafe. Across the country, everyone is dealing with inflation and rising costs of living. More than anything, after nearly three years of a pandemic amid political dysfunction, a government insurrection, and hyper-partisanship, people are exhausted. Jaded. Trapped in an existential hell of collapsing rights all around them, but also grappling with very real day-to-day problems like the cost of food and housing. People want to feel saved. By someone, something, anything—an elected official, a government that functions in their interests, a court that represents public opinion. They don’t want to be the ones called upon to do the saving.

Maybe counterintuitively, I think this is a giant part of the appeal of the democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, John Fetterman. While that, too, has been a close race, it has remained so in spite of the name recognition of his GOP opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, as well as Fetterman’s own health issues following a stroke earlier this year. He spent his primary on the streets of Pennsylvania connecting with voters and saying how he would fight for them, and has spent the bulk of his general-election campaign on aggressive offense against his opponent, painting Oz as a carpetbagger—not just to land a cheap shot, but to show how poorly positioned Oz is to champion the real needs of individuals in their home state. Where some see Fetterman’s stroke and its aftereffects as a deficiency, others not only find his plight relatable but are inspired by his fortitude. Fetterman’s speech might not have fully recovered, and he might forget a word here and there, but not even a stroke will stop him from fighting.

I sometimes wish that if the Democrats can’t do a better job of presenting themselves as the party that can save us, then they’d at least do a better job of scaring the shit out of us about the alternative. Not just with generic, rhetorical language about “high stakes” and “lost rights,” but by painting a picture of what awaits us, as individuals, in a future MAGA-GOP America. It’s not like there aren’t already ample dystopian near futures to float by the public. There are towns running out of drinking water, women smuggling in abortion pills across borders. In Russia, terrifying anti-LGBTQ laws are being put into effect that could very well become the direction we are headed toward here in a post-Trump Republican-led America. And I haven’t even touched on the horror of what happens in a puppet democracy.

Amid my anxiety and frustration with Democratic messaging, I often find myself thinking of one of my favorite holiday films: the 1988 Bill Murray vehicle, Scrooged. In it, Murray plays a morally bankrupt TV executive producing a live adaptation of A Christmas Carol, called Scrooge. Early in the film, he shoots down a promo clip that leans on passive good cheer, instead opting for fear tactics. Over a series of horrific images, we hear in voice-over: “Acid rain, drug addiction, international terrorism, freeway killers. Now more than ever, it is important to remember the true meaning of Christmas. Don’t miss Charles Dickens’ immortal classic, Scrooge. Your life may depend on it.” Ratings were through the roof. I’m not saying we needed a viral ad like this about democracy, but I’m saying it couldn’t have possibly hurt.

Alas, the polls are open, the clock is ticking, and in the absence of better messaging by our actual candidates, I find myself, once again, lighting my novena candle and hoping that enough of my fellow Americans will fight exhaustion and fear, and vote for the moral good. Our democracy may depend on it.