Engaging All Sectors

When reading the article, "Creating Constituencies," I found myself trying to locate the appeals to symbolic and material interests in the 2008 presidential campaign. Just as Bush emphasized the importance of having millions of evangelicals show up tot the election, Obama emphasized the importance of young people voting in the election. The results fromt he 2000 election campaign study found that more attention to issues of morality, thought to resonate more with evangelical conservatives, stimulated the entire population, rather than the evangelicals specifically. I wonder though if this is the same case for the 2008 election. An entire generation (younger, college aged population) is more inclusive than evangelical conservatives. Perhaps appeals to a group that is much broader will have the ability of mobilizing individuals within the group to 're-mobilize' others like them in the group as well. In the study issues of education and health care effectively mobilized women more than men, but no distinctions were made between the actions of women and women with children. This too suggests that it may be harder to target a group of individuals that is too specific for they also share many interests with non group members that make them react more towards other issues. From my perspective, it does appear that Obama had the ability to appeal to a specific age demographic, but perhaps there were group effects within this movement that attribute to the increase in participation of citizens.

The discussion about taxes and how certain appeals are likely to motivate the general public while other appeals, such as Gore's appeal to the lower and middle class voters, had the opposite affect than what was intended is quite compelling. The fact that Gore was able to stimulate the interests of citizens in the wealthier class, though granting tax cuts to the lower and middle class, highlight the idea that peole are more motivated or affected when they have to give something up versus when the material gains are most apparent. Like we discussed in class, people respond more positively when they receive a tax reimbursement check in the mail than when the monthly tax deduction from their paycheck decreases each month. The people in the wealthiest tax bracket see these tax cuts for the middle and lower income tax groups as threatening- they might lead to tax increases for the wealthy. I hesitate to believe this same 'reverse stimulation' would work if the wealthy were given tax cuts and the middle and lower income groups were unaffected. The wealthy class is already thought to be more politically active and vocal. The opportunity cost of becoming politically engaged may still be too high for the lower and middle class groups, even when tax cuts are at stake.

I think political leaders do have a responsibility to try to engage all electors. This article proves it is very hard to target a specific sector of the population by simply focusing more specifically on particular issues such as tax breaks or education. Some issues increase the awareness and political participation of all groups, thus having no effect of making the less engaged sector more vocal in the political arena. Although some efforts may not elicit the most positive response from a sector of the population, representatives must still try to engage these less engaged sectors.