The Pundits Are All Wrong About Alabama

There is hope.

It’s not that a Democratic Senator was elected in a traditionally Republican state.

That’s mostly irrelevant.

And incredibly important.

It’s irrelevant that he was elected. He was going up against an incredibly flawed candidate and it was STILL a close race. It’s incredibly important because of a theme I’ve been seeing growing, slowly.

Local activism. “Oh, the Black vote came out and saved the Democratic party” say the pundits. No, they didn’t. Because there is no Black vote. There’s no Evangelical vote. There’s no Jewish vote. There’s no White vote.

There is no Democratic party. Or Republican party. Those are artificial constructs that are getting in the way. However, these constructs are tribal which means they are still deeply compelling. So, while people generally act in self-interest, we’ve seen people stop acting (or voting) in self-interest.

Political parties (and other organizations) come up with simplified issues around which they try to rally vastly disparate groups (individuals, really). Then they try to make people care about them, as if they are the most important things in the world.

While I’m sure there are dedicated public servants in elected office, too much of their dedication is sidetracked into issues not related to their constituents or what they think is most important. They have to toe the party line in the hopes that some day the issues important to them will become the issues that are important to the party. That, and trying to get re-elected. Every two years.

What’s important to a small business owner in Kansas is not necessarily the same as what’s important to a factory worker in North Carolina, an attorney in Texas, a McDonald’s cashier in Connecticut or a farmer in Oregon. And with digital media these individuals are able to amplify their individualism and self-determination. This in turn magnifies their self-identification as unique individuals, not demographics.

The era of general demographics is OVER. If you are in the marketing world, you know this. There are 330 million demographics in the US. We are all a demographic of one.

The Democrats failed in the 2016 national election because they tried to tell people the important things they should care about. The Republicans succeeded because they amplified and adopted what people actually cared about (or feared, or were angry about). Whether or not it was important or even in their best interest was secondary to validating their concerns.

In 2016 the Democratic Party tried to get potential voters to rally around their 55 page platform. The Republican Party platform fit on a few bumper stickers.

What wins? Not whats important. What wins is what people care about. Or too often what someone can get people to care about. The emotional pull of a charismatic leader and xenophobia are primal survival instincts deeply ingrained in the tribalism that has dominated humanity for most our history.

We often gravitate towards what we think is right over what is in our best interests — especially if we are stirred by highly emotional narratives.

This is outdated in our contemporary world. That’s our past.

It’s outdated because it is now easier than ever to behave en masse and tip us over into catastrophe. It is easier than ever to generate false “reality bubbles” that can mislead not hundreds or thousands but millions of people to behave against their self-interest.

And it is also easier than ever to apply collective power to improve the world. Community activation around human rights, women’s rights, #MeToo, #BLM, are examples of this collective action. These trends are not leader driven, they are community driven.

Where is the future? Its finding issues you are passionate about and working to make a difference. Then finding ways to connect with others to work towards common or complementary goals. That’s how we will solve the intractable problems we face.

If you followed along with what Jeff Gomez has been writing about in terms of Collective Journey, you’ll understand that the Hero’s Journey model — what our political parties have been immersed in for centuries — is losing efficacy. The new model — exploited well by the Trump team — is where the power lies in the 21st century.

The stories that unfolded in Alabama (and what I saw in the 2017 elections) played into key elements of the Collective Journey engine: regenerative listening, superpositioning, social-self-organization, and change-making. I saw local activism. I saw individuals who used to outsource their activism to a political party looking to take back agency for their lives and their communities. And I saw grassroots efforts connect with each other, powered by pervasive communications. The Google search word for 2017 was “HOW”. That’s how often people were looking up how THEY can do something themselves, not outsource it to someone else. And connecting with other people who are doing it already.

The pundits see individuals coming out to support their party. They are wrong. This was not the black or female or even Democrat vote. It was the vote of a collective whose values transcended all those groups. That’s where our true hope (and salvation) lays.

I see individuals acting at a local level working towards addressing our most intractable problems.

Therein lies hope.

(Thank you Jeff Gomez for your always sage editorial advice.)