The audacity of despair

An interesting article on the role of negative emotions in the election campaign — although it defines negative emotions narrowly in terms of gloom and despondency rather than in the Buddhist sense that includes ill will and craving. Anyway, it suggests that demoralized McCain voters are less likely to motivate themselves to vote.

More McCain supporters also feel angry and bored, while Obama’s are likelier to say they are proud and hopeful.

All of this is a bad sign for McCain, according to George E. Marcus, a political scientist from Williams College who has studied the role emotion plays in politics. Negative feelings about a campaign can discourage voters by making them less likely to go through what can be a painful process: Voting for someone who will lose.

“If I’m getting my head handed to me by a tennis player, my brain is saying, ‘Do I want a second match? No,’” Marcus said. “Why do something that’s going to lead to failure?”

Political Pulse | The Associated Press-Yahoo! News Poll on Yahoo! News

I’ve found myself wondering sometimes if McCain is a victim of this kind of thinking — that knowing he’s likely to lose he feels compelled to lose.

• He must know that the electorate is generally turned off by negative campaigning, and yet he continues to pump out McCarthyist, guilt-by-association ads that portray Obama as a friend of “terrorists” and “antisemites” in the plural, although he can only point to one example of each and hasn’t established the existence of anything close to a friendship.
• He must feel dreadful about having picked Palin when he really wanted Lieberman, and he must deeply regret his pick having seen what a liability she’s become.
• He must feel depressed that he had to kowtow to the religious right when he prides himself on being a maverick and doing his own thing.
• He must be terrified of the possibility of Palin becoming president in the even of his incapacity. He must despise himself for not being able to look Obama in the eye during debates.
• He must feel deeply ashamed about not being able to talk to the press on his so-called “Straight-Talk Express.”
• It must be a source of great pain to him to have so many friends and former supporters say that he’s no longer the John McCain they once knew and respected.

Carrying that burden of nagative emotion I can’t believe that McCain could want to win. I think he’d probably, at this point, like to crawl quietly away and become himself again.

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