With the Massachusetts special Senate election over the battle for its meaning is in full swing.
Elections don’t “mean” anything. The effects elections have are a function of the meanings we put into them.
One way to think about elections is to think about language. Words don’t have meanings. This medium is no more a “blog” than it is an artichoke, there is nothing inherently blogly about it, and should we all agree to call it an artichoke it wouldn’t suddenly taste great dipped in butter. For convenience, communities assign words to concepts. A “blog” tends to be a place where people post short writings on a variety of subjects. They are drafted and exist “virtually”, readers may print a blog post, but it is written to be consumed online. These and other conventions, which emerged as the medium developed, are all crammed into four squiggly lines and a short sound-pattern: b l o g. With the word standing in for the concept we no longer think about the many attributes of blogs, the history of the medium, how the internet works, and the countless other aspects of a blog. Instead we act as if the word were the “thing in itself.” We read, write and judge blogs based on this shortcut rather than on the broader conception (for example I have about 200 words left to make my point – what if we called the medium “blovels”, could they be longer and assumed to be fiction?). Meaning determines action.
Which brings us back to the Massachusetts Senate election. A lot of things went into that election – campaign management, money, messages, weather, in at least one case an openly gay liberal radio personality on a vendetta against Democratic candidate and Attorney General Martha Coakley for issues unrelated to the campaign. Elections, like concepts that words represent, are big and complex beasts that cannot possibly be entirely described all at once (if for no other reason than no one has that kind of time). As a result we assign a quick meaning to elections: a mandate on health care, a lousy candidate, a repudiation of Obama’s liberal agenda, proof that cautious Democrats in the Senate fell for Republican stalling tricks, and so forth. We then act as if our explanation were true. If the meaning becomes “repudiation of Obama’s agenda” people will act as if this were the case, ignoring all of the things the election simultaneously means. Candidates will run against Obama, Democrats will distance themselves from Obama, and so forth. The outcome of the election, like the emergence of a new medium, cries out for definition so that we know what to do with, and about, it. The explanation, like the word, “becomes” the thing in itself and we behave as if the explanation were complete, given and true.
Whoever wins the definitional battle will have won the meaning of the election, and thus largely determine political behavior until the next political event that cries for explanation.
