Voting alone: the decline of bodily mass communication and public sensationalism in presidential elections

Abstract

The congregational crowd was a powerful mode of political communication in the nineteenth-century US until banished by the imposition of literate modes on popular electoral politics by Progressive reformers. We examine its major channels of expression, bodily mass communication and public sensationalism, within a framework of class-based struggle, observing that the practice of live bodily assembly created broad points of entry into political life, socialized the young, and successfully conveyed the importance of voting. A text-based normative model of the informed deliberative voter, we argue, offers too narrow a conception of participation compared to a more spaciously conceived democratic community.

The Freak Election Bet and the Performance of the Democratic Paradox

“…The tribal partisan, defined by racial, ethnic, and religious markings, was replaced by an abstracted seeker after the common good. This "informed citizen" left behind all features of his (and now her) social particularities and communal identity and decided on policy using a purely objective, rational calculus (Schudson, 1998;Marvin and Simonson, 2004). Even when, as in the case of race, social divisions retained some relevance in electoral politics, their explicit articulation-whether by Al Sharpton or George Wallace-inevitably provoked a scandal.…”

“…And yet it was also true that participation in ritual was itself a form of politics, as McGerr has argued (1986) (see also Marvin and Simonson, 2004). The spectacular campaigns and political rituals of the Gilded Age provided citizens with a concrete, meaningful electoral experience, one that has been arguably missing from much of American political culture since the Second World War.…”

The Salt River Ticket, Democratic Discourse, and Nineteenth Century American Politics

“…They probably disappeared for slightly different reasons than did the spectacular style of politics as a whole (Marvin & Simonson, 2004;McGerr, 1986). The mass rally or the torch light parade provided fun and entertainment for many and were intimately woven into political strategies for activating and mobilizing the voting base prior to the election.…”

The Troubling Equivalence of Citizen and Consumer

“…The nineteenth-century politics that was being supplanted was one of emotional, partisan manipulation and mobilization that had more to do with feelings of fellowship and teamwork and rivalry, and the good feeling engendered by alcohol, than it did with considerations of policy or the public good. The new politics may have led to superficiality in presenting candidates to the public and may have been the avenue that would one day lead high-minded leaders to complain of being marketed like breakfast cereal, but the old politics was no closer to the sort of "rational-critical" public discussion that political philosophers like to think is the heart of democracy (see also Marvin and Simonson 2004).…”