Do You Want Proof That We Just Like to Fight?

Carl Sheline just won re-election as the mayor of Lewiston, Maine.  I don't know anything about Carl Sheline, his opponent, Jon Connor, and almost anything about Lewiston.  (I pass the I-95 exit for it to and from Bangor or Southwest Harbor.  But I have no reason to go there.)  Perhaps the most noteworthy fact for me, and for everyone else, is that Lewiston just suffered a sizeable mass shooting a couple of weeks or so ago.

So, it was presumably election time in Lewiston, and Sheline and Connor opposed each other.  In a runoff.  (That, in itself, should be an attention-grabber.)  "No party affiliation" is given for each of them.  They were just two Mainers running against each other for mayor of Lewiston.

There are two, or possibly three, striking things about this story  Carl Sheline wins Lewiston's mayoral run-off election by slim margin (msn.com)  Perhaps one is that neither candidate had a party affiliation.  I don't know how common this is in Maine, but it was true in this case.  So there was no primitive reflex basis to say "he's terrible, because he's a..."  But the two more striking things about this election were that the candidates related to each other, and to the public, in a respectful and non-confrontational way, and that the voter turnout was 16%.  (It's also noteworthy that this runoff election was very close, with only 122 votes separating the winner from the loser.)  And the candidates congratulated each other for a good campaign.

If things aren't ugly, nasty, mean, and combative, we're just not interested.  It doesn't engage us.  It's not our idea of fun.  Sixteen percent?  A turnout of 17% or 18% maybe gives the opposite result.  But only about one in six voters could be bothered, if there wasn't a dog or cock fight to capture their interest.

If you're thinking I've failed to note that the platform is important, in terms of how it affects the public, it isn't.  It's never mentioned in this article.  Sheline thanked the voters for giving him another term.  He didn't say anything about how, or if, his approach was helping them.  And Connor didn't say anything about a different approach out of which the voters had cheated themselves.

I don't watch political debates, by and large.  There's little to learn from them.  But I did see a couple of clips from the last Republican debate.  DeSantis and Ramaswamy were making wisecracks about Haley, and Haley thanked them for the attention.  They made fun of her, and she made fun of them.  Christie, who's running against all of them, supported Haley, and said he'd worked with her for years, and she was very capable.  DeSantis, Ramaswamy, and Haley were all versions of wiseasses, and Christie was a respectful gentleman.  Do you want to know who's last in that group?  And do you want to know who's leading, by a very large margin, in the Republican primaries, even though he's one of the most obnoxious people on the planet, and doesn't respect his opponents or the public enough even to bother to participate in the debates?

I'm telling you there's something wrong with us.  And part of the evidence is our love of aggression.