The belief that voters have no real agency and are simply influenced by marketing, I refer to as marketocracy. If marketing is the key to what the voters prefer, then we do not have a democracy as the people simply vote as they are influenced by the marketers. This is the antithesis of a democracy. If the people can be convinced via marketing to vote either way, then they have no free will and the democracy is worthless.
In this last election, it felt as if political marketing had peaked. Rather than arguing policy, former Vice President Harris seemed to be running a marketing campaign. She appeared alongside musical acts and celebrities who told voters that they needed to vote for her. She avoided undertaking difficult interviews as this could result in negative press if she made a mistake.
For several years many politicians and campaign staffers have not accepted the people’s opinion as the will of the people. If a policy or a law was unpopular, it was because they did not sell it well enough, not because the people did not want that law.
This implies that there is no agency among the regular people. They hold no opinions that can not be changed with marketing. If the majority of people are against something, it only means that a slick marketing campaign is needed to change their minds.
After the Affordable Care Act passed and was extremely unpopular former President Obama said that they just did a bad job marketing the law. Over time, the opinions have shifted as the law has become more popular. Part of this has been due to the marketing around the law, acceptance of the changes, and the difficulty in repealing the law. It would appear that former President Obama was largely correct.
The popularity of the Affordable Care Act caused some in Washington to buy into the concept of the marketocracy. It does not matter what the voters want, as marketing is all that is needed to change their minds. You can normalize verboten behaviors and change attitudes without difficulty, so why be concerned with the current opinions of voters?
A marketocrocy would mean a small group of marketers actually control the country. They can convince the voters to vote how they like so they are the ones in charge. Big-monied interests would lavish money on these voter influencers to make sure they and their politicians would set up an environment where these interests could flourish.
This past presidential election, there was a noticeable difference in how the candidates campaigned. President Trump talked about the policies that he would implement if elected, securing the border and getting us out of foreign entanglements. Former Vice President Harris’s campaign seemed like a procedural product launch. There were events to create a buzz with musical acts, celebrities and large crowds, but it seemed as if much of the energy was missing.
It seems that this election, the hype and celebrity that had propelled other campaigns did not work as well. This may well mark the end of the marketocracy as voters may have become hardened to this type of campaign and seek one that is more policy-based.
Rocco Maglio is the co-publisher of The Hernando Sun and earns a living as software engineer and cybersecurity specialist. He has been a software engineer for 30 years and has a master’s degree in cybersecurity.
