"People tend to vote the present tense - not the subjective"
About this Quote
“People tend to vote the present tense - not the subjective” is Diane Sawyer doing what good broadcast journalism does at its best: compressing a messy political truth into a phrase that sounds simple because it’s been stress-tested against reality.
“Present tense” is a sly grammatical metaphor for the tyranny of now. Voters, Sawyer suggests, aren’t grading a candidate’s inner life, nuance, or even long-range plans as much as they’re reacting to whatever feels immediate: gas prices this week, a viral clip last night, a sense of disorder or calm in the air. The line is also a quiet rebuke to pundit culture, which loves to treat elections as personality tests or moral referendums. Sawyer’s framing implies that “the subjective” (values, intentions, character narratives) matters less than the felt temperature of the moment.
The subtext is sharper: political communication is structurally biased toward immediacy, and modern media accelerates that bias. A journalist who lived through the rise of 24-hour news, polling-as-plot, and campaign “optics” is pointing at a system where perception is constantly refreshed, rarely remembered. “Present tense” isn’t just time; it’s attention span.
It works because it’s mildly cynical without being nihilistic. Sawyer isn’t saying voters are stupid; she’s saying they’re human, operating under cognitive scarcity. In that sense, the quote doubles as advice: if you’re trying to understand (or win) an election, stop psychoanalyzing the electorate and start reading the room.
“Present tense” is a sly grammatical metaphor for the tyranny of now. Voters, Sawyer suggests, aren’t grading a candidate’s inner life, nuance, or even long-range plans as much as they’re reacting to whatever feels immediate: gas prices this week, a viral clip last night, a sense of disorder or calm in the air. The line is also a quiet rebuke to pundit culture, which loves to treat elections as personality tests or moral referendums. Sawyer’s framing implies that “the subjective” (values, intentions, character narratives) matters less than the felt temperature of the moment.
The subtext is sharper: political communication is structurally biased toward immediacy, and modern media accelerates that bias. A journalist who lived through the rise of 24-hour news, polling-as-plot, and campaign “optics” is pointing at a system where perception is constantly refreshed, rarely remembered. “Present tense” isn’t just time; it’s attention span.
It works because it’s mildly cynical without being nihilistic. Sawyer isn’t saying voters are stupid; she’s saying they’re human, operating under cognitive scarcity. In that sense, the quote doubles as advice: if you’re trying to understand (or win) an election, stop psychoanalyzing the electorate and start reading the room.
Quote Details
| Topic | Decision-Making |
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