Stupidity and ideology

by Chris Bertram on September 7, 2004

“David Aaronovitch in today’s Guardian”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1298909,00.html , defending the idea that poor people in the US might have good reason to vote for George W. Bush:

bq. But suppose, for a moment, that the Kansas voters aren’t so dumb. Suppose, first, that they don’t buy the economic prospectus unwittingly along with the social populism, but consciously because they actually agree with it – because (and this hurts) it does actually tie in with their concrete experience. In other words, their consciousness is not false at all. Why might a poor person be opposed to tax increases and social benefits? Possibly because they hope to be richer themselves, maybe because they believe that high benefits are a disincentive to work and conceivably they believe both because that is exactly what they see happening around them – folks getting rich and folks idling.

I’m sure that Aaronovitch underestimates the importance of stupid people in determining elections. There are, after all, a lot of stupid people about (even here in Yoorp). Nevertheless, we can ask whether the beliefs Aaronovitch attributes to the Bush-voting-Kansas-poor are rational, given what we know about social mobility in the US, the extremely small section of society that benefits from Bush’s tax cuts etc. It is also rather odd that he decries the idea their beliefs might be the product of false consciousness on the grounds that they are rather the product of their lived experience. But the Marxist-educated Aaronovitch ought to know that it is a highly characteristic feature of ideological beliefs that they involve extrapolation by the believing subject from the immediate and local features of their experience to beliefs about the social world as a whole. So Mrs Thatcher’s belief that national economies should be managed on the model of a greengrocer’s shop in Grantham certainly “tied in with her conscious experience” and was ideological for all that. Why is Aaronovitch writing this stuff?

{ 53 comments }

1

nick 09.07.04 at 10:48 am

Why? Because he’s a paid semi-contrarian.

(Though surely it’s ‘Yurp’, pace Steve Bell?)

2

abb1 09.07.04 at 11:18 am

Wasn’t there an opinion poll recently where something like 60% of Americans thought they are in the top 1% of income earners category?

3

Steve Carr 09.07.04 at 11:29 am

I think it is perfectly rational for lower-middle-class Christian evangelicals to support Bush, but not for the reasons Aaronovitch cites. (By the by, I don’t think any survey of poor or working-class Americans who are supporting Bush would find them citing the reasons Aaronovitch gives.) If you’re a believing Christian evangelical, it’s surely far more important to you to limit the number of abortions, have parental notification when teens are having abortions, restrict or repeal federal funding of stem-cell research, and stop gay marriage than it is to improve your economic position, even by a relatively significant amount.

Let’s exaggerate absurdly and say that if John Kerry were elected instead of George Bush, the incomes of working-class Americans would rise five thousand dollars a year, their conditions at work would improve dramatically, and they would be guaranteed health insurance. (I’m pretty sure that no American president, however left he was, would be able to improve working-class lives to that extent that quickly, but let’s say it’s possible.) That’s the positive. The negative is that by voting for John Kerry — and therefore voting for essentially unrestricted abortion rights, for expansion of the use of embryos for stem-cell research, and for a dramatically more liberal judiciary — you would be committing any number of serious sins. Is five thousand dollars a year really enough of a reward to explicitly contradict God’s will?

Now, Tom Frank suggests that all the culture-war stuff is basically hooey, because there isn’t really any differences between Republicans and Democrats in terms of the cultural policies that actually get enacted. But this is just willfully misleading. There is no doubt that if we had a Democratic majority in Congress, and if the judiciary were dominated by Democratic judges, there would have been no restriction on partial-birth abortion, there would be no parental notification rules, there would be greatly-expanded federal funding for stem-cell research, there would be greater emphasis on contraception and less emphasis on abstinence in US family planning programs, and so on. These are real differences, not stylistic ones, and they are differences that matter, for good reasons, to believing Christians.

The basic flaw in Frank’s thesis — and in all false-consciousness arguments — is that it assumes that economic concerns are, in the last analysis, somehow more real than cultural or religious ones. But there’s no philosophical foundation for this. (Where is the metaphysically privileged standpoint that allows us to see the true nature of reality?) And you can only believe this if you’re a non-believer. From the perspective of a believing Christian (or Muslim), being more worried about an extra five grand a year than about your eternal soul is the real definition of false consciousness. Religion is not an epiphenomenon. In the US, as in the Islamic world, it is more real and important to many people’s experience of everyday life than their economic status or their job.

4

dsquared 09.07.04 at 11:32 am

I fear the answer is that he found his postbag from “the Left” to be so bloody appalling during the Iraq War that he is determined to annoy us at every turn (I am serious about this; Aaronovitch appears to be picking up a lot of anti-Semitic hate mail, and may not have realised that it is quite likely to come from right-wing trolls, same way as it does on comments sections of blogs).

Also, he’s presumably got a copy of Thomas Frank’s book.

Btw, given the established facts about the American economy and welfare system, it is extremely unlikely that vast numbers of poor rural whites are seeing either “folks getting rich” or “folks idling” around them. Unless by “see”, Aaroovitch means “see in newspapers or on television”, which rather puts the whole thing in a different light.

5

dsquared 09.07.04 at 11:58 am

Is five thousand dollars a year really enough of a reward to explicitly contradict God’s will?

This is an admirable summary of Frank’s thesis, and it’s why I’ve tended to think that it the thesis needs to be turned back on itself; is a slight increase in the progressivity of the tax system really worth rolling back gay rights?

6

Abiola Lapite 09.07.04 at 12:00 pm

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“and may not have realised that it is quite likely to come from right-wing trolls, same way as it does on comments sections of blogs”

And where is the evidence for this? Looking around on Indymedia and Democratic Underground, or just taking a peek at any of the big anti-war demonstrations that went on last year, one sees ample evidence that there are scads of such people on the left. This smacks of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy to me: do people who oppose capitalism, support North Korea, rail against globalization, and express the “lightness and joy of being communist”, magically turn “right-wing” just because they express their hatred for Jews?

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7

a 09.07.04 at 12:26 pm

Aaronovitch makes the same mistakes which all on the left make again and again:

a) assuming that people vote purely with their self-interest in mind and

b) assuming that personal economic interest is the only thing which anyone cares about.

8

efraim 09.07.04 at 12:29 pm

That last charge of self-refutation seems uncharitable. “Tie in with their concrete experience”: I take it that he means the experience gives respectable reasons for views which others might seriously consider–even if they disagree with both the reasons and the views.

Of course, those reasons will appear irrational if one assumes that the other party in a moral conversation is either stupid or paid to be despicable.

9

efraim 09.07.04 at 12:41 pm

Which last charge? “It is also rather odd that he decries the idea their beliefs might be the product of false consciousness on the grounds that they are rather the product of their lived experience.” (Sorry I was unclear.)

10

dsquared 09.07.04 at 12:53 pm

Abiola: On the London indymedia board (the only one I had any acquaintance with), the anti-Semitic posts tended, in contrast to the regular posters to a) be uninterested in the rest of the discussion, b) to have next to no knowledge of any left-wing issues at all and c) to arrive in disproportionate numbers when there was a link from Freerepublic.com. Thus, I concluded that the whole board was lousy with provocateurs and trolls and exited.

There was a lot of pretty mindless anti-Israel rhetoric, which I would agree is actually a form of “institutional” anti-Semitism, but the people who posted it were not aware that they were being anti-Semitic and would have in general denied it.

11

Mike 09.07.04 at 1:30 pm

This column made me freakin’ pissed off when I read it this morning.

Mainly because of that towering straw man that Aaronovitch sets up towards the end, quoting “one Democrat commentator” – who, as far as I can tell, appears to be a bloke called Jonny Lieberman reviewing WTMWK at a website called Ruthless Reviews.

I don’t even know what the fuck he thinks he’s talking about at the end. It just veers of on a completely ludicrous tangent, supposedly talking about “the alternative” to Bush.

Let’s just give him the benefit of the doubt and hope he didn’t really have time to figure this column out.

12

Matt Weiner 09.07.04 at 2:53 pm

Wasn’t there an opinion poll recently where something like 60% of Americans thought they are in the top 1% of income earners category?

As best I can tell, no–apparently the poll showed that 19% of people thought they would benefit from Bush’s tax proposals, which in fact would mostly only benefit the top 1% here.

I discuss this on my blog, though D-squared did all the work here in a comment at Asymmetrical Information.

13

Timothy Burke 09.07.04 at 3:01 pm

I’ve just started Frank now, and so I don’t know if I’m anticipating an argument he makes, but here’s a different take on the same issue:

The Kansas voters aren’t so dumb to vote Republican on social/cultural issues because it is the only way they have to restrain the national power of the bicoastal elites. They know they can’t make any inroads on economic issues no matter how much they try: neither Republican nor Democratic elites are going to give a lot of thought to transfer-seeking activities emanating from the underpopulated Midwest. Under Democrats, not only would the Kansans not get their own economic interests served, they’d probably see an increase in monies flowing to urban areas in the East and elsewhere.

The one advantage that non-elites in the Midwest and elsewhere have is their ownership of cultural and social issues, so by voting along those lines, they retain some sort of power, however anemic, over the authority of wealthier elites.

It’s just a tentative thought–just starting Frank, I can see that this is maybe one of the places he’s going as well.

14

Timothy Burke 09.07.04 at 3:03 pm

I’ve just started Frank now, and so I don’t know if I’m anticipating an argument he makes, but here’s a different take on the same issue:

The Kansas voters aren’t so dumb to vote Republican on social/cultural issues because it is the only way they have to restrain the national power of the bicoastal elites. They know they can’t make any inroads on economic issues no matter how much they try: neither Republican nor Democratic elites are going to give a lot of thought to transfer-seeking activities emanating from the underpopulated Midwest. Under Democrats, not only would the Kansans not get their own economic interests served, they’d probably see an increase in monies flowing to urban areas in the East and elsewhere.

The one advantage that non-elites in the Midwest and elsewhere have is their ownership of cultural and social issues, so by voting along those lines, they retain some sort of power, however anemic, over the authority of wealthier elites.

It’s just a tentative thought–just starting Frank, I can see that this is maybe one of the places he’s going as well.

15

dsquared 09.07.04 at 3:05 pm

Under Democrats, not only would the Kansans not get their own economic interests served, they’d probably see an increase in monies flowing to urban areas in the East and elsewhere.

Money flows from urban areas in the east to the MidWest, not the other way round.

16

Steve Carr 09.07.04 at 3:20 pm

Timothy, Frank doesn’t really make that argument, because he doesn’t think that the government really has much of an impact at all on cultural/moral matters. That’s why he thinks Kansans are really throwing away their vote: they’re voting against their economic interests, and they’re getting no reward for it.

I think this is simply empirically wrong. The truth is that Frank doesn’t really think cultural issues are ones worth voting on, even if doing so makes a difference. But since this is a pure false-consciousness argument that he doesn’t want to make — you think stopping gay marriage is important, but really you should care about raising the top income tax rate — he makes the “electing Republicans doesn’t affect social issues” argument. It’s false, but I think it’s comforting to well-meaning Lefties who want to believe that working-class evangelicals won’t be giving up something important by voting for Democrats. (Or, to flip it on its head, that Democrats can win over evangelicals without betraying their commitment to gay rights or abortion rights.)

17

Elrod 09.07.04 at 4:07 pm

I tend to agree with Steve Carr on this. We can easily flip the false consciousness argument if we want. Take a drive down tony Sheridan Road in Evanston, IL and you’ll see nothing but Kerry and Obama signs. Rich people voting against their economic interest. Why? Because of culture. I personally vote Democrat because of cultural issues, not economic ones (though I tend to agree with Democrats on economics more than Republicans anyway). I am committed to a secular society and I see the encroachment of fundamentalist Christianity as one of the most dangerous social phenomena in America. I happen to believe that abortion is grossly immoral too. But I refuse to vote with the Republicans on it because I find the fundamentalist critique of abortion (which lay at the heart of the Republican platform) to be unconvincing. If respect for basic human life is central to Christian opposition to abortion then why not more of an outcry against the death penalty? The answer, as far as I can see, is that the death penalty appeals to white Christian fundamentalists’ racism (protect white people from black aggressors) while prohibiting abortion rolls back the sexual revolution and restores male prerogative in sexual relations. Race (fear of non-whites) and gender (defense of masculinity) beliefs are more convincing explanations for party affiliation than class position.

18

MIchael Cholbi 09.07.04 at 4:30 pm

Right on, Elrod! Excellent explanations.

Also, isn’t part of Frank’s thesis that Republicans benefit from talking tough on cultural issues without actually winning any of their battles against gays, Hollywood, and abortionists — i.e., that they gain votes by depicting white Christian culture as perpetually under siege, battling nefarious leftist forces?

Second, one thing I think Frank underestimates is the ‘get the big government off my back’ rhetoric and how strongly this plays in a lot of parts of the U.S. The Republicans have (brilliantly) favored policies that hurt the working poor while wrapping those policies in the language of ‘responsibility’. The key here, I believe, is convincing people that government spending (read social programs, not defense or road construction) is inherently wasteful and misguided. My suspicion is that many voters, white middle-class especially, would support economic policies more conducive to their own interests, but since they believe these to be ineffective or unfair, they figure the next best option is to have nice low taxes and have the government concentrate its efforts on abortion, gay marriage, and drug crimes.

19

Steve Carr 09.07.04 at 4:45 pm

Michael, that is part of Frank’s thesis, but it’s simply wrong. Republicans have won any number of battles against “gays and abortionists” (I’m not sure about Hollywood.) The ban on partial-birth abortions, the creation of parental-notification laws, restrictions on federal funding of abortions, the Defense of Marriage Act, numerous state laws defining marriage as heterosexual, restrictions on federal funding of stem-cell research: these are all concrete, important victories that Republicans won on cultural issues. You can only pretend they’re irrelevant if you think that, say, stopping partial-birth abortions (of which there were a couple thousand every year) is morally unimportant. I think it’s very unlikely that any believing Christian evangelical would be willing to trade the lives of two thousand late-term fetuses for a more progressive income tax.

20

Anonymous 09.07.04 at 4:52 pm

I’m leftwing, but I’m also a Christian who’s been going to mostly evangelical churches until recently. Steve Carr has it right–if you believe that abortion is murder than by supporting pro-choice candidates, you’re helping to commit a million murders a year.

I used to think this and that’s why I would find myself unable to vote for the Democrat, as much as I despised the Republican. Eventually I stopped thinking that fetuses in the early stages are the moral equivalent of babies, but obviously people who think fetuses=babies are going to allow this to effect their vote. For them, it’s the same as the slavery issue was for abolitionist Christians in the 1800’s.

21

Lynne 09.07.04 at 4:55 pm

As a midwesterner, I know that many Christians believe that righteousness will lead to prosperity. That is why they vote they way that they do. The Dems need to frame the argument in terms of taking care of others. If you are anti-abortion, you also need to be pro-universal health insurance so that mothers can take care of their children. If you are pro-family, you need to be pro-union to make sure that everyone can earn a living wage. I also point out to people that the Reps have had 30 years to change abortion laws and haven’t been able to. I also say that maybe it is time to throw your weight around with the Dems and pull the party to the right on social issues and to left on economic issues. The other option is to start a third party, which I hear seriously discussed among ordinary people for the first time in many years. Dems also need to drop the snotty urban hipster attitude I see on display so often and get back to the protector of the working class attitude that they used to have.They will start winnin elections then.

22

Nicholas Weininger 09.07.04 at 5:13 pm

The point about Midwestern voters voting on cultural issues in order to retain a measure of power over the coastal elites is a good one, I think, and it isn’t a new phenomenon. I am reminded of one of my favorite H.L. Mencken quotations:

“All the benefit that a New Yorker gets out of Kansas is no more than what he might get out of Saskatchewan, the Argentine pampas, or Siberia. But New York to a Kansan is not only a place where he may get drunk, look at dirty shows and buy bogus antiques; it is also a place where he may enforce his dunghill ideas upon his betters.”

23

a-train 09.07.04 at 5:19 pm

Republicans take advantage of people who project “evil” outward and then seek to attack it. Leading people to see themselves “at war” with evil (whether cultural or political) is a cynical way of taking advantage of them. I think Frank’s book is about this as much as anything. Given the choice between the truth or contentment, most people chose contentment and there are plenty of people out there who are willing to take advantage of this (for example the success televangelism).

It seems to me that the potential impact of government on social and cultural issues is minimal compared to governments potential impact on economic issues (which paradoxically may actually have more of an impact on the culture than the so called social/culture issues).

24

Steve Carr 09.07.04 at 5:31 pm

A-Train, it is not minimal when government is making a decision between women being allowed to abort a million fetuses a year (that is, in the mind of an evangelical Christian, murdering a million babies a year) or not being allowed to do so. It is not minimal when government either allows cloning or not. It is not minimal when government expands the definition of marriage to include gay people, when for believing Christians this completely upends an institution ordained by God.

You think these things are minimal because they’re unimportant to you. But they are essential questions in the lives of believing Christians. Pretending that they’re not may provide a comforting explanation for why Kansans are voting Republican (i.e., they’re being taken advantage of by cynical Republicans) but it doesn’t have anything to do with what’s actually happening.

25

Barbara O'Brien 09.07.04 at 5:39 pm

steve carr:

“The ban on partial-birth abortions,”

You mean the ban that just got nullified by the courts?

26

Ginger Yellow 09.07.04 at 5:43 pm

Why is Aaronovitch writing this? Because he’s a pseudo-contrarian hack, who still can’t get over the fact that the left was right on Iraq and he was wrong. It’s a particularly egregious, yet entirely typical, example of his work. It begins with a fairly reasonable premise, as usual consisting in leftist orthodoxy probably being incorrect or generalising. He then proposes an alternative explanation. All well and good. But he never, ever provides any real evidence for his arguments, and this article is no exception. One way you could find out if voters are voting against their interests would be to, you know, ask them. Thousands of academics and pollsters have done so for decades. Does he look at any of this evidence, for example that summarised in a recent New Yorker article? No. Does he talk to voters himself? No. He quotes a couple of words from a couple of books and hangs an entire psephological philosophy on them. Why anyone pays attention to him I don’t know.

27

Steve Carr 09.07.04 at 6:13 pm

Barbara, the ban has not been “nullified” by the courts. It’s been ruled unconstitutional, unsurprisingly, by lower courts. Until the Supreme Court decides, we don’t know what will happen. But in any case, the judges’ decisions only emphasize how important the government is when it comes to social/cultural issues, since judges are political appointees. Voting Republican makes it less likely that judges will be appointed who will strike down these kinds of laws.

28

John Davies 09.07.04 at 6:17 pm

This particular stupid person has no problem with the idea that the people who pay the most in taxes get the biggest savings when taxes are cut.

I think it has something to do with something called percentage. But then again I’m a middle American so must be stupid.

29

MQ 09.07.04 at 7:06 pm

It’s perfectly rational for any individual voter to vote in whatever way he finds most entertaining, since the chances his vote will sway the election are approximately zero. Hence his vote has no influence on anything. So voting is about expressive/imaginative behavior, not rational calculation. It’s perfectly understandable for the poor to identify with being rich in their political lives. It’s got to be more fun than thinking about the actual fact that they are poor.

30

C Betley 09.07.04 at 7:30 pm

On wealth transfers to the Midwest: What Kansas gets for voting Republican

31

a-train 09.07.04 at 7:50 pm

Steve you wrote:
it is not minimal when government is making a decision between women being allowed to abort a million fetuses a year, etc.

I think every instance you mention is not really decided by “government” and imposed down, as much as the government responds to what the most politically energetic portion of society demands (or appears to demand). (The squeaky wheels get the grease, used to be the womens rights movement and now there is no squeakier wheel than the born-again Christian).

What is cynical is that the Republican party has always represented the interests of the wealthy and they, to my mind, are taking advantage of people who hold these strong beliefs on social issues.

They have their convention and who is speaking on prime time? The pro-choice, pro-gay marriage members. How can someone who cares so deeply about these issues stand for it? I was under the impression that there was no middle ground in the culture war. How can the people who vote based on these intensely important social issues not feel like rubes?

Paraphrasing Tom Frank, they vote for anti-abortion and get social security privatization. The vote against gay marriage and get corprate welfare for haliburton.

32

Walt Pohl 09.07.04 at 7:51 pm

Steve: Try looking at it from the point of view of a nonbeliever. Of all possible false beliefs, why do Kansans (to accept Tom Franks’ description — I have no first hand knowledge) happen to hold as their highest values the ones that prevent them from making common cause with the party of progressive taxation? That’s pretty much what false consciousness means.

33

abb1 09.07.04 at 7:55 pm

Matt Weiner,
not it’s not that “19% of people thought they would benefit from Bush’s tax proposals”. Here, I found an article by David Brooks, appropriately titled The Triumph of Hope Over Self-Interest:

The most telling polling result from the 2000 election was from a Time magazine survey that asked people if they are in the top 1 percent of earners. Nineteen percent of Americans say they are in the richest 1 percent and a further 20 percent expect to be someday. So right away you have 39 percent of Americans who thought that when Mr. Gore savaged a plan that favored the top 1 percent, he was taking a direct shot at them.

I bet 95% of the US population have no idea how bad the US income distribution really is. So, yes, they are – maybe not stupid – but certainly too ignorant to recognize their self-interest. Not that it necessarily has anything to do with the Republicans and Democrats.

34

Jason McCullough 09.07.04 at 8:33 pm

“Rich people voting against their economic interest. Why? Because of culture.”

You can go a lot deeper than this and make an interesting argument that they’re actually not voting against their economic interest.

I believe Kevin Phillips has done work along these lines – the rich who vote Democrat do so because of the power structure at their jobs and how that works out related to the government. For example, on economic issues non-management professionals have become much more liberal over the last 30 years.

35

Jason McCullough 09.07.04 at 8:34 pm

“Rich people voting against their economic interest. Why? Because of culture.”

You can go a lot deeper than this and make an interesting argument that they’re actually not voting against their economic interest.

I believe Kevin Phillips has done work along these lines – the rich who vote Democrat do so because of the power structure at their jobs and how that works out related to the government. For example, on economic issues non-management professionals have become much more liberal over the last 30 years.

36

obeah 09.07.04 at 8:36 pm

The partial-birth abortion ban, even if it is not overturned by the Supreme Court, will not save one life. It doesn’t outlaw elective abortions after 20 weeks — all it does is outlaw one brutal method of performing them. As the gap will simply be filled by other (also brutal) methods, this does not strike me as progress. And this is what the political capital of the pro-life movement has been wasted on for the last 10 years. Feh. Think of what we could have done with all that time and money to actually reduce the demand for abortion.

I’m pro-life, and I wouldn’t vote Republican if you paid me. (Not even if you paid me enough that I could afford to vote Republican.)

37

HP 09.07.04 at 8:36 pm

People who are well educated and financially and socially secure tend to be more socially liberal, no? So, if I identify as a low- to moderate-income social conservative, and I support policies that lead to better education, better wages, and a wider social safety net, I am in fact supporting the erosion of “my way of life.”

It’s less about individual self-interest than declared group identity. When my own economic self-interest is best served, the social cohesion of my “kind” is threatened.

There’s a daily drama played out throughout the Blue states, where proud conservative parents are delighted to see their children succeed academically and financially, and then dismayed to see those same children demonstrate totally alien (yet almost inevitable) values and beliefs. I know it wasn’t easy for my parents.

Regarding the 39% polling numbers–it’s less about what people believe they will achieve than what their children will achieve. Exceptional children will always find a way to succeed, and every parent believes his child is exceptional. But if society gives every child the tools of success, then conservative America is doomed.

38

dsquared 09.07.04 at 8:45 pm

Abb1: Brooks was incorrectly citing the Time poll. I’ve got the exact reference somewhere … but when you think about it, it’s obvious that there can’t be this much denial about. Do 20% of employees of Microsoft believe they’re in the top 1% of earners at Microsoft, etc?

39

Matt Weiner 09.07.04 at 9:10 pm

abb1–
I don’t necessarily disagree with your main point about people’s perception of the income distribution; I’d add that I think people are deeply mistaken about US income mobility.

But as for the specific poll, I think David Brooks has just reported it wrong (and from Brooks, is that a surprise?). I find this Brookings piece more trustworthy–it says

An October 2000 Time-CNN news poll showed that 19 percent of Americans thought that they were in the high income group that would benefit from proposed tax cuts – defined as roughly the top 1 percent of the distribution

which suggests that they were mistaken about the effects of the cuts, not about their own income percentile.

40

Steve Carr 09.07.04 at 9:20 pm

Walt, are you actually suggesting that the Republicans have duped a sizeable minority of Americans into being Christian evangelicals? Much as I respect the dark powers of Lee Atwater, Dick Cheney, and Co., I have a hard time believing their influence extends this far.

41

Kimmitt 09.07.04 at 9:29 pm

I would dispute that even upper-middle-class Americans are voting against their economic interests by voting Democratic. Yes, their taxes go up a bit, but their stocks also perform better, crime rates drop so they are less likely to be robbed, et cetera. You have to be pretty rarefied before the outright class warfare of the Republican Party starts to seriously help you.

42

abb1 09.07.04 at 10:10 pm

Ok, fine, but I still can’t imagine that people would vote the culture-wars crap on the federal level. Locally – sure, but why would a hick in South Carolina want to ban prostitution in Nevada or abortion in Vermont? Doesn’t make sense. I think Roe v. Wade needs to be overturn so that they could have whatever cultural local laws they want, they should be able to accept whatever definition of marriage they want, have whatever flags they like and then – I hope – they’ll vote their economic interest in federal elections.

43

Ignacio 09.07.04 at 11:45 pm

I am no fan of the income distribution in the US, but I see a lot people quoting the percentages as if they reflected a permanent class structure, rather than yearly snapshots of a population that is in various stages of upward and downward social mobility.

The urban poor ARE, in fact, entrenched in multi-generational cycles of poverty, but they do not vote Republican, when they vote at all.

44

Robert Brown 09.08.04 at 1:20 am

I have often wondered what moderates voter behavior. Why cannot liberal democrats campaign on raising the marginal tax rate on the top 10% of taxpayers back to say 70% in order to offer a generous shopping list of free or low cost benefits to the other 90%?

If people voted according to their personal financial interest, liberals should win easily since the 10% paying the bills (those who objected) would not have the votes to defend themselves.

Some possibilities:

Guilt about taking other peoples money? Not likely, I think most people can be convinced that high income people do not really deserve their income.

Social conservatism? I think that is a big factor. I don’t understand it but many people feel very strongly about abortion, gay marriage, promiscuous sex, pornography, ect., and will not vote against their moral values if they have a reasonably income.

Economic analysis? I think that is part of it. Some people probably worry about strangling the over all economy in the long run with high, sharply progressive taxes and the economic isolationism that usually is part of the package. And, thy may worry about tying too many benefits to a small number of taxpayers in case they “go away”.

Foreign policy? Probably as big as social conservatism. Liberals have the image (right or wrong) of not liking the U.S. very much and many people fear that they would defer to the U.N. before defending U.S interests.

45

...now I try to be amused 09.08.04 at 3:22 am

If people voted according to their personal financial interest, liberals should win easily since the 10% paying the bills (those who objected) would not have the votes to defend themselves.

That’s blindingly obvious to me too, and it shows the genius of the Republican Party in building a coalition of strange bedfellows indeed. Their core constituency, the 10% you speak of, can afford to support the social conservatives because they can avoid any inconvenience the social conservatives might cause short of a Taliban-style theocracy. For instance, they can afford to get their abortions abroad. They send their kids to private schools, so they needn’t worry about what the religious right would do to the public schools.

I wonder how many social conservatives know how few of their wealthy political allies actually share their values.

46

...now I try to be amused 09.08.04 at 3:24 am

If people voted according to their personal financial interest, liberals should win easily since the 10% paying the bills (those who objected) would not have the votes to defend themselves.

That’s blindingly obvious to me too, and it shows the genius of the Republican Party in building a coalition of strange bedfellows indeed. Their core constituency, the 10% you speak of, can afford to support the social conservatives because they can avoid any inconvenience the social conservatives might cause short of a Taliban-style theocracy. For instance, they can afford to get their abortions abroad. They send their kids to private schools, so they needn’t worry about what the religious right would do to the public schools.

I wonder how many social conservatives know how few of their wealthy political allies actually share their values.

47

...now I try to be amused 09.08.04 at 3:25 am

Sorry for the double post. It won’t happen again.

48

chris 09.08.04 at 9:06 am

“Locally – sure, but why would a hick in South Carolina want to ban prostitution in Nevada or abortion in Vermont?”

For the same reason a hick in southern Afghanistan would want to impose the veil on women in Damascus or Istanbul.

49

burritoboy 09.08.04 at 8:38 pm

“I am no fan of the income distribution in the US, but I see a lot people quoting the percentages as if they reflected a permanent class structure, rather than yearly snapshots of a population that is in various stages of upward and downward social mobility.”

True enough, but the percentages seem to be comparatively stable. There isn’t THAT much social mobility – a person might move from one tier to the one above or below, but rarely makes huge steps in even relatively long time-frames (even 10 years). There are exceptions (students being the obvious one), but not many. I.E., the US does have a class structure.

50

Anthony 09.09.04 at 12:27 am

Last year (2003), I was in the lower half of the US income distribution for the first time in quite a while (my current income, now that I’m eployed again, is about that of the median family income in the US). Despite being in the lower half by income, and a single earner, to boot, the Bush tax cut saved me money. About $175, which is quite a big deal when unemployment benefit caps out at $400/wk and rent is over $800/month.

So the fact is that this lower-income taxpayer was benefitted by the Bush Tax Cut.

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seth edenbaum 09.09.04 at 1:41 am

There are a few points here that I agree with, and a couple are contradictory: I agree with Steve Carr that refusing to choose self interest can be a logical choice, and yet I wouldn’t deny false consciousness plays a big part as well. There are plenty of people who think Bush actually cares about them. Others just hate being condescended to by rich liberals. There’s also the question/problem of individualism. I go off on this subject enough (too much) so I’ll leave it at that. But there is no need to see any of the proposed reasons as mutually exclusive.

And by the way, poor or working class evangelicals in the south vote Democratic by a margin of 4-6%. It’s the middle class and up who vote Republican. I forget where I read that, Tapped maybe.

Ignacio: “The urban poor ARE, in fact, entrenched in multi-generational cycles of poverty, but they do not vote Republican, when they vote at all.”
The white urban poor vote republican or against their economic interests. There are some great stories about the response in the white working class neighborhoods in Chicago when Harold Washington started making sure the streets were cleaned. It was something like grateful amazement.
Washington was quite a character.

52

Vance 09.09.04 at 1:36 pm

Why does it surprise ANYBODY that people in Kansas and throughout the midwest support Bush?

Farm subsidies have doubled under Bush. They ARE voting their pocketbook.

53

Ignacio 09.09.04 at 8:09 pm

Regarding social mobility. . .

I’ve seen lots of studies showing that significant social mobility is real.

Here is reference to one from the University of Michigan:

“Tracking individuals’ incomes over time gives a startlingly different view of the forces shaping America’s income distribution. Let’s begin with the people who were in the bottom fifth of income earners in 1975. The conventional view leads us to think they were worse off in the 1990s. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the University of Michigan sample, only 5 percent of those in the bottom quintile in 1975 were still there in 1991.

Even more important, a majority of these people had made it to the top 60 percent of the income distribution—middle class or better—over that 16-year span. Almost 29 percent of them rose to the top quintile. This is a far cry from the popular vision of a society in which the poor are getting poorer. In fact, the evidence suggests that low income is largely a transitory experience for those willing to work, a place where people may visit but rarely choose to live.[See Exhibit 4.]

There’s further evidence that being in the low-income bracket isn’t, for a large majority of people, permanent. Less than 0.5 percent of the sample showed up in the bottom quintile every year from 1975 to 1991.[3] Nearly a quarter of those in the bottom tier in 1975 moved up the next year and never again returned. More than three-quarters of the lowest 20 percent in 1975 made it into the top 40 percent of income earners for at least one year by 1991. In fact, the poor made the most dramatic gains in the income distribution. Those who started in the bottom quintile in 1975 had a $25,322 average gain in real income by 1991. In the top quintile, the increase was $3,974. In other words, the rich have gotten a little richer, but the poor have gotten much richer.[See Exhibit 5.]

The patterns are similar in other quintiles. Among the second poorest quintile in 1975, more than 70 percent had moved to a higher bracket by 1991—with 26 percent going all the way to the top tier. From the middle grouping, almost half of the income earners managed to make themselves better off. A third of the people in the second highest quintile made it to the highest fifth during these 17 years. All through the University of Michigan data, there’s a consistent, powerful thrust toward the top of the income distribution.

http://www.dallasfed.org/fed/annual/1999p/ar95.html

[NOTE–I am aware that this is not a disinterested source, but I have seen comparable results compiled elsewhere].

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