Un-enlightened Self-Interest
One of the myths of democracy is that voters know their interests and vote accordingly. At worst, voters may see those interests narrowly and choose to reward politicians whose policies are likewise short-sighted. And at best, voters could see beyond parochialism and chooser wiser policies. According to this model, a successful government was one that accurately reflected the desires of the electorate, and elections were a plebiscite on whether politicians had done this.
Whether framed narrowly or broadly, the underlying assumption is that voters are rational, and the problem with this assumption is that it is frequently wrong.
Voters do vote against their own self-interests, and as tempting as it is to think of them as confused it’s also somewhat misleading.
In What’s the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank gives us part of the answer, and I strongly recommend reading it.
Another resource, which I hope will provide the basis for a discussion on this topic, is in the following article.
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=68225069-3048-5C12-00FA02842EFBC1AA
The thing about comments like ‘Dems must woo white males to win’ is that the complete opposite can also be true; ‘Republicans must keep white males to win’.
Such framing can expose which party is really vulnerable. If elections are close, then the party that is more diverse in their appeal has a better chance of winning, simply because of the diversity of districts. Yet at the Politico such diversity is said to be a weakness.
If the margin was 27% for white males the dems do not need ALL 27%, they probably only need to bring it to about 20% for a complete wipe out. With the Iraq war and economic insecurity who can doubt that there will be at least SOME erosion with white male support. IMO over a few election cycles health care alone will account for far more than 7%, particularly as the present 20 somethings get families.
What I see is a big problem for Repubs, their lack of diversity will eventually weaken them.
The framing is the same ‘ol trick, it’s diversity, and the appeal to that diversity that is the supposedly the problem. Have they never heard of the phrase ‘putting all your eggs in one basket’?
nalbar
I consider the Politico article one of the truly exceptional pieces of political analysis that I’ve read, and I hope that others get as much from it as I do.
Let me back up; one of the points — (mine)– relates to the belief in the rational voter, which leads to the assumption that politicians merely need represent a wide coalition of their voters — (known in political science as the lemonade stand on the beach). What Thomas Franks shows in “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” is that voters often vote against their own self-interests.
One way of looking at this phenomenon is through the Culture War, which I believe reflect social changes over the course of the last half century. As the article says:
As portrayed by the new breed of liberalism, the white man held all the cards, and everyone else’s bad deal was his fault. The problem was that the bulk of white men did not feel like dealers or players. They felt like pieces on someone else’s table, and their livelihood, their family’s very stability, was in richer men’s hands, as well. Increasingly, as Reagan assumed the presidency, many white men, particularly those in industrial trades, found their lives marked by instability. This was true in the home, as cultural changes refashioned the role of women and the place of sex in popular culture. And it was especially true in the workplace, as many once-secure union jobs disappeared.
Historically speaking; the “Solid South” began to realign with the Civil Rights movement. And the candidacies of Dixiecrats such as George Wallace and Strom Thurmond provide examples of this dynamic at work.
But, whether intentional or not, the Democratic Party began to overlook this block of voters, and in some cases they became a symbol of what was wrong with the country — which further alienated them from the Democratic coalition.
Although I’ll save many of my comments for future posts, I can draw some preliminary conclusions. One of the ways of reaching this block of voters through economic populism. Curiously, as economic conditions grew worse over the last half century, blue collar white males were drawn (paradoxically) in increasing numbers to the Republican coalition. Even though Republican policies hurt them economically, the Republicans better understood their situation and crafted a message that appealed to them. That message relied heavily on “expressive messages” which tapped into their insecurities. The Republican myth of the “elite Democrat” was contrived to take advantage of this situation.
In essence, it’s the “world as we’d like it to be; not the world as it is” that often draws voters, and the Republicans tapped into this.
One example of this is in the belief in free-markets, which is often a quasi-religious belief. While male voters were looking for an ideology that explained their declining situation through a scapegoat, and that scapegoat was market intervention by government.
At the risk of offending– this psychological dynamic is hardly new; Jews and Christians used it, too. The belief in a just god was a way of providing comfort for people who lived in a political system that was very un-just.