One of the most puzzling (and irritating) things about modern leftist rhetoric is the ubiquity of contemptuous mentions of people who vote against their economic interests. Examples: an opinion piece in the Washington Dispatch that notes "The right-wing media propagandists, themselves affluent elitists, are perpetrating a gigantic fraud on masses of average American working people by attempting to convince them to vote against their economic interest..."; a column lamenting that "the excruciating part ... is that the conservative backlash has succeeded in convincing people to vote against their economic interests"; more examples are easily forthcoming.
One would have thought that failing to vote for the guy who promises you buckets of cash is prima facie evidence of political sophistication. Apparently not. Its amazing how many otherwise smart people on the left have began tossing this around as something thats fundamentally wrong with America.
posted by alex @ 11:33 PM
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1 Comments:
By the way, lest some one point out the obvious, most red staters do believe that they are voting for their own economic self interests - in the form of tax cuts - not realizing that most of the revenue goes to the uber-rich. And so many Democrats are justifiably upset that they have been unable to communicate this point effectively in the red states. So perhaps the complaint about people voting against their economic self-interests can be seen as shorthand for the complaint that Republicans have misrepresented the economic interests of red staters (something the Democrats would never, ever do of course, being pristine and perfect). If so, then my objection is about the imprecise formulation - there is nothing bad about voting against your economic self interest per se.
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