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Human Events...
Voting for the
National Interest, Not Self-Interest
by Michael Barone
02/28/2011
It’s a question that puzzles most liberals and bothers some
conservatives. Why are so many modest-income white voters rejecting the
Obama Democrats’ policies of economic redistribution and embracing the
small-government policies of the tea party movement?
It’s not supposed to work out that way, say the political scientists
and New Deal historians. Politics is supposed to be about who gets how
much when, and people with modest incomes should be eager to take as
much from the rich as they can get.
Moreover, as liberal economists and columnists point out, income levels
for middle-class Americans remained stagnant for most of a decade
during the George W. Bush presidency and then plunged in the recession.
Housing values fell even more.
The conservative writer David Frum has made the same point and has said
that Republicans must come up with policies that will raise ordinary
people’s incomes if they hope to win.
But the fact is that Republicans did pretty well among whites who did
not graduate from college -- the exit poll’s best proxy for the white
working class -- even in the otherwise dismal year of 2008. John McCain
carried non-college whites by a 58 percent to 41 percent margin, more
than his 51 percent to 47 percent margin among college whites.
Barack Obama won because he carried all other voters 79 percent to 21
percent. But he carried non-college whites in only 14 states and the
District of Columbia with 127 electoral votes.
Liberals are puzzled by this. Thomas Frank’s book “What’s the Matter
With Kansas?” argued that modest-income whites were bamboozled by the
moneyed elite to vote on cultural issues rather than in their direct
economic interest.
But that’s no more plausible than the notion that rich liberals from
Park Avenue to Beverly Hills have been bamboozled to vote the opposite
way on similar issues rather than for those who would extend the Bush
tax cuts. People are entitled to base their vote on the things they
think important. They don’t always vote just to maximize their
short-term income.
In any case, the cultural issues seemed to be eclipsed by economic
issues in 2010, when Republicans carried non-college whites 63 percent
to 33 percent in House elections. That was almost as large a percentage
margin as the Democrats 74 percent to 24 percent among the smaller
number of nonwhites.
My own assumption is that economic statistics have been painting an
unduly bleak picture of modest-income America. When we measure real
incomes we use inflation indexes, which over time inevitably overstate
inflation, because they’re based on static market baskets of goods.
The problem is if one item spikes in price, we quit buying it. In
addition, inflation indexes cannot account for product innovation and
quality increases.
Liberal writers look back to 1973 as a year when real wages supposedly
peaked -- just before a nasty bout of inflation. But back then, a
pocket calculator cost $110. The smartphone you can buy today for $200
has a calculator and hundreds of other devices.
If you get out beyond the Beltway to Middle America, you find
supermarkets with wonderful produce and big box stores with amazing
variety, all at prices that are astonishingly low. You can eat well and
dress stylishly at prices far below what elites in places like
Washington and New York are accustomed to paying. In many ways, people
with modest incomes have a significantly better standard of living than
they did four decades ago.
The recoil in 2010 against the Obama Democrats’ vast expansion of the
size and scope of government seems to have a cultural or a moral
dimension as well. It was a vote, as my Washington Examiner colleague
Timothy P. Carney wrote last week, expressing “anger at those unfairly
getting rich -- at the taxpayer’s expense.”
Those include well-connected Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs that
got bailed out and giant corporations like General Electric that shape
legislation so they can profit. They include the public employee unions
who have bribed politicians to grant them pensions and benefits
unavailable to most Americans.
A government intertwined with the private sector inevitably picks
winners and losers. It allows well-positioned insiders to game the
system for private gain. It bails out the improvident and sticks those
who made prudent decisions with the bill.
Modest-income Americans think this is wrong. They want it fixed more
than they want a few more bucks in their paychecks.
Read it at Human Events
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