Reply #4: God, I wish I could share your optimism, but I really think that

[Emillereid]

this victory of the gropenator is more ominous than that. I think it tells us about the unthinking, gulliable, uninformed, authoritarian electorate that we have in America. They are 'good' Germans. They want a 'strongman' leader. They resist complicated answers to complicated issue. They simply want the trains to run on time. I personally wish I didn't know and I wish I didn't care so much -- it hurts.

See this article in the editorial forum:

Of all the explanations offered for the mystery of why people vote against their own economic interests by voting Republican, this article is definitely one of the best I've ever seen.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16885

George W. Bush is sinking in the polls, but a few beats on the war drum could reverse that trend and re-elect him in 2004. Ironically, the sector of American society now poised to keep him in the White House is the one which stands to lose the most from virtually all of his policies – blue-collar men. A full 49 percent of them and 38 percent percent of blue-collar women told a January 2003 Roper poll they would vote for Bush in 2004.

In fact, blue-collar workers were more pro-Bush than professionals and managers among whom only 40 percent of men and 32 percent of women, when polled, favor him; that is, people who reported to Roper such occupations as painter, furniture mover, waitress, and sewer repairman were more likely to be for our pro-big business president than people with occupations like doctor, attorney, CPA or property manager. High-school graduates and dropouts were more pro-Bush (41 percent) than people with graduate degrees (36 percent). And people with family incomes of $30,000 or less were no more opposed to Bush than those with incomes of $75,000 or more.

We should think about this. The blue-collar vote is huge. Skilled and semi-skilled manual jobs are on the decline, of course, but if we count as blue-collar those workers without a college degree, as Ruy Teixeira and Joel Rogers do in their book Why the White Working Class Still Matters, then blue-collar voters represent 55 percent of all voters. They are, the authors note, the real swing vote in America. "Their loyalties shift the most from election to election and in so doing determine the winners in American politics."

<snip>

We can certainly understand why Bush wants blue-collar voters. But why would a near majority of blue-collar voters still want Bush? Millionaires, billionaires for Bush, well, sure; he's their man. But why pipe fitters and cafeteria workers? Some are drawn to his pro-marriage, pro-church, pro-gun stands, but could those issues override a voter's economic self-interest?

Read the whole piece, HIGHLY recommended!

sw