Why Do Working-Class People Vote Conservative? | | AlterNet
Joseph W.H. Lough
Jonathan Haidt is right to question what he calls the “dupe thesis,” according to which “the Republican party dupes people into voting against their economic interests by triggering outrage on cultural issues.” Perhaps the best example of the “dupe thesis” is Tom Franks’ entertaining (and disturbing) What’s the Matter with Kansas? (NY: Holt, 2004). Haidt’s problem with the “dupe thesis” is that “it absolves them from blame and protects them from the need to look in the mirror or figure out what they stand for in the 21st century.” Yes and no. Yes, when we focus on the psychology of conservative voters by definition we focus less on how we might court swing voters to our side or on why we have had so little success courting swing voters. (Although, recall, we did a damn good job in 2008!) But, no, this does not so much disprove the “dupe thesis”—in fact, it doesn’t touch the thesis at all—as much as recommend that we also include “moral psychology” among our points for critical reflection.
Point well taken so long as we recognize that Haidt really did not show us why conservative voters were not or are not being duped. As my friend and Berkeley colleague George Lakoff has pointed out, there is some value in exploring the purely formal, cognitive side of rhetoric and to ask “Why has their rhetoric proven so successful?” And, yet, there is still something missing from Haidt’s analysis.
Several respondents (on FB and elsewhere) have rightly pointed to Haidt’s no doubt unintentional side-stepping of the implicit and explicit racism upon which conservative candidates can rely in their bids for public office. We are still a deeply racist nation and republican strategists would not draw upon race did it not promise them electoral victories, which, in many regions of the country, north and south, it does.
Yet, race is only one of the more prominent among a range of social, political, cultural, and economic realities that republicans have learned how to leverage in their favor, while leftists scramble to cobble together any number of rhetorically and logically coherent accounts for why voters should opt instead for their explanations of the facts. In addition to race there is, for example, gender, language, wages, benefits; and, yes, there is tradition, culture, religion, and history. To be sure, the republicans are having to scramble and cobble on some of these issues too; think of gender, for example. But the sheer fact that republican senators can vote en masse against a bill promising wage-equality without much fear of a voter-backlash suggests that, even here they have developed a fairly coherent and compelling counter-narrative that they believe will carry them through election day. (You know: trust the market to assign wages and prices, not the state, blah, blah, blah . . . which, however wrong-headed, appeals to a certain kind of voter, with or without the “dupe thesis.”)
Allow me, therefore, to offer a counter-counter thesis, or at least the beginning of a thesis. In a blog written just prior to the Wisconsin recall election, I called attention to the dramatic political shift that took place in the Republican Party from the late 1960s through the 1980s. There I showed how the republicans, who had stood their ground on fiscal and monetary responsibility, hastily abandoned the former (for the sake of the Viet Nam War) and the latter (for the sake of a more thoroughly global investment strategy). I also showed why the party that had until that point had been loathe to practice “Gorgias’ ‘fine art’,” southern Jacksonian-style politics, suddenly found in the Democratic Party’s abandonment of its southern (and northern) white, racist, male base, an unprecedented opportunity.
What we need to note is that, although both of these shifts have a psychological and moral component, they are not for this reason solely psychological or moral. The republican rhetoric is founded on an extraordinarily coherent and compelling narrative—part Edmund Burke, part Ayn Rand, part Friedrich von Hayek—that holds together at several levels. But, the level at which it holds most traction is, we actually do live in a world composed by capital. And that means that republicans have reality on their side.
Now, capital is not the only thing that holds the world together. So, too, do families, communities, traditions, and, yes, even caring for and about one another. And, no one ought to know this better than republicans, since it is precisely what res publica, the things or wealth we hold in common, is all about. But, guess what? Republicans no longer believe in the Common Wealth. Hell, they no longer believe in the Republic!
And, this, I believe, points to our opening. Capitalism is the antithesis of public or common wealth. It is the antithesis of republican ideals and institutions, of res publica. But, in order to seize upon this opening, we need to militantly challenge their cynical quasi-populist, southern Jacksonian-style strategy, a strategy that is actually at odds with their Burke-Rand-von Hayek philosophy. And, however odd it may sound, we need to embrace the radical republicanism which they have abandoned.
This counter-counter thesis does not require that we ignore Tom Franks’ intriguing thesis; nor does it require that we overlook Haidt’s interesting insights. But, it does require that we acknowledge a world beyond rhetoric and psychology; a world in which outspending your opponent 7-1 on messaging makes a difference not only because of the message, but also, more importantly, because of the 7-1 fund-raising advantage that Capital showers upon its political friends.
Since we will never enjoy this kind of fund-raising advantage—we should not even try to—this needs that we need to redouble our efforts where we do enjoy an advantage: numbers and message.