Voting for the Rich

For the past 7 years, I have wondered why so many Americans vote against their own class interests. For example, why does a working- class, Georgia mechanic with 4 children vote for someone like George W. Bush? For that matter, why would she vote for a republican, the party of elities who work in the interest of other elites?

The explanations for this socio-political phenomena are comlex and varied. An obvious explanation is that republicans have controlled the body politic of this country for many years, setting the cultural and political agenda, through its use of a well-oiled and efficient propoganda machine that convinces the Georgia mechanic that republicans are the party of the people, the comman man. For someone who works long hours, and has tremendous family responsibilties and limited free time to pursue alternatives sources of news, the propoganda is hard to escape and very seductive. She doesn't have to think or act; she simply consumes the information and gets on with her busy schedule.

Another very interesting explanation was provided recently by David Graeber in his article "Army of Altruists," published in the Jan. 2007 edition of Harper's magazine. He connects voting to larger issues of education in this country. Graeber, discussing the increasing impossibility of class mobility through academic accomplishment, suggests that America stills operates on the "promise of unlimited upward mobility." Sure, anyone who has taught college students lately knows that the myth of meritocracy, and that "pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you will become rich and famous" ideology is alive and well in the U.S. However, Graeber notes that today obtaining a college education does not lead one necessarily to a good job or a comfortable income.

Also, he suggests that walls around institutions of higher education are now fortresses, where only an elite few get in - primarily kids from the middle and upper middle classes. He says that the number of working-class students in universities across the country has been declining for decades. As a side note, Graeber says that the inaccessibility of a college education in the 1980's and 1990's was further complicated by the fact that during this time some people who had previously been exluded were now being accepted. This, of course, was the 80's and 90's era of identity politics, but as Graeber tells us, that acceptance of different identities was not extended to the "redneck" or the "baptist" for example.

So, given this social backdrop where education is not even within the realm of possibility for a good portion of the country, Graeber says the reason why the working-classes have voted republican, and for Bush in particular, is quite simple: working-class people can "imagine a scenario in which they might become rich, but cannot possibly imagine one in which they, or any of their children, would become members of the intelligentsia."

This exaplanation not only suggests that the idea that anyone can get rich and be whatever they want in this country is still powerful, but it also assumes that this portion of the populace has come to associate republicans as the party of the little person, and the democrats as the party of educated, intellectual elites. My question is this: how and when did this happen? We know, historically, it has been quite the opposite. And I would argue that it didn't start with the ostensible good ole boy, brush clearing, pick-up truck driving, plain speaking, George W. Bush.

jb