Why do people vote against their own self-interest?

What motivated us? Perhaps the lack of vision, direction or hope from the Democrats. If Kerry had been even remotely saleable you would have had a shot at an election win. Instead, someone was trotted out who actually made Al Gore look good. At least Gore didn't do the Angry Man routine. Look like a stick figure and politically it's bad, wear a perpetual scowl and it is worse than signing your own death warrant.

I have found Bush The Second to be a decent President. Not the absolute best but more than adequate at his job and I have always felt he cares about the people unlike his predecessor.

Re: Why do people vote against their own self-interest?


Beats the hell out of me.

I did not vote for Bush the first time out...and I did not vote for him for re-election.

I consider having him as president to be an insult to our country.

Re: Why do people vote against their own self-interest?



Now you know how millions of us felt about Clinton.

Re: Why do people vote against their own self-interest?


I understood way back how millions of you felt about Bill Clinton. I most assuredly did not need to have this pathetic, moronic, incompetent elected and re-elected to understand that!

Re: Why do people vote against their own self-interest?


Who are you talking about? I cannot for the life of me figure out who you are referring to as pathetic, moronic and incompetent. Hillary wasn't even in the election.

Re: Why do people vote against their own self-interest?


There are lots of things you cannot figure out, Sturgis.

In fact, if there is anyone in this forum who should be thinking about the implications of the question posed in this thread...you are it!

You are a homosexual who "worships" a god who considers your conduct to be an abomination...and decrees death as a penalty for doing what you do.

And you are an advocate for American conservatism, a discipline populated by people who would not lift a finger in defense of your chosen life style...and who probably wish that the aforementioned decree of your god would become part of the laws of our land.

But...what can one expect for someone who thinks George Bush is not a pathetic, moronic, incompetent....but that Hillary Clinton is?

BBB...the answer to your question is here...right in front of you in the person of Sturgis. All you've gotta do is figure out why such self-hatred exists.

Re: Why do people vote against their own self-interest?


You know FrankApisa, self-hatred is a rather strong allegation. Take a closer look at me, I do not hate myself. I have my beliefs and they are mine, you have yours and they are yours. Where in this do you find an appearance of self-hatred? For the record I have a number of Conservative friends who know of my sexuality and who attend the church of their choice on a regular basis and they do not shun me as you would like to believe. These good people have had me and at times various gentlemen friends over for dinner, on weekend outings and even let me watch their children for a few hours while they are enjoying a night on the town. I have been known to sleep in the same room as heterosexual conservative males and oddly I found in the morning I had not been beaten or harmed. Equally I have known some so called liberal minded folk who think my being a homosexual is just fine and dandy provided I don't spend any time alone in the same room as their male family members...even the adult ones. Liberal men that I know who wait until I have departed a public restroom before they will go in. Oh yeah I can see where those Liberals are my salvation . I have made clear in the past that the God who I believe in is not taking my sexuality and declaring it a sin. If you have trouble with that then that is your issue, not mine.

Sturgis
Stugis, all well and good that some of your best friends are.....

But would they support your marrying your lover and having all of the rights of a married couple?

BBB

Rationalization is a dangerous thing, Sturgis.

In any case, I am sure there are American conservatives who are understanding and reasonable with regard to homosexuality. That does not make the vast preponderance of American conservatives understanding and reasonable in that area.

I am sure you are able to find fellow theists who are understanding and reasonable about homosexual conduct..but insofar as you claim your god is the god of the Bible...you are dead wrong that your god does not declare your homosexuality a sin.

But...delude yourself if you choose. I have no problem with that.

The question here present, however, is "Why do people vote against their self interests?"...and I am using you and your take on things as part of my response to BBB. (RexRed has an almost identical situation...and an identical take, by the way.)

My personal opinion is that much of this kind of behavior is the result of self-hatred. Certainly I am not saying this is absolute and always the case...and if I am wrong in your situation...so be it.

But the fact that you are an American conservative in the face of the kinds of responses to homosexuality coming out of the vast preponderance of American conservatism...is bizarre. To worship a god who condemns your behavior....is even more bizarre. To deny the reality of all this simply goes beyond bizarre...to whatever comes next on that continuum.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Didn't really like Bush, but was competely turned off by Kerry. And I voted for Gore.

Re: Sturgis


The answer is most probably YES. I can say this because in one case, a friend, who shall remain nameless for his own sake and that of his wife and their children and their dogs Trapper, Greta and Morty as well as their cat. Now this couple have a wonderful son. He announced to them when he was 19 that he had realized he is a homosexual. They reacted. His father sat in stunned silence and then gave him a hug and told him to just live safe. His mom was a harder sell, she did not ban him from the house or her life; however she spoke to him only in clipped sentences for over a year. Finally she realized this was the same person she had loved all along and she got past her difficulty.
Currently their son is involved with another man and both his parents are active in seeking changes in legislation which will make marriage legal for same sex couples.

And for the record I changed the names of the dogs in the previous passage, to help protect their anonymity.

Sturgis
Sturgis, isn't it sad that it takes having a homosexual son or daughter to make their parents understand they are born that way and that they should enjoy the same rights as everyone else?

Too many politicians having homosexual children privately say OK to them, but publicly are anti-homosexual for political reasons. Those hypocrites dishonor their children!

BBB

BBB
I'm so sorry to be rude and I know this is, but I am having somewhat of a problem. This message is for BBB. A while ago I wrote about Civil rights and you posted a story about your friend Tazako. The story was useful to me and I am so thankful you shared it. The thing is that I want to use it in the paper I am writing but I need to have your name to do that (for citing purposes). Can you please send me an e-mail or something with your name. If you do not want to I understand. Thank you again for the story even if I dont get to use it in my paper I learned from it. Once again I am so sorry to have butted in like this.

Re: Sturgis


Which has been my major beef with people such as Newt Gingrich and the late Sonny Bono.

I am actually curious. What exactly was it about Kerry that turned so many people off? Was it just his kind monologue tone of voice or his stand on policies?

I wondered about that question all the election and never could really figure it out. If it was just his style, I never could see how Bush's style was any better. If neither one had style why didn't voters concentrate on substance?

I finally just settled on the fact that since we here in America are easily swayed by gimmicks and slogans, the flip flop gimmicks and swift boat veterans smear must of won the day.

I've already shared with Phoenix that anyone who was so put off by Kerry that he/she actually voted for the moron...

...deserves to see and experience the result of their folly.

This question - in other contexts - has bedevilled me for years. If I can point to the fact that it happens all over the world I hope it doesn't disturb the thread. It has also happened through history.

When Benjamin Disraeli, who was a Prime Minister (one of two I think) who served during the reign of Queen Victoria, died, The Times published an obituary in which it asserted that part of Disraeli's brilliance as a politician was to appeal to the innate conservatism of the British working class who voted against their own obvious interests. The Times suggested Disraeli saw conservatism in the British working class "as a sculptor sees the angel in a rough piece of marble" (that might be wrong as I'm going from memory but it's along those lines).

There's a very interesting book on this tendency. Robert McKenzie and Allan Silver "Angels in Marble: Working Class Conservatives in Urban England". My copy is by a British publisher but there is a North American edition. It was published in 1968 and you might find one in a second hand bookshop (that's where I got mine).

What's the Matter with Kansas?
What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (Hardcover)
by Thomas Frank

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The largely blue collar citizens of Kansas can be counted upon to be a "red" state in any election, voting solidly Republican and possessing a deep animosity toward the left. This, according to author Thomas Frank, is a pretty self-defeating phenomenon, given that the policies of the Republican Party benefit the wealthy and powerful at the great expense of the average worker. According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans' actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class. Thus the pro-life Kansas factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically.

To much of America, Kansas is an abstract, "where Dorothy wants to return. Where Superman grew up." But Frank, a native Kansan, separates reality from myth in What's the Matter with Kansas and tells the state's socio-political history from its early days as a hotbed of leftist activism to a state so entrenched in conservatism that the only political division remaining is between the moderate and more-extreme right wings of the same party. Frank, the founding editor of The Baffler and a contributor to Harper's and The Nation, knows the state and its people. He even includes his own history as a young conservative idealist turned disenchanted college Republican, and his first-hand experience, combined with a sharp wit and thorough reasoning, makes his book more credible than the elites of either the left and right who claim to understand Kansas. --John Moe

Review

"Drunk on tax cuts, favors for corporations and above all else, their undying lust for the culture wars most of us lost interest in years ago, conservatives have driven Middle America into a ditch, Mr. Frank argues in this brilliant book. His examination of how the right has prolonged the battles over pop culture, abortion and religion (and meanwhile accrued great power and financial gain) will not single-handedly eject President Bush from the White House?-but it does contain the kind of nuanced ideas that should be talking points for the Kerry campaign . . . Mr. Frank's willingness to scold his own side; his irreverence and his facility with language; his ability to make the connections that other writers fail to make?-all of this puts What's the Matter with Kansas? in a different league from most of the political books that have come out in recent years. Even better, its understanding of the methodology that has given Republicans the Presidency and control of both houses of Congress makes it a road map for upending the G.O.P. Here's hoping somebody slips a copy to John Kerry."?-Kevin Canfield, The New York Observer

"When I read Thomas Frank, I hear a faint bugle in the background. It's the cavalry-to-the-rescue call: There you are, surrounded by Republicans?-outmanned, outgunned, and damn near out of both ammunition and humor?-when up shows Thomas Frank. A heartland populist, Frank is hilariously funny on what makes us red-staters different from blue-staters (not), and he actually knows evangelical Christians, antiabortion activists, gun-nuts, and Bubbas. I promise y'all, this is the only way to understand why so many Americans have decided to vote against their own economic and political interests. And Frank explores the subject with scholarship, understanding, passion, and?-thank you, Mark Twain?-such tart humor."?-Molly Ivins

"This is the true story of how conservatives punk'd a nation. Tom Frank has stripped the right-wing hustle to its core: It is bread and circuses?-only without bread. Written like poem, every line in its perfect place, What's the Matter with Kansas? is the best new book I've read in years, on any subject."?-Rick Perlstein, author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of American Consensus

"A wise reporter and a splendid wit; Tom Frank understands the grassroots Right as well as anyone in America. He is the second coming of H. L. Mencken?-but with much better politics."?-Michael Kazin, author of The Populist Persuasion: An American History

"What's the Matter with Kansas? is the most insightful analysis of American right-wing pseudopopulism to come along in the last decade. As for Kansas: However far it's drifted into delusion, you've got to love a state that could produce someone as wickedly funny, compassionate, and non-stop brilliant as Tom Frank."?-Barbara Enhrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed

"Frank combines top-flight journalism with first-person reflections to dig deep into the Kansas psyche. Both exhilarating and a little scary, What's the Matter with Kansas? should help flat-landers and coastal types alike understand how traditional Republicanism gave way to the politics of the Christian Right in the heart of the heart of the country."?-Burdett Loomis, professor and chair, Department of Political Science at the University of Kansas

"A fire-and-brimstone essay on false consciousness on the Great Plains. 'The poorest county in America . . . is on the Great Plains, a region of struggling ranchers and dying farm towns,' writes native Kansan and Baffler founding editor Frank, 'and in the election of 2000 the Republican candidate for president, George W. Bush, carried it by a majority greater than 80 percent.' How, Frank wonders, can it be that such a polity?-honest toilers descended from free-soil, abolitionist progressives and prairie socialists?-could back such a man who showed little concern then and has showed little concern since for the plight of the working class? And how can it be that such a place would forget its origins as a hotbed of what the historian Walter Prescott Webb called 'persistent radicalism,' as the seedbed of Social Security and of agrarian reform, to side with the bosses, to back an ideology that promises the destruction of the liberal state's social-welfare safety net? Whatever the root causes, many of which seem to have something to do with fear and loathing of big-city types and ethnic minorities, Kansas voters?-and even the Vietnam vets among them?-seem to have picked up on the mantra that the 'snobs on the coasts' are the enemy, and that Bush ('a man so ham-handed in his invocations of the Lord that he occasionally slips into blasphemy') and company are friends and deliverers . . . Even so, he sees the tiniest ray of hope for modern progressives: after all, he notes, the one Kansas county that sports a NASCAR track went for Al Gore in 2000. A bracing, unabashedly partisan, and very smart work of red-state trendspotting."?-Kirkus Reviews