How Kerry Can Win, By Bernie Sanders

[G_j]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/how_kerry_can_win/

How Kerry Can Win
By Bernie Sanders

The great political crisis in our country is the extent to which millions of Americans vote against their own economic interests. We can understand why CEOs and millionaires will vote for Bush and contribute to his campaign. But why would someone who makes $8 an hour, lacks adequate health insurance and is unable to send his or her kid to college vote for a president who so clearly represents the interests of the rich and the super-rich?

Why would, according to polls, a majority of white working-class citizens support someone who works against their best interests—taking away overtime pay, encouraging companies to move jobs abroad, working to privatize Social Security and Medicare, and cutting benefits for veterans? The future of this country depends upon whether that question is adequately answered and addressed.

At the root of this problem is a Democratic Party that has been, for at least 30 years, wishy-washy on economic issues facing working families. Having received large campaign contributions from the wealthy and the powerful, many Democrats have refused to stand up to the corporate interests waging vicious class warfare. While many Democrats have focused on such important issues as women’s and gay rights, the environment, civil liberties and war and peace, the needs of working families have not received adequate attention. The result is that a majority of lower-income Americans no longer votes, and of those who do, many don’t see a clear difference between the two major parties.

With Republicans having almost nothing of substance to say about economic or healthcare issues, they will attempt to make gay marriage, opposition to the war, flag burning, affirmative action, the Pledge of Allegiance, prayer in schools, abortion and guns the major issues of the campaign. If they are successful, and they will have a corporate media to help them, George Bush will be reelected.

..more..

[Saltdog]

1. Confused

I've always been utterly confused by the fact that people vote against their own best interests. It is strange that the most dependable Republican constituency is actually low to medium wage workers.

I guess it is also an education issue. High school graduates simply do not receive an education that encourages them to question authority and think critically about politics.

[sadiesworld]

2. Welcome to DU, Saltdog

:hi:

And thanks for posting this, G_j.

[Saltdog]

4. Thanks!

Everybody here has been so nice by welcoming me to the forum.

Back to the issue...

BUT, as evilGOPbastards.com points out, Republicans have been on the wrong side (opposite from popular opinion) of most issues for most of the 20th century.

For instance:

Gay marriage: GOP wants a constitutional amendment, population mostly against gay marriage, but most favor civil unions, and a large majority favor equal rights.

Abortion: GOP wants total ban, population mostly for and overwhelming majority favors allowing in certain cases.

Gun control: GOP against even criminal background checks, majority want stronger gun control laws and enforcement.

Religion: GOP wants evolution banned from public schools and replaced with Protestant forced prayer, majority want separation of church/state, but want people to be free to pray on their own and for nativity scenes/ten commandments to be allowed on public ground.

I'm still confused why people vote Republican. It is so appallingly stupid and illogical, that I cannot make sense of it.

[JI7]

3. culture overrides economic interests for them

bush's biggest supporters are not rich but they are those who love him because of his faith. when bush said jesus christ was his favorite political philosopher it was a huge thing for them.

[kodi]

18. you hit on the gop formula for electoral victory

and what occurs is that these poor/working class folks are convinced to willing sustain economic hardship for alleged higher causes.

in this way their leaders stoke the belief that they are nobly sacrificing for their ideals and cast those who act out of their own economic interests as mere a-moral money-grubbers.

[AP]

19. Nothing should be a higher cause that flowing political, cultural, and

economic power down, broadly to more people in the middle and at the bottom.

You have nothing if you don't have power.

It's amazing that some people vote to send power up to fewer people with the mistaken impression that it makes their own lives better.

[kodi]

20. while i agree with you, who is to say what is a higher cause for others?

for many, they believe their lot in life (and a post-life) is ordained by their adherence to a creed, and for the christian communities that support the gop the creed is a morality of the old testament preached each week to them.

the creed is to bow to authority, to accept what is given as holy providence, and upsetting the apple cart to campaign for more from the temporal life is tantamount to going against their god's divine wishes.

how does one get past that?

i dont know, but i have seen it for decades in my own personal experience with these people, and i still can not move these folks past it.

[AP]

24. There is one umbrella issue under which all other issues

can't exist without that umbrella being in place -- and that the idea that, unless you're at the very top, you want power to flow down to you, and others like you.

You just have to look at the world today to see that all those single issues are meaningless in the face of a right wing that has managed to shift so much power to the the top.

Also, FDR proved that you can't have a functioning democracy without an economically, politically and culturally powerful middle class.

People who think that they can give up power to get any single issue moved up the list of social priorities is really cutting off their nose to spite their face (or cutting off their face to spite their nose).

[kodi]

26. such people are sacrificing for a higher cause than empowerment

whether you and i like it or not. that is why they are doing it, and it is folly to dismiss this as a motivating feature in their political choices.

screaming in their face that they are relinquishing power or not striving for it is meaningless to them. they have a set of priorities and they are acting upon them. that such priorities are not in their economic best interests is NOT unknown to them. they are considering other values as more important.

whether they are mistaken in this is not my call, but showing them that they are making their decisions based upon erroneous data is the only way to succeed in swaying them from their current path.

no one is going to be convinced to change their values, but we can show them that their decisions are not actually in accord with those values.

[AP]

28. I'm not advocating screaming in anyone's face to get them to realize

that in pursuing their single issues (morality, guns, or whatever) they're sacrificing political, economic and cultural power.

And I think it's pretty clear that I understand why they're doing it and that I'm not dismissing it.

However, I will say that I do think they are totally mistaken in voting for a republican who will take all their money and give it to the banks and drug and oil companies, just so they can feel like they're protecting some 'value' that wasn't really threatened and that they'd have a better chance protecting within a functional democracy rather than a oligopoly.

[AP]

5. Here's the short version of what has happened the last four years:

War. Terror.

Each party has its strengths and weaknesses. For a party to win an election, you need a two pronged strategy. The first prong of attack is to drive wedges into your opposited parties coalitions. The Dem's coalition is the middle and working class (just about everything the Democrat Party does is done to flow political, economic and cultural power down to people who work for a living, while the Republicans try to flow it up to fewer and fewer wealthier and wealthier people).

To break up those coalitions, the Republicans use things like racism and morality (religion, abortion, etc.) to get people to vote agains their best interests -- ie, they pick a singel issue which is clearly less important than which way power flows, and get people to vote on it. It is so obvious to me that, for example, it so much better for a working class guy to have money in his pocket (a good job and a pension) than live in an all-white neighborhood, but somehow Republicans are able to convince him that the latter is more important -- and, stunningly, things like abortion rights and fighting racisim actually increase the ability of the middle and working class to have more economically secure lives. There's an economicst at the University of Chicago who has done a study on crime and has linked it, in part, to abortion rights. He says that "unwantedness" and poverty in the past created a class of people prone to crime. The Republicans LOVE crime, because it creates the kind of fear that allows them to get their agenda accross (see Bowling for Columbine). Of course, crime makes people who work for a living poorer and rich people richer. So, you have the Republicans driving a wedge into the left, getting people to vote to make their lives more miserable. It's amazing.

The second prong of attack you need to win an election is that you need to look at how people perceive your party/candidate and then you have to convince people that the issues they think you're strong on are actually the most important issues. Democrats are stronger on jobs and the economy, so Democrats try to convince you that your economic power is the most important issue. Republicans do best on the issue of national security and on the emerging issue of terror (which is why there's such a heated battle today between Dems and Republicans over whether Bush is good on terror).

So, the media and the Republicans have spent the last 3 years trying to convince Americans that war and terrror are the most important issues. If people think they are then they'll make the conscious decision to vote for someone they know will be worse for them on jobs, but don't care because they've ranked other issues higher on their list of priorities.

[Warpy]

7. There's a great article about these folks

...which explains a lot of the mindset, what we're up against.

http://mondediplo.com/2004/02/04usa

Welcome to DU and happy reading.

[Cocoa]

9. people overestimate their own status

It's a proven phenomenon at all levels, poor people think they're middle class, middle class people think they're rich.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

22. So true

and that's why it's important to use phrases like "repeal the tax cut on those making more than $200,000" instead of "repeal the tax cut on the rich" -- a lot of people making less than $200,000 are doing a good job of fooling themselves into thinking they are rich.

[meow2u3]

6. Economic issues are far more important than culture

If emotionaly-charged cultural issues, which seem impervious to reason (Dems too are guilty of this), were more important to me than economics, I'd be a Republican! :puke:

Personally, I think Kerry ought to lay off emphasizing guns, gays, abortion, etc., and focus strictly on fiscal issues, thus framing the debate--and he should mention outright that to vote for Bush based solely on his professed (as opposed to actual) stand against gun control, abortion, etc., would be to cut off their noses to spite their faces.

[AP]

10. Dems bigger battle this year: economy is more important than war.

Republicans are definitely using cultural wedge issues, but not as much as in the past (Reagan overtly used racism as a wedge issue; even Dole used morality as a wedge issue).

What they're really doing is trying to get people to feel like national security and terror are the number one issues. The Republicans are basically saying, we know we can't deliver a good economy the way democrats do, but we're better on terror than democrats, and terror is to blame for the bad economy (please don't notice that oil companies are having record profits and our tax cuts are making the rich richer). And you'd rather be safe and alive than rich, right?

[AP]

8. By the way, notice Sanders doesn't think the war is the issue to run on.

He's a socialist. He says jobs and economy are the issues to run on because they're the core issues for liberals, and they're are the target for the Republican's assault on liberalism in their effort to shift wealth up the wealth ladder.

Sanders is telling Democrats to fight the battle on the Democrat's home field: jobs and economy.

[JI7]

13. yup, i hope Kerry reads this

and takes it into consideration.

[AP]

15. We'll know if he read it based on the VP selection.

The VP selection will tell voters a great deal about which issues Kerry thinks are the most important on which to run.

[G_j]

29. VP choice: will it be issues that matter?

I'm not so sure.

[Saltdog]

11. But the wierd thing is

if you ask the average "person on the street" which party is better with economic issues (in general), they will invariably say the Republicans are.

Somehow, the Repubs have cultivated an image of being good for the economy and being the party of fiscal responsibility. How is this possible when all of the evidence says exactly the opposite?!?

I think most people associate Repubs with: Strong defense, good economics, and morality.:puke:

Most people associate Democrats with: civil rights, social security and weakness relative to Repubs on the Repub "strengths" listed above.

It is quite Orwellian.

[AP]

12. No longer true. Democrats do better on economy and jobs these days.

The Republicans do better on values (I think) and definitely on terror and national security (by big margins, in the neighborhood of 60:40)

[Saltdog]

16. Totally agree

Historically, Democrats do much better with the economy than Repubs. My question is why the public thinks otherwise.

[AP]

17. I don't think they do any more. This is from memory,

but I'm certain that (after 8 years of clinton) voters now rank Dems higher than Republicans on the economy (by low 50s to high 40s) and better on jobs (by about 55:45 or slightly better).

I wish I had a few links, but I'm pretty sure I'm in the ballpark.

If the Republicans did better on the economy, they wouldn't be running so hard on terror.

[AP]

14. Also, in 2000, there was an exit poll on Bush v Gore and most voters

agreed with Gore on every issue but one. Although they thought Gore would create more jobs, and they agreed with him on social issues, and just about everything else, they felt like Bush would lower their taxes more.

In other words, voters knew Gore would give other people better and higher paying jobs and protect their SS, etc, but somehow, Bush convinced them that lowering their taxes was the single most important issue in 2000 and he got enough votes to "win" from people who liked Gore on every other issue except taxes. In other words, he got enough people to move "lowering taxes" to the very top of their list of priorities,

I guess one of the reasons that worked was because there was so little increase in salaries for most Americans, they felt that the best way to make more money was not from their job, but from lowering taxes, so "more and better jobs" didn't mean that much to them.

Then he cuts taxes the most for millionaires, gets a lot of publicity for cutting taxes, and convinces people he has kept his campaign promise! (So he wins again by hurting the people who voted for him. It's crazy.)

[BurnInHellFoxNews]

21. What you vote for vs. what you receive

There was a great piece in Harper's a little while ago. It read:

"Vote against abortion; get electricity deregulation. Vote to screw those uppity college professors; get your overtime pay revoked. Vote to protect the sanctity of marriage; get the biggest gap between rich and poor this country has ever known."

Sorry I'm so sketchy on the details.

[G_j]

23. that is a good way to put it n/t

[no name no slogan]

25. Thank you Bernie Sanders!

For me, this is one of the BIGGEST reasons why Democrats have been getting hammered over the last decade and a half. We have abandoned our traditional strengths on the "bread and butter" issues by becoming too much like the Repubs, which has taken these issues off the table.

With the economic issues gone, it has allowed the Repubs to define us as the party of abortionists, radical feminists, gay lovers and philanderers. This has driven the socially conservative economic liberals over to the Repubs-- even though it's not in their best economic interests.

Don't get me wrong, the social issues are important, but we as a party need to take PRINCIPLED STANDS on these vital economic issues to win: living wages, overtime protection, accessible healthcare, affordable housing and job protection from corporate greed.

Not only do we need to take these stands, we need to CAMPAIGN on them, too! Most people in the country stand for these issues in principal, we just have to prove to them that we're the party that best represents them on these.

[TheDonkey]

27. Unions, minimum wage, demand economics, these aren't new to the Democrats

Sanders must have been under a rock.

Democrats have been talking about jobs and the middle class many just don't care to listen or educate themselves.