Please ask me what my "best interests" are.

[Chitown Kev]

I'm going to slightly modify a diary that I published over at DK ~ two hours ago to this board for discussion...here is a link to the diary as it stands at DK right now.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/28/1441631/-Please-ask-me-what-my-best-interests-are

Here is pretty much the same text retro-fitted to this board and things that have gone on over here at GDP.

There's a phrase that has explicitly and implicitly been making the rounds that irks the shit out of me.

It's the idea that if voter X votes for electoral candidate Y (at any level), that X is not voting "in their best interests."

This phrase is usually invoked when mention is made of poor and working-class whites that vote for Republican politicians and Republican policies.

Maybe voter X feels that the racist, homophobic, and women-hating policies of the GOP ARE in their best interests. You may not like that and I certainly don't like that but, for example, those 2008 Palin rallies and the highly charged rhetoric that GOP politicians and commentators spew on Fox News don't tell me anything different.

Maybe a prospective black voter's best interest is that the GOP nominee does not get elected President.

That doesn't mean that black voter Z thinks that the Clintons walk on water or even that Hillary Clinton will always enact policies that he or she likes or that Z has forgotten about the racism of Clinton's 2008 primary campaign.

It might mean that the most important factor for voter Z that the Democratic nominee is elected president in 2016.

Amid all the sturm und drang regarding Hillary Clinton's recent statements on the Defense of Marriage Act, the most odious implication of Secretary Clinton's statements is the idea that it was for the purpose of protecting the self-interests of LGBT's by saving the GOP (and lots of Democrats!) from writing discrimination into the Constitution.

With all due respect, Secretary Clinton, your husband's signing of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 may have been in your husband's best interests for reelection but I didn't feel then (or now) that it was in my best interests. Considering the lack of evidence that there was a movement to write LGB marriage discrimination into the federal constitution at that time, it seems a little deceitful to claim that your husband signed DOMA in the best interests of the LGBT community.

As a rule, we usually don't know what the "best interests" of another actually are. Maybe we should ask them instead of making assumptions.

While, yes, Secretary Clinton's comments w/r/t the Defense of Marriage Act was the latest irritant, some Bernie Sanders supporters (Senator Sanders himself...not so much) have used "low-information voters" in a pejorative manner that pretty seems to suggest the same thing (i.e. that "Stockholm Syndrome" thread or some comments directed at bravenak last night about how she wasn't acting in her own "best interests.&quot

This isn't simply about Clinton's DOMA comments. it's about how we talk to one another and about one another.

[bravenak]

1. You want I should come over there?

[Chitown Kev]

3. To DK? You can...in fact

I would welcome your viewpoint there but part that diary was a reaction to things going on here (and a comment made to you last night)....we need to talk about this here at DU as well.

[bravenak]

4. Ok. I'll stay here. I'm sick in bed so I have all day.

[RobertEarl]

2. You don't get it?

It's because of Bernie supporters that the world is not full of fun and laughter. We so bad......

[bravenak]

5. I gave advice. You were supposed to love me.

[aidbo]

6. Good points. And well articulated.

My only counter point (and it's not really a counter point, but something to consider) would be in reference to

Maybe a prospective black voter's best interest is that the GOP nominee does not get elected President.

As Bernie pointed out at the DNC meeting a couple months back, the republicans win when voter turnout is low. That's mostly what he's talking about when he speaks about the political revolution. Getting the apathetic citizen and the fed up citizen to become active and engaged and informed voting citizens.

If voter turnout increased significantly from its average, then we'd probably never have to worry about a republican presidency again. It would be nice if voting in one's own interests didn't have to be a defensive action to block the other party.

[mmonk]

7. Subjective. White people in the south would have benefitted

from expansion of Medicaid but they claim they wouldn't. The human mind rejects any assertion it is wrong, even if true.

[Chitown Kev]

8. hmmmm...maybe keeping black and brown folks from benefitting from Medicaid expansion

was a higher priority to those voters...

(re: The New Deal)

[mmonk]

9. Nice try trying to link economic justice with resistance to economic justice.

[Chitown Kev]

11. OK, why did many working-class Southern white voters

leave the Democratic Party, then?

Race and not economics is a priority to them. Their "racial interests" (white supremacy) are a higher priority than their "economic interests".

In my opinion.

[mmonk]

13. How does that relate to economic justice is the bigger question.

A racist is a racist and cares about that more than he cares about equal justice in all spheres.

[Chitown Kev]

14. You might want to tell that to Bernie Sanders

although, I think that the Senator is up to speed on that since the time of his 2014 NPR interview..

You might want to tell that to some of the nice white progressives who think that if the Dems talk just enough about economic justice (at the expense of racial and other forms of justice, a lot of times) that "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans" will fall in love with the Dems all over again and will vote Democratic in droves.

[mmonk]

16. I think the premise of your argument is wrong.

I do not see him speaking about economic justice at the expense of racial justice. I do not see the "qualifiers" interjected into this campaign by political operatives. The threats to our well being through economic injustice are real. There is no reasonable reason to keep that under wraps. It hits minority communities even harder. I will fight for my children, even against well meaning persons that think their financial well being is a ruse to cover racism. I do this because the premise is false. Besides, the economics of when this country was founded included slavery (the cheapest of labor). The reason the south pretends today that slavery wasn't the problem but is was a problem of economics is false. The stain of that is why we are stuck presently where economic justice is given a 2nd tier priority. To keep minorities from rising up the ladder (in the minds of racists from the south). That is why they vote against their interests and the interests of us all on the whole. I don't believe in comprising either one on a false premise.

[Chitown Kev]

18. This is a derailment...but I'll respond like this

The threats to our well being through economic injustice are real. There is no reasonable reason to keep that under wraps.

Convince a prospective Trump/Carson voter of that...chances are, that very same thing would apply.

Maybe such a voter is not voting against what they would define as their "best interest"; maybe such a voter has other (and "higher&quot interests and priorities that the Republican candidates are addressing.

I am, in part, reacting to this comment and bravenak's response.

Bravenak was speaking of what is in her best interests.

[TheKentuckian]

31. When was all this talk of economic sense and decency drowning out social issues because

I don't recall a lick of it. Even Carter was pushing deregulation, "free trade" and W.I.N.

What is the story? Have some of you guys joined the Bircher crowd on the New Deal and the Great Society and still mad 60 and 8p years later at that? Seems to me the civil rights movement made more headway under those conditions than under decades of the only game in town (if any, seems for a while it's was no talk of any justice of any sort).

This complaint is because some of us aren't hearing or tolerating socially liberal (usually not really just not bigots) and fiscally conservative anymore and that is it because as much as this is complained about the record of actual reality completely fails to support any such concept, at least in many years. Generations even, the assertion is misinformation designed to protect and expand the grip of the toxic economic status quo.

[Chitown Kev]

32. and your point is?

The civil rights movement (even under FDR) made more headway when labor unions were a more active and accepted part of American life and political conversation...you get no argument out of me there...and that's a pretty rational assessment of the history, as I know it.

So I do think that the choice of one or the other is a false dilemma...

That certainly didn't stop quite a few Dems from scapegoating LGBT's for losing the WH in 2004.

[TheKentuckian]

35. That wasn't liberals, that was the same Turd Way folks and their apologists

The same fuckers that scream about "SOCIAL JUSTICE" now we're talking ponies and blaming gas AND all the while cheering the looting of the American people as "pragmatic".

They are the same folks that are quick to want to jump on bombing some brown folks or defend "regime change".

They are the same ones pooh pooing protecting the environment.

They loves them some fracking and drill, baby, drill they just call it "all of the above".

Who was tripping over themselves to defend the Blue Gang until the flood of videos became to much to deny?

Who just can't manage to find a way to stop supporting the stupid and failed drug war.

They are the ones sneering at and spitting hatred about liberals and the "far left".

Whatever it is to be conservative about, it almost always the same "pragmatic" folks doing it no matter how much they try to lead from behind once change does manage to happen despite them.
Democrats and liberals aren't the same thing at all. Most liberals might be Democrats but all and maybe not even most Democrats aren't liberal.

[Chitown Kev]

38. I still don't get the point you are making

or its' relevance to the topic at hand.

[TheKentuckian]

41. I'm not sure what the disconnect is. You seem to be implying that Social issues are being drowned ou

in favor of economics and I don't see any such thing.

[Chitown Kev]

42. I'm not saying that at all

You seem to be implying, though, that social issues are a distraction.

[TheKentuckian]

43. Not at all. No, not even a little bit.

There is only one justice though it has many aspects.

What you may be detecting is the feeling some use social issues as a smoke screen to cover ans excuse their overall conservative positions around the spectrum including on many social and closely related legal issues.

Further, I'm not even grasping the assessment of socially liberal from our supposed friends who like to claim to be socially liberal but fiscally conservative.

Scratch the surface and we find drug warriors and worriers, we see support for the death penalty, we see fans of fracking and drilling, we find ardent education deformers, we see opposition to polyamorous relationships, we can recall many of the same folks calling gay rights stupid shit like "ponies" just a short while ago, among them the fiercest defenders of the murderous blue gang, same folks were tripping over themselves to cut and run on ACORN and essentially scoff at right wing owned and operated voting machines and who's answer to disenfranchisement is "mob the polls", who yawns at the idea of environmental stewardship, who is able to get behind bullshit wars and will even stretch themselves to the point of snapping to defend past ones. Same folks can always get behind regime change. Who mocks civil liberties?

Socially liberal my fucking ass. You get past controlling women's bodies and not being fire breathing bigots and even that little cover slips away.

Who is socially conservative? The same motherfuckers who are conservative about everything else for the most part along with many of our more churchy folks.

[Chitown Kev]

47. OK, people have principles and values

that cover the political spectrum, that can seem contradictory...and they have those values and interests for all sorts of reasons and (I assume) they (among other things) vote based on those things.

This is a democracy (or, rather, a democratic republic). They are entitled to have fucked-up beliefs.

You are entitled to think that their beliefs are fucked up. But I don't think that out-and-out saying that their beliefs are fucked up or telling them directly that their beliefs are fucked-up is a winning strategy....or rather, it's simply not very persuasive.

[TheKentuckian]

49. I don't consider them persuadable in any practicable way. The play is to break them.

To render them inert and ineffective. To deny fertile ground and safe haven to operate from. To oppose tooth and nail. To resist.

Sometimes you have hard cases and no amount of convincing or even experience can teach, often it takes a 2x4 between the eyes a few times to get any traction.

No, playing nice has only lead to bad going worse with these folks and for my part it is time to take the keys from the drunks by any and all means necessary.

[Chitown Kev]

50. So if they disagree with you 100%...

and this s what I'm hearing from you...

if they have one interest or one value that's more on the conservative end of things that you disagree with then that renders ALL of their political beliefs suspect.

That's not my experience at all.

[TheKentuckian]

51. It is seldom one thing, one issue can be worked around large chunks of ideology not so much.

Sometimes though even one thing can be a huge stumbling block that prevents much cooperation other than on an individual issue basis for just one instance if you think of me as a "thug" or a subhuman ape then we aren't going to make it as strong allies despite a lot of crossover.

[Art_from_Ark]

44. When did Carter push W.I.N.?

If you're talking about "Whip Inflation Now", that was the brainchild of the Ford administration (1974) and it had pretty much faded away before Carter took office.

[TheKentuckian]

45. Carter was an inflation hawk to the point of taking Ford to task.

While the marketing scheme faded the concept took root and effectively has been running ever since and by inflation they mean labor costs and wages.

Wages have been strangled regardless of party for decades on end now and yes Carter was all up in that along with deregulation he had a near mutiny in the party going for some real and valid reasons.

People want to pretend away and forget that Carter was a pretty damned conservative Democrat and you provably could find more liberal Republicans back then.

It wasn't all sweaters and solar panels for our greatest living post President.

[Art_from_Ark]

46. Well, inflation was pretty bad back then

My family's income wasn't anywhere near keeping up with inflation.

[TheKentuckian]

48. The problem is that sort of inflation was marketing to kill wages.

Rent, food, child care, health care, and utilities aka the shit that eats a great many of us damn near all up keep rocketing up and wages are flat or falling for decades.

Add that to hoping to get back to the real dollar income of 12 and 15 years ago and the math gets pretty ugly for keeping g up with inflation now.
If one's "basket" of purchasing or percentage of income is different then years things like durable goods and new vehicles are very stable but most everything is the stuff of home fires for me.

[jfern]

29. A combination of two reasons

One was Democrats becoming less racist, the other was Democrats moving to 3rd way economics. What Democrats need to do is stand for something on economic principles while retaining their anti-racism. Obviously a majority of Southern whites will continue to vote Republican, but we can win back some people.

[Chitown Kev]

30. Truman, Johnson and McGovern

weren't advocating anything like what we call "Third Way" economics.

What Democrats need to do is stand for something on economic principles while retaining their anti-racism

I don't disagree with that, per se, but don't act as if the GOP (or some other party) won't do anything about that by cobbling together some other type of winning electoral coalition.

[sadoldgirl]

10. So you don't think that a good number

of voters don't vote against their own interests?

Take the case of Dr. Carson: He wants to get rid
of medicare and medicaid. At this point he is leading
the pack. How do you explain that?

[Chitown Kev]

12. Maybe there are other "interests" or "values" that are more important to these voters

and they vote based on those other priorities that are of higher importance to them?

[1StrongBlackMan]

15. I don't get why that is such a difficult concept to grasp ...

ANYTHING that a person does, makes sense to them ... whether it makes sense to me/us, or not.

That said, a racist's interest in promoting/maintaining white supremacy has very real economic ramifications/benefits to that racist ... and he/she can easily (and will openly) argue that the white liberal's focus on economic injustice, is acting in their own interest as a white person.

[1StrongBlackMan]

19. Oops, I meant ...

Last edited Thu Oct 29, 2015, 11:03 AM - Edit history (1)

"Is NOT acting in their own interest as a white person. "

[Recursion]

22. No, and it's patronizing of us to keep insisting that

They view what "their interests" are much differently than we do.

[JI7]

37. Carson is leading because of Religious Conservative Voters who vote based on Common Faith , Anti gay

anti choice issues.

so they ARE voting their interests by voting for him.

[Number23]

21. The United States is FULL of people who have worked hard as hell to deny other people their rights

and worked equally as hard to deny themselves their own rights as well aka voting against their own interests.

As a gay, black man, I think it is pretty clear that you don't belong to any group that has done either. K&R

[sahel]

23. That argument presumes that self-interest is inherently subjective

and unknowable from the perspective of any third party person. Its an argument that also fits in neatly with the contemporary, neoliberal rhetorical tactic of advancing subjective experience as fact, and then demanding that it be uncritically accepted as such, because after all, who are you to lecture me on my own experiences?

Now, I suppose one or two Jewish people might have voted for Hitler on the grounds that they were sincerely more concerned in having a strong Germany than anything else. Nevertheless, there comes a time (probably about when you are being transported in a cattle car for the crema) when even a disinterested, third party person might legitimately question whether you had made a rational assessment of your own self-interest.

Maybe voter X feels that the racist, homophobic, and women-hating policies of the GOP ARE in their best interests.

Do they? Plenty of people in Kentucky hate Obama, but they were more than happy to sign up for Obamacare as long as their state government renamed it to "Kynect". Mitch McConnell was re-elected in Kentucky on a platform of repealing Obamacare but keeping Kynect, which is basically like promising to rip the plumbing out of your house but letting you keep the tap.

Frankly, even a faintly rational person could have seen that was entirely fatuous, but a majority of Kentuckians accepted it anyway, probably because they never bothered to make a reasonable assessment of their own self-interests. After all, if they did, it would be entirely futile and unnecessary for the political class to spend billions of dollars on self-serving political advertising to try and persuade the hoi polloi to vote in a prescribed way.

Maybe a prospective black voter's best interest is that the GOP nominee does not get elected President.

Is it? A majority of African Americans supported Jesse Jackson for president in the eighties, even though his chances of ever being elected were exceedingly modest. And somewhere near forty percent of African Americans would vote for Ben Carson were he to receive the GOP nomination.

My guess is that the African Americans who would vote for Carson, much like the white working classes that vote Republican, have probably not made a rational assessment of their own self-interests.

[Vattel]

24. Nice post. Welcome to du.

I agree with your rejection of the subjectivist presuppositions of the OP. People act against their own self-interest and, more broadly, their own interests, all the time. I have done it countless times (and often regretted it).

[Chitown Kev]

26. Sure we do...I have on many occasions

but why did you do that? What other priorities and decisions did you make that overrode the rational ones?

This conversation may be getting somewhere after all...

[Vattel]

27. sometimes it's simply not having enough information to know

what would best further my interests. Sometimes it is giving in to temptation (e.g., over-eating). Sometimes it is forgetting what really has value. There are lots of kinds of cases.

[Chitown Kev]

28. Yes...and we're human beings

and not Kantian cyborgs.

I would posit, however, that in the case of the stereotypical "Dixiecrat" voter their racism/sexism/homophobia is simply of greater interest and value to them.

To me, it does not seem to be a rational value to have at all.

Yet that seems to be a primary value of a lot of Republicans and Reagan Dem-types (see Kim Davis, a new Republican convert in Kentucky).

If only the Great Texas Wall were built and all the Negroes were kicked off of welfare, all would be well...I know that's not TRUE but that is what they seem to value the most.

I'm not saying that it's right. I'm saying that it is.

[Chitown Kev]

25. So then we do know what the primary self-interest

of many Kentuckians was, right?

A majority of them like their new healthcare and they don't like Obama.

Yes, it's a contradiction. Non-rational, even

Many (and I might go so far as to say most) people (people who vote) aren't necessarily rational about their primary interests or values (perhaps the ability to attain and maintain pleasure or to attain instant gratification outweighs the more rational and painstaking value in those instances) but they have those interests and values all the same and they damn sure don't want people like you talking down to them.

Please give me a link to the Ben Carson stat, please.

[sahel]

53. Last things first

I must confess I googled "Ben Carson black support" and clicked on the first link that came up (https://www.isidewith.com/poll/631968041/290416960) which quoted his black support at 37%. In fact his campaign today claims black support at somewhere between 17 and 18 percent. I am happy to walk that claim back.

So then we do know what the primary self-interest of many Kentuckians was, right?

Do we? LBJ had the same problem with Kentuckians after he launched his fabled "war on poverty" whilst standing on a sagging Appalachian front porch. While his civil rights and desegregation progress resulted in an almost immediate hike in black support, his great society legislation did nothing to shore things up with poor whites. Even after delivering benefits to them, he got barely a vote in the whole paddock. Its a phenomenon that public choice theorists have called the "ungrateful electorate dilemma".

perhaps the ability to attain and maintain pleasure or to attain instant gratification outweighs the more rational and painstaking value in those instances

Definitely. Racial/national/sectarian issues always trump economics in the minds of voters, pound for pound. Lenin once theorised that World War II could never happen because the French and German soldiers would refuse to fight each other in a show of working class solidarity. We all know how that turned out. There is something primal and atavistic about national/racial/tribal/sectarian solidarity, once that takes over bread-and-butter issues can go hang.

And I certainly don't recommend "talking down to anyone". Poor whites from Kentucky, West Virginia, etc, are extremely sensitive about being dissed. There are parallels with Black people, I think. Michele Wallace once said that the Black man clings to his swagger, his cult of machismo, because the White man has left him with precious little else. The hillbillies fix their own cars, brew their own liquor and shoot their own game with their own guns because all they have left is their self-image of rugged independence. Obama said something to that effect, that they cling to their "guns and their religion" because it is the only semblance of their collective manhood that they have left. Is it any great surprise that they choose to identify in that way, rather than as beneficiaries of a certain welfare policy or another?

Of course, no one likes to get a free personality assessment from someone of another race. The hillbillies didn't like getting it from Obama and neither do Black people like it coming from white people. It is what it is.

[JI7]

34. in Kentucky they don't view it as Obamacare , in fact in polls they say they oppose it

kind of like keep the govt away from medicare.

[aikoaiko]

33. I can respect this position even though I think Bernie can win the GE.

I guess what puzzles me is that HRC will likely govern slightly to the right of Obama (certainly not more left) and, therefore, maintain the status quo.

But the status quo is a massively disproportionate number of black Americans being shot by police (stable numbers since mid 1980s) and in prison (proportionately level since late 80s, overall up), 45% of black babies under 6 living in poverty, and 50% of young black adults are unemployed.

The status quo is what I'm hearing black folks say is unacceptable and demanding change, but supporting the status quo candidate.

I suppose your OP is making the case that black folk would rather have the status quo rather than something worse with a republican president, but I'm just not seeing numbers to support that more blacks were shot by police, in prison, in poverty, or unemployed in substantially different numbers under Bush1, Clinton1, Bush2, Obama1 (maybe), or would be expected to be different under Clinton2.

Good OP.

[Chitown Kev]

36. Remember, many blacks weren't even convinced that Obama could win a GE

at least at first...and they withheld their support...until after Iowa, at least according to the polling.

So...the electability of Democrat _________________ in the GE is probably the MOST important thing for blacks at this point in time (it's not 1984 or 1988 anymore).

Republican presidencies are twice as hard on POC as they are on white people...and given political conditions right now?

That may or may not be a rational belief on the part of those African Americans who support Clinton over Sanders (it would be a damn good question for pollsters to ask more regularly).

Mind you, I'm not simply making an "African American" argument here.

[sahel]

54. Let me put this to you

A century ago, Irish Catholics were the keystone of the Democratic party base. They voted 85%-90% Democratic, year in year out, at a time when AAs were still voting for the Republicans.

Of course you don't get that level of support in a vacuum. An Irish Catholic going to church would listen to the priest telling him to vote the straight ticket (ie, for the establishment Democratic candidate). There would be vague allusions to the Republicans being a nest of nativists and anti-Catholic Freemasons, and equally warnings against supporting the godless Communists on the left.

He would work in a city job, or at least a union job. The union rep would visit the boys from time to time and tell them to vote the straight ticket, amongst other things. Even when he knocked off work for the day, the saloon or speakeasy that he frequented for a beer or two would have posters extolling the establishment Dem candidate, since a lot of the saloons were actually owned by city bosses.

Of course you had Democratic party operatives on the ground as well. Then you had fraternal Irish organisations, city machines like Tammany Hall, friends and family who worked for these various entities, all instilling in you the importance of voting the straight ticket. If you were illiterate, the newspapers helpfully printed out a ballot sheet showing you just how to vote the straight ticket, and you could take that to the polling booth.

Was it any great surprise, then, that Irish Catholics went to the polls and voted the straight ticket in the numbers that they did?

Hypothetically, the only way to get them to peel off would have been to run a popular insurgent Catholic against an establishment Protestant. I can't recall that ever having been done, though.

[ibegurpard]

39. People don't vote rationally.

They make decisions with their animal brains and then try to rationalize it. Republicans have capitalized on this for years. We still try to throw logical arguments at people. We have to get to the root of the animal brain appeals and find counter arguments that appeal at the same level.

[Chitown Kev]

40. Bingo...

For all that "Sahel's" first comment tried to chastise me, I never claimed that American voters (or voters anywhere else, for that matter) vote based on the purest sense of rational thinking possible.

I'm not saying whether that's bad or good (and I can make arguments either way); I'm saying that it simply is.

After all, racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia...all those -isms...actually had a lot of support from scientific communities and philosophers and otherwise "rational" people at one time (Thomas Jefferson, for example)...in fact, -isms still do have some basis for support with some of the "rational" set.

[LostOne4Ever]

52. Big K&R nt