Please, stay away from arguments about "educated voters".

Zynx

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Tue May-27-08 01:19 AM
Original message

Please, stay away from arguments about "educated voters".

Before I begin, let me be clear. I was once a Clinton supporter, but I have recognized this race is over for some time and now support Senator Obama. Now then, moving on.

I'm not going to name names, but there have been a number of threads making broad pronouncements about the education levels of the supporters of the various candidates. The insinuation is that voters with higher levels of education are much better skilled at selecting presidents than those with lower levels. Taken to its logical extreme, why do we not just have government by the Ivy League universities? I mean, by this line of argumentation we are all just a bunch of ignorant rubes, most of whom have attended public secondary schools and more likely than not public universities and we should just bow to Harvard, Princeton, and Yale.

Speaking for myself, I have double-majored at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Economics and History and I am starting a Masters of Public Affairs specializing in Public Finance and Budgeting. I could easily make the argument that I am much better suited to make decisions on who our political leaders should be than your average retail clerk or table washer in Mercer, Wisconsin in Iron County where the per capita income is about $14,000 and a college degree is a rare thing. However, as a Democrat, making such an argument is shameful to me. Why? Because up until quite recently, the college educated electorate was on balance a Republican leaning one. Even recently, if you look at the 2004 exit polling, voters with a bachelors degree or at least some college voted more Republican than those with a high school education or less. Granted, voters with post-graduate levels were the most Democratic voting bloc, but the point remains that the next best group for Democrats were those with less than a high school education. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election%2C_2004#Voter_Demographics

Why is this important? As Democrats we believe in equality among all the people regardless of their characteristics. The plain fact is that the bulk of those with post-graduate educations, which will soon include myself, come from quite privileged backgrounds. We really don't know what it is like for most people out there. While people like me, economically(and thus educationally privileged white people for the most part) inevitably end up in the positions of making policy, we are not truly certain how those we are implementing policies on are truly effected if we do not listen to them. This is the genius of how the vote of a college professor counts just as much as the vote of a cashier at Sears.

As I pointed out earlier, the college educated used to be a pretty heavily Republican demographic. If it was up to them exclusively, the Democratic Party would have never had its heyday of the 1930s-1960s. Thomas Dewey would have beaten Harry Truman. Richard Nixon would have defeated JFK. FDR probably would not have won his second two terms. Gerry Ford would have beaten Jimmy Carter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election%2C_1976#Voter_demographics I've heard Republicans even still make the argument, and it is a racist one, that because black voters on balance have lower levels of education that is the reason they vote Democratic. This is why my skin crawls when I see people here making the same arguments.

Please, realize what you are saying before you condemn the poorly educated. Remember this is an inclusive party, and that's what separates us from the Republicans. We don't hold the privileged above the non-privileged. We don't separate people by class and keep them down and insult them. We represent giving everyone a voice and respecting their voice. Thank you.