Why do people often vote against their own interests?



The Republicans' shock victory in the election for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts meant the Democrats lost their supermajority in the Senate. This makes it even harder for the Obama administration to get healthcare reform passed in the US.

Political scientist Dr David Runciman looks at why is there often such deep opposition to reforms that appear to be of obvious benefit to voters.

Last year, in a series of "town-hall meetings" across the country, Americans got the chance to debate President Obama's proposed healthcare reforms.

What happened was an explosion of rage and barely suppressed violence.

Polling evidence suggests that the numbers who think the reforms go too far are nearly matched by those who think they do not go far enough.

But it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform - the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state - are often the ones it seems designed to help.

In Texas, where barely two-thirds of the population have full health insurance and over a fifth of all children have no cover at all, opposition to the legislation is currently running at 87%.

Anger

Instead, to many of those who lose out under the existing system, reform still seems like the ultimate betrayal.

Why are so many American voters enraged by attempts to change a horribly inefficient system that leaves them with premiums they often cannot afford?

Why are they manning the barricades to defend insurance companies that routinely deny claims and cancel policies?

It might be tempting to put the whole thing down to what the historian Richard Hofstadter back in the 1960s called "the paranoid style" of American politics, in which God, guns and race get mixed into a toxic stew of resentment at anything coming out of Washington.

But that would be a mistake.

If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them.

They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best.

There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots.

As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing. And that makes anything as complex or as messy as healthcare reform a very hard sell.

Stories not facts

In his book The Political Brain, psychologist Drew Westen, an exasperated Democrat, tried to show why the Right often wins the argument even when the Left is confident that it has the facts on its side.

He uses the following exchange from the first presidential debate between Al Gore and George Bush in 2000 to illustrate the perils of trying to explain to voters what will make them better off:

Gore: "Under the governor's plan, if you kept the same fee for service that you have now under Medicare, your premiums would go up by between 18% and 47%, and that is the study of the Congressional plan that he's modelled his proposal on by the Medicare actuaries."

Bush: "Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers.

"I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math. It's trying to scare people in the voting booth."

Mr Gore was talking sense and Mr Bush nonsense - but Mr Bush won the debate. With statistics, the voters just hear a patronising policy wonk, and switch off.

For Mr Westen, stories always trump statistics, which means the politician with the best stories is going to win: "One of the fallacies that politicians often have on the Left is that things are obvious, when they are not obvious.

"Obama's administration made a tremendous mistake by not immediately branding the economic collapse that we had just had as the Republicans' Depression, caused by the Bush administration's ideology of unregulated greed. The result is that now people blame him."

Reverse revolution

Thomas Frank, the author of the best-selling book What's The Matter with Kansas, is an even more exasperated Democrat and he goes further than Mr Westen.

He believes that the voters' preference for emotional engagement over reasonable argument has allowed the Republican Party to blind them to their own real interests.

The Republicans have learnt how to stoke up resentment against the patronising liberal elite, all those do-gooders who assume they know what poor people ought to be thinking.

Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America's poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.

Thomas Frank says that whatever disadvantaged Americans think they are voting for, they get something quite different:

"You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our life times, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining.

"It's like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy."

As Mr Frank sees it, authenticity has replaced economics as the driving force of modern politics. The authentic politicians are the ones who sound like they are speaking from the gut, not the cerebral cortex. Of course, they might be faking it, but it is no joke to say that in contemporary politics, if you can fake sincerity, you have got it made.

And the ultimate sin in modern politics is appearing to take the voters for granted.

This is a culture war but it is not simply being driven by differences over abortion, or religion, or patriotism. And it is not simply Red states vs. Blue states any more. It is a war on the entire political culture, on the arrogance of politicians, on their slipperiness and lack of principle, on their endless deal making and compromises.

And when the politicians say to the people protesting: 'But we're doing this for you', that just makes it worse. In fact, that seems to be what makes them angriest of all.

snooty intellectual elite source that wants to take yr guns

Or maybe people understand that the USA is not the 'Ancien Régime'. Americans are not born as aristocrats and peasants, they are free men 'endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.' That's why they refuse to listen to those preaching class envy. They understand that robbing 'the rich' and spreading the wealth around is not good for anyone in the long run. American people value their liberty too much to surrender it to the state bureaucrats just because it might make paying the bills a bit easier next month.

By the way, the human history is full of examples of people who acted 'against their own interests'. 'Pure Germans' sacrificed their lives opposing Hitler, white Americans fought against slavery and so on.

nice way to work in the Nazi comparison...that plays well.

So you are saying that we have no poor in America? That is similar to the way the right sees race too. Just a bunch of empty rhetoric that does nothing to solve the problem.

Yes, we must protect the liberty of the corporations and the banking industry to fuck everybody, and the liberty of the insurance companies to refuse to pay claims.

And the freedom of the politicians to trash the earth, spy on their own people, start illegal wars, and set up a system to reap campaign funds for helping big business.

Poor people voting Republican are like the Underground Railroad?

Obama's health care reform was just another fucking of the people, next to no benefit. "We gonna tax the shit out of you today, to pay for a program that may happen in 5 years that you probably aren't going to qualify for. Oh, and if you can't afford health insurance, then we gonna fine you, putting you further in the hole and at our mercy."

I haven't had health insurance in 9 years, when it crested over $5000 a year for me. In that time I have accrued maybe $1000 in medical expenses, maybe $1000. Now they want to force me to pay into that system?? Fuck that. When I'm old and need it, sure, but to get a prescription of antibiotics every other year, nope, I'd rather have cable TV.

So, the insurance companies should be free to deny you coverage when you are older, and the health care and pharmaceutical industries should be free to take everything you worked for all your life. If that's the way you want it.

This is the most slanted, reality-ignoring piece I've seen in a long time.

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But it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform - the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state - are often the ones it seems designed to help.

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Nobody thinks health care reform is socialist or a step on the road to... It's was the liberal health care reform bill that was just defeated by the iconically blue-blooded people of Massachusetts that was all that.

There was just all kinds of hub-bub over Obama attending that conference with Republicans. Obama talked about Republican ideas to reform health care. Elab, did you miss that conference? It was all over the news. Were Republicans proposing those reforms because they are socialists?

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Instead, to many of those who lose out under the existing system, reform still seems like the ultimate betrayal.

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Good lord this article is full of itself.

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Why are so many American voters enraged by attempts to change a horribly inefficient system that leaves them with premiums they often cannot afford?

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That bill rose the costs of health care in this country. This, according to an agency that's a part of the Obama administration, the Center for Medicare Services. That's why it sucked. It made costs go up without any substantial price controls.

There are plans available that cover more people than that public option bill and drive health care costs in this country down. This bill still leaves 10 million Americans uninsured and drove costs up.

The rest of the article is so full of highly theoretical situations that it makes concrete conclusions out of within a horribly slanted piece, it wasn't even worth reading. I almost made it to the end. Stopped a few paragraphs short.

Nothing has been defeated, except a poor candidate for the Senate seat in Mass.

It's going to cost more to cover everyone, obviously. Early versions of the current health care reform effort would have greatly benefited the majority of Americans. I'd be OK paying a small amount more to slow the skyrocketing costs of insurance. To have a system where I would know I'd be covered, job or no job, and not dropped because I was too sick.

But, the article addresses the larger issue of why people vote against their best interests. I remember reading about how, in Mississippi a few years ago, there was a bill that would change the regressive state tax system. Some corporations who were large land owners opposed it, and blitzed the state with advertising. Rank and file voters decided to keep paying a higher percentage of their incomes as taxes than the rich do.

How people still cling to the idea that keeping the corporations super rich and above the law, will somehow magically benefit the middle class, is mystifying. Why people refuse to demand better, I don't know. Does everyone have the delusion they will become super rich, and benefit from these policies?

I'll never understand how someone can come on a porn board and defend Republicans. You helped put Max in prison. Why do you defend the conservatives who did this? Why do you defend a party that doesn't want to do anything to work towards solutions to the problems the Republicans created in the last decade? Why do you want to make this like some third world shit hole, where a few are rich, and many die from lack of proper food and medical care? A basically poor country where the rich rip off what little most people have with unregulated banking and commerce systems, why do you want that?

Why do you hate freedom, and hate America?

There are lots of countries with governments that don't do shit for their people, where the economy is wide open. Take you ass to one of them, and quit fucking up my country.

what Charin said

hey northrup...check out the Health Care system in place in Mass...The same one yr new Cosmo Model Senator voted for. the vote in Mass was not a referendum on the Health bill...

This article was mainly talking about the tea baggers and the ragers of August and OF COURSE they called it Socialist...and also Nazi confusingly enough.

Poor dumb republicans

Elab:

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Poor dumb republicans

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And how they are led around by rich evil republicans

Northrup:

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Seriously charin, watch that Obama at the Republican conference video. They air a bunch of grievances about that dogma you've somehow let yourself believe.

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I watched Obama at the Republican caucus. Did you? He said he had seen their health care proposal(s), and given consideration to much of it. He also said what I said about how providing more health care will have to cost more. That's why I said it, he said it after some Republican claimed they could cover everybody and reduce cost.

Obama was trying to drive the Republicans away from the shit explained in the article. He wants to work with reality, instead of getting NO and lies told to the public. Remember the Bolshevik plot reference? Here on this board you echo chamber tools have been spreading that kind of shit, so fuck you.

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And note, that article accuses Republicans of boon-swaggling the public and how that's really their only secret to success. Meanwhile you're running around spewing the same kind of nonsense the Democrats have managed to brain-wash you with.

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It doesn't say that's their only secret to success. If you can't understand the article, STFU.

Interesting how you parrot the article in your last sentence.

My opinions are my own, I would like to see Obama and the Dems go way left. Kucinich left. I'm disappointed about several of Obama's shortcomings so far.

I'm a civil libertarian, and I defend the entire Bill of Rights. I break with the left on gun control. I think for myself.

Here's an example - in the last election in Ohio, there was an initiative on the ballot to establish a state animal cruelty board and give them enforcement powers. It was framed like a way to go after people who abuse dogs and cats. I got an e-mail from the local Humane Society explaining
the big corporations that raise, torture, and slaughter pigs, cows, and chickens got it put on the ballot so they could take enforcement away from county Humane Societies and have a board in Columbus they could control. It passed, because most voters had no idea what was really going on.

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations can give unlimited amounts of advertising to candidates they choose, the fucking will get worse.

Bush's 5-4 Supreme Court that stupid asshats like you voted in. Fuck you and all the "libertarians" here, you're supporting the people who want to ruin this country for the middle class.

The reason is no one has come up with a simple plan. Something like "every citizen is covered for anything. X number of dollars per month". But no we get offered a plan that's over one thousand pages long and you need to be a tax attorney to understand it.

That and probably an awful lot of people don't want to get another expensive entitlement started that not only will be in danger of going bankrupt at some point in the future but next to impossible to eliminate or reduce. (See Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security).

Any health care reform that is worth its weight in shit needs to include reform of Big Pharma. No advertising on TV, no greasing politicians, allow the importation of prescription drugs. This would be a windfall for the consumer, so it will never happen.

36 percent of Republicans believe Obama was not born in the United States, 22 percent are not sure, 42 percent think he is a natural citizen.

31 percent of Republicans believe Obama is a "Racist who hates White people" -- the description once adopted by Fox News's Glenn Beck. 33 percent were not sure, and 36 percent said he was not a racist.

63 percent of Republicans think Obama is a socialist, 16 percent are not sure, 21 percent say he is not

24 percent of Republicans believe Obama wants "the terrorists to win," 33 percent aren't sure, 43 percent said he did not want the terrorist to win.

21 percent of Republicans believe ACORN stole the 2008 election, 55 percent are not sure, 24 percent said the community organizing group did not steal the election.

23 percent of Republicans believe that their state should secede from the United States, 19 percent aren't sure, 58 percent said no.

53 percent of Republicans said they believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be president than Obama.

Yeah, there are some stupid Republicans.

But, even the intelligent Democrats. They thought "the public option" was a good idea... Come on! It's no comparison.