Bitter Fruit in Pennsylvania

Like many, if not most, readers of this magazine, I often vote against my economic interests. Whenever I vote for a candidate who wants to redistribute wealth--which is basically whenever I vote--I am electing to make myself poorer. Like many of you, then, I am a values voter. There are more important things to me than money. This is not entirely selfless. I vote not only for a world I want to see but a world I want to be part of and a world I think would welcome me as part of it. It has never really occurred to me that I might cast a vote in solidarity with those who earn like me.

So the fact that so many white working-class people in this country vote Republican does not strike me, a priori, as an aberration. That they put different priorities (like opposing gay marriage or abortion) ahead of their financial well-being does not mean they are any less savvy about their interests than I am. I think their priorities are wrong. But I don't think them irrational.

Barack Obama was quick to admit--as he should have been--that his characterization of poor white Pennsylvanians as "bitter" people who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations" was a mistake. To suggest that poor white people who vote Republican in this country are the victims of a collective electoral false consciousness is as convenient as it is deluded. It forgoes any effort to understand why they do what they do or how we might persuade them to do otherwise, suggesting instead we are high-minded and they have been hoodwinked. If that's our attitude, no wonder they vote for the other side. Ask any neocon, and he'll tell you--trying to liberate people who have no interest in the freedom you have in store for them is an exhausting and unrewarding business.

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