Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Why Romney Lost

Leaving aside all the usual stuff about Republicans losing the black vote, the Latino vote, the youth vote, the single women vote, there is this.

Romney lost the working class vote.  Here's what happened, according to Fred Bauer.
However, for those households making between $30,000 and $49,999, he underperformed: McCain lost those voters by twelve points, while Romney lost them by 15. Moreover, because of the economic travails of the past four years, members of those working-class/lower-middle-class households rose from 19 percent of the electorate in 2008 to 21 percent in 2012.
So the Obamis were smart after all.  They spent the whole summer on negative ads demonizing Mitt Romney as an uncaring capitalist, and it worked.

It's funny really, if it weren't so sad.  The whole prosperity of the working class depends on the ability of entrepreneurs to create jobs out of nothing.  But the Democrats have made a political empire out of demonizing those same entrepreneurs.

Meanwhile the Democrats destroy the economy with their credit subsidies and their interventions and succeed in blaming the greedy bankers.

Well, that may be so.  Look, nobody really understands the modern economy.  We all pontificate, conservatives about the wonders of markets and liberals about the wonders of regulation, but nobody really knows what they are doing.

And really, the voters are right in voting for Democrats.  Those folks who have lost out in the aftermath of the Great Recession are probably never going to rise again.  Many of them, we know, are settling for a disability pension, and are getting ready to live out the rest of their lives on the dole.  So they are voting for the dole.  That's a good idea as long as the checks keep coming.

So what happens next?

You can choose the Marxist prophecy, which says that the change in the economy changes the relations between people and prompts the creation of new "classes" mobilized to fight against injustices visited upon society by the old regime.

Or you can choose the moral movement notion, that politics is moved by moral movements, such as Great Awakenings, that work their way into politics and change the rules of governing.

When you think of it, they are saying the same thing.  Look out for new "classes" or moral movements to arise in the future as people respond to the stresses and the injustices of the age.

What will these movements look like and what will they want?

Nobody knows.  But they will surprise us and surprise the political experts.

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