Tag: stupidity
We Are All With Stupid
by Josh K-sky on Dec.14, 2009, under Politics
I have no more patience for complaints about the stupidity of the electorate. Stupidity can mean a great number of things. Innocence, credulousness, parochialism, and lack of education (or even political interest) all fall under the category of stupidity when we talk about other voters besides ourselves. Neither party can win without stupid people. For those whom the sad facts of birth, environment or fortune have left stupid, Democrats should have compassion.
No, our problem is with asshole voters, who make up a solid section of the Republican base. They are our enemies. We must ever seek to defeat them, except for a slim margin whom we must work to convert, not by playing to their assholishness, but to the better angels of their natures.
Blaming the stupid for political problems is weak sauce, and John Emerson makes this point at greater length and depth:
Unless you regard everyone without at least a master’s degree as stupid, the facts do not justify the Democratic or progressive disparagement of stupid voters. In 2008 high school dropouts were Obama’s best educational demographic at 63%. Voters with advanced degrees were next best at 58%, with HS graduates and those with some college giving Obama respectively 52% and 51% of their votes. At 50%, college graduates without advanced degrees were Obama’s worst demographic. Thus, when people talk about “stupid voters” what they’re really talking about is an internal split within the most-educated 28.8% of the population — between those with BAs and BSs and those with MAs and PhDs.
This illuminates two clichés of American political debate: first, the “elitist Democrat” idea, and second, the culture wars. Those who most resent the elite Democrats are themselves college graduates, and as Gelman recently has recently shown, the culture war is a split within the more prosperous and better-educated class, and not a split between educated liberals and ignorant conservatives. Democrats often speak of the religious right as hillbillies and trailer trash, but they’re more likely to be well-off, complacent college graduates.