Whose Interests Are We Talking About?

On the one hand, there is a part of me that agrees with the viewpoint that, by and large, support of the current Republican Party runs counter to the general self-interest of most voters. All the same, I am self-aware enough to know that is a pretty blinkered thought. The idea that others can determine others' self-interest in a given case is the basis of that famous book, What's the Matter With Kansas?, and now political philosopher Ronald Dworkin makes the same assertion in an essay in the New York Review of Books as part of a review of Tuesday's election. The following section is so pompous and arrogant, I really don't know what to say about it.

We must take seriously what so many [voters] actually say: that they feel they are losing their country, that they are desperate to take it back. What could they mean? There are two plausible answers, both of them frightening. They might mean, first, that their new government is not theirs because it is not remotely of their kind or culture; it is not representative of them. Most who think that would have in mind, of course, their president; they think him not one of them because he is so different. It seems likely that the most evident difference, for them, is his race—a race a great many Americans continue to think alien. They feel, viscerally, that a black man cannot speak for them.

Obama isn’t one of them in other ways as well: in the period since he was elected it’s become clearer that he is uncomfortable with the tastes, rhetoric, and reflexive religiosity they identify as at the heart of American political culture. He tries to find his way into that culture—he speaks of “folks” in every paragraph these days—but his articulate, rational style strikes the wrong note. Many of those who voted for him before don’t like what they got. They want to take their country back by taking its presidency back, by making its leader more like them.

There is a second, equally dismaying, understanding of what they mean. All their lives they have assumed that their country is the most powerful, most prosperous, most democratic, economically and culturally the most influential—altogether the most envied and wonderful country in the world. They are coming slowly and painfully to realize that that is no longer true; they are angry and they want someone to blame.

I just love that we need to take seriously the things voters say! How innovative.

While there are many points in Dowrkin's article with which I agree to an extent - and it is only to an extent - the attitude on display here is just awful, part of the problem too many liberals and others have. To pretend that a college professor sitting in a campus in a city on the east coast has any idea what the self-interest of a voter in Iowa or New Mexico or even rural Maine may be is absurd as to be laughable. That Dworkin does not even seem to understand the massive failure of campaign leadership on the part of President Obama, let alone serious failures of Presidential leadership over the past two years isn't really all that surprising. If I had to guess, Obama is going to face not just hostile Republicans, but hostile Democrats as well who are going to pin the blame for their losses squarely where they belong - on him. I doubt many will want to haul water for the guy in Congress over the next couple years.

Rather than tell people they have no idea what their interests are - that's a sure-fire way to get people to listen to you, tell them they're too stupid to know what's best for them - it might be nice to read folks talk about all the reasons why it might just have been a perfectly rational, self-interested decision to support Republican candidates. Furthermore, all things considered - the sucky economy, the massive outside spending favoring Republican candidates, the many failings of Obama and the Congressional Democrats - that the Democrats didn't do worse is something that needs some careful consideration, too. Sitting and crying in your chardonnay that the great unwashed are far too child-like to understand where their real interests lie gets no one anywhere.