Wasn’t this the subject of the book, What’s The Matter With Kansas, in which the writer of that book was shocked that so many people in Kansas vote Republican? Which he said was against their economic interests???
I think just in general, liberals are shocked that anyone would vote for a Republican candidate for any office. It’s beyond their frame of reference to think that voters are not just voting their economic interests, and/or vote for candidates who oppose abortion rights, homosexual marriage, Obamacare, global warming, on down the list of liberal causes.
>>Which he said was against their economic interests???
I live on the UWS of Manhattan, one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the US. And yet the vote is 80% for the most left-wing candidate on the ballot. The progs I discuss politics with flip out when I bring up Thomas Frank’s book, and apply it to NYC or other left-wing bastions. Why don’t Manhattanites vote their economic interests?
It isn’t a riddle- they actually do vote their economic interests. Affluent socialists are not in favor of income and wealth mobility. Their policies simply redistribute wealth on the basis of political status rather than value generation. They are for the “state capitalism” originally proposed by Lenin: expropriation of wealth, given to the vanguard of the proletariat, i.e., cronies of the rulers.
Kansas has low population density, 35 people per square mile. Democrats increasingly represent the interests of high density city slickers, Republicans everyone else. Poor people cannot afford to waste money and big government is the ultimate money waster.
What's the Matter With Kansas was just a re-statement of Lenin's 1905 work, What Is To Be Done?