Earlier in the week, the Washington Post highlighted the story of a Kentucky voter who is on expanded Medicaid with a high cost condition and who voted for Matt Bevin who had been running on rolling back Medicaid expansion. Quite a few liberal blogs tsk-tsk poorer Kentucky voters for voting against their direct interest. I think there is a bit more sympathetic and cynical way to look at their decision process.
Dennis Blackburn has this splintered self-interest. The 56-year-old mechanic hasn’t worked in 18 months, since he lost his job at a tire company that supplies a diminishing number of local coal mines….
He has a hereditary liver disorder, numbness in his hands and legs, back pain from folding his 6-foot-1-inch frame into 29-inch mine shafts as a young man, plus an abnormal heart rhythm — the likely vestige of having been struck by lightning 15 years ago in his tin-roofed farmhouse….
On Election Day, Blackburn voted for Bevin because he is tired of career politicians and thought a businessman would be more apt to create the jobs that Pike County so needs. Yet when it comes to the state’s expansion of health insurance, “it doesn’t look to me as if he understands,” Blackburn said. “Without this little bit of help these people are giving me, I could probably die. . . . It’s not right to not understand something but want to stamp it out.”
They know that it is very likely that they are being lied to on major Tea Party policy planks and accept that.
Anne Laurie in this morning’s open thread is highlighting another Washington Post article that has an excellent analysis of the Republican base by Republican governor Nikki Haley:
“You have a lot of people who were told that if we got a majority in the House and a majority in the Senate, then life was gonna be great,” she said in an interview Thursday. “What you’re seeing is that people are angry. Where’s the change? Why aren’t there bills on the president’s desk every day for him to veto? They’re saying, ‘Look, what you said would happen didn’t happen, so we’re going to go with anyone who hasn’t been elected.’ ”
The Republican base voters are used to getting lied to on major policy planks. And in the Kentucky case, that looks probable to be true as well. Kynect is highly likely to go away, but it will be replaced by a reasonably well functioning Healthcare.gov with minimal hassle besides people having to create new accounts. Bevin has already started backtracking from his promise to take away Medicaid expansion from Kentucky residents. Instead, he is promising to keep Medicaid expansion but make it slightly worse and slightly more convoluted with a 1115 waiver that has to be approved by the dreaded Obama administration.
If there is an implicit assumption by Republican leaning voters that Democrats are trying to pick off with tangible policy benefits that the Republican candidate is likely lying to the voters the policy wedge disappears. From here, Republican leaning voters can can rationally vote on other, social and cultural grounds. The economic policy ground will be indistinguishable when implementation comes around.
And assuming Bevins does get a 1115 waiver passed, the election was not Medicaid expansion versus no Medicaid expansion but Coal, God, Guns and Gays versus those damn hippies in Louisville looking down at Appalachia.
Cermet
So, these voters are betting their lives on the hope the person they are voting for was lying? This is even more stupid then voting against their own interest. This is knowing your stupid and being determined to prove it! Only in Appalachia …
BillinGlendaleCA
With some, especially younger, voters; they really don’t believe that Republicans are serious about what they say. Ban abortion, ban birth control, raise taxes on the poor; they don’t believe that they will really do that, they’ve been elected to positions in Congress, in the states and have not done any of these things. Things aren’t great now, so lets give these guys a try; can’t hurt, they think.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Cermet: Not only in Appalachia.
EconWatcher
It’s not just the poor and uneducated who think this way. My younger brother is college-educated and quite comfortable economically. He supports Republicans mostly on yuppie/libertarian/keep- your-hands-off-of-my-stash grounds.
When I try to point out crazy s#!t that Republicans say they will do, like bomb Iran, privatize social security, or go to the gold standard, he just says, “Yeah, but they don’t really mean it.”
And for some of it, no doubt he’s right. (Probably the gold standard.)
But here’s the thing: How can you know? I mean, they threatened to invade Iraq, and then they went ahead and did it (which my brother pretty much admits was crazy.)
So what’s the secret decoder for distinguishing empty talk from actual commitments? And isn’t it possible that empty talk can morph into action?
It’s kind of fascinating, because it makes democratic elections seem like even more of a farce than I had thought. I mean, what’s the point if you are not just skeptical of campaign promises, but don’t care about them at all?
Then it’s just pure tribalism. And maybe that’s all there is.
Baud
Republican voters know that Republicans hate the right people. None of the other promises are relevant.
Richard Mayhew
@Cermet: It is not stupid.
It is a reasonable bet given the inability of the Republican Party to achieve most of their stated policy planks (except for funneling money to the rich, what a coincidence) over the past fifteen years. The Republican Party has not been able to keep the gay people in the closet, has not been able to keep those other people down, has not been able to restore high wage manufacturing/production jobs for medium skilled workers, has not been able to make retirement more secure, has not been able to improve inner city schools, has not been able to win a war. And that is during the Bush administration when there was a trifecta for 4 years.
And now under the Obama Administration, large Republican majorities have barely been able to nibble around the edges of PPACA, have not been able to reinvigorate the coal mining economic system of northern Appalachia, has not been able to due something (what is another issue) about illegal immigrants of the wrong color (the undocumented Irish immigrants of Boston/NYC are another story entirely)
The GOP is good at shoveling money at the rich, and obstruction. It is not good at actually implementing policies outside of those two limited areas. So when a major policy proposal is made by a GOP politician, assuming that it won’t be implemented is a reasonable assumption.
MomSense
I explained the Medicaid gap to someone who lost their Medicsid coverage and he told me he got a letter from MaineCare that sounded like it was the Affordable Care Act thet ended his MaineCare. Hmm. This happened before the 2014 election. I wonder how many people thought they lost their health insurance because of Obama so they voted for LePage. He did a town hall meeting in Rockland recently and talked about low income workers being able to have MaineCare but apparently didn’t know or lied that this is only if they have children.
Ugh.
BillinGlendaleCA
@EconWatcher:
@Baud: It’s not entirely tribal, it’s being unhappy with current conditions and a desire to try something different and since they don’t believe what the Republicans say, it’s easy to vote for them.
Iowa Old Lady
Also the changes bad policy makes can be more or less invisible to most people until it all goes wrong. Kansans probably wondered what hit them (right before they re-elected Brownbeck). But you’d think that having seen both Clinton and Obama rescue the economy, something would have dawned. Maybe it’s too hard to trace the line between policy and effect.
Even if you don’t hear people say “they’d never really do that” (and I do hear people say that), you sure hear them say they ‘re all alike and why bother to vote.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Iowa Old Lady: Yup.
Sherparick
@Cermet: Generally though, calling voters stupid is not a way to get you to vote for them. We are all subject to tribal affinity issues. Bevin played it and Conway, like to many Southern Democrats over the last 20 years, played to the stereotype of being a squish. Win or lose, the way Edwards has taken it to Vitter and called him to account for his mendacity and hypocrisy is a lesson to behold.
Reading Adam Silverman accounts of Iraq and his interaction with the CPA and Provincial Reconstruction Teams is very enlightening about what a Rubio or Bush or Cruz administration might be like. A whole generation of young Republican apparatchiks, young Alden Pyles, passed through the country, good intentions of building a free market paradise in Iraq spreading death and destruction everywhere. These would be the people appointed to Government positions asked to run Government agencies that they believe need to be abolished. The harm they will do the U.S. will be amazing.
Bobby Thomson
Sorry, I’m missing the part that makes this guy sympathetic and not just tragic.
Bobby Thomson
@Sherparick:
It’s not like we didn’t see that exact same thing 10-12 years ago.
Bobby Thomson
@Richard Mayhew:
You are assuming a fine-grained analysis that is far more sophisticated than what voters actually do. Good lord, the median voter doesn’t even know who John Boehner is, let alone what politicians have promised or delivered. You can’t put lipstick on this pig.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
If they just wanted something different, they would have botted McConnell last year and will boot Rand next year.
bemused
What explains those who say both parties are the same but still vote and with no hesitation vote Republican? They are lying and are never going to vote for a Democrat, no matter what? They think Republicans are the lesser of two evils with the Democrats being Satan’s spawn?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Richard Mayhew: I’m not sure that people make such a calculated decision when comparing policy positions between the parties. I don’t think they honestly say to themselves “they’re all liars, so it doesn’t matter what they say, they won’t do it anyway” when deciding who to support. I think it has more to do with tribalism and which memes you are immersed in and choose to accept.
If a party gets people to accept that the other is illegitimate (doesn’t love America, isn’t a Christian, violates his Constitutional oath, doesn’t care about anyone but gays and blacks and Muslims, etc.), then they won’t bother to examine the contradictions in their tribe. This is why it’s vital to find a way to fight bad memes without reinforcing them. A party filled with career politicians can’t logically claim to be outsiders or against career politicians. But it makes a good soundbite for many people, so they’ll do it anyway.
It’s always easier to blame someone else, some outsider for problems (Obama’s war on coal is causing KY’s problems; the lazy moochers who are taking all your tax money; etc.) rather than working to solve problems as the local economy changes.
I think people who are on KYNect understand that they may lose benefits and have more hoops to go through. They just figure that it won’t be as bad as the scary language from the Democrats (because Democrats always lie because they hate America), and that things will be better after a little bit of pain. I fear that they are wrong. But maybe the voters who didn’t turn out will be convinced that staying home does have very bad consequences and will be convinced to turn out in the future. And if Bevin finds that there’s too much heat in trying to keep his promises, well, if he’s a smart politician, he’ll nibble around the edges and make bigger changes in the background when he thinks people aren’t looking.
The point of extreme social positions in a Teabagger campaign these days isn’t first and foremost to implement them, its to get elected. Sure, they at least nominally want to implement the policies, but the most important thing is to have the job to 1) keep the lefty pinko hippy socialist moochers from having the office, and 2) to change the system so that LPHSMs can’t get elected to offices, and 3) to reward supporters with economic benefits.
Here in VA, the lack of Medicaid expansion is hurting rural hospitals, etc. It’s costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars. But the Teabaggers in the legislature don’t care. It’s Obamacare and the LPHSMs like it, so it has to be opposed. They are using it to rile up their voters and keep power even though it’s not in their supporters’ economic interests.
We’ll see how it all turns out.
Where’s the Democrats’ Frank Luntz?
That’s my early morning Friday the 13th ramble. Yours?
Cheers,
Scott.
gene108
For whatever reason, Eastern Kentucky is strongly Republican and has been for generations. My high school German teacher was from there and was named after Wendell Wilkie.
gene108
Ozark Hillbilly posted this article yesterday from the Guardian about Beatyville, KY. Worth reading in its entirely.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/12/beattyville-kentucky-and-americas-poorest-towns
Watchman
So is anyone going to broach the subject that one of the “liberal bloggers” that Richard here thinks is full of shit is the guy living in Kentucky?
I don’t think there has ever been a more glorious example of Tom Nichols’s “Death of Expertise” in action better than the comparison of the analysis of why Jack Conway lost between Zandar and Richard.
bemused
Everything outside is covered with a layer of snow, every tree branch coated, beautiful. Our Samoyeds are ecstatic.
gene108
Posted a link and am in moderation. If you can read up on The Guardian Article about Beatyville, KY that Ozark Hillbilly posted yesterday.
Apparenly the link is now grounds for moderation.
Very good article and sheds a lot of light into that part of the world.
boatboy_srq
@BillinGlendaleCA: Hardly. This explains Rick Scott very well: both his election, and the shock you’ll hear when people who voted for him realize he meant all the craziness in his platform.
The problem is we have a segment of the electorate convinced that all pols lie and that campaign rhetoric is meaningless; and at the same time a higher percentage than normal of True Believers running for office, on a mission to carry out their wingnutty campaign promises to the letter.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@gene108: Really? I haven’t had much trouble posting links as long as I do the HTML. Let’s see…
Beattyville, KY and America’s Poorest Towns – The Guardian.
Fingers crossed.
(Thanks for the pointer.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Cermet
Yet in Appalachia they are so solidly anti-social safety net but use it far more than just about any group – even blacks! These poor whites trapped in the hills of coal country just vote solid red again and again … guess as someone pointed out it is just the tribal thinking; as in – “Really, this will only be cut for ‘those people’ but mine was ‘earned’ and would never be cut” … . Sorry, but these people are just out and out stupid – calling it for what it is here is just what is done; on the national stage, not so much, of course … .
MomSense
Hopefully this link will work. It is about LePage’s townhall and gives a glimpse into what we are dealing with.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Cermet:
Just like how the glorious small business owners who are the life blood of our economy are also the largest group of tax cheats. It’s the old splinter vs log in the eye problem…
Cheers,
Scott.
gvg
I think one factor is they don’t know that the majority don’t agree with them. They are louder than those of us who aren’t racist or economic fools. Not being numerically the majority even with gerrymandering means they can’t actually get the number of elected representatives in all branches of government, that will quite let them do these horrible things. I overheard a number of white voters in 2008 that assumed they were going to beat Obama when the actual polls made it clear he was going to win big. They assumed that all whites felt as they did. It’s true the democratic coalition depends alot on minorities, but they also get a lot of white votes. Not the majority but enough combined with the minorities that we can win. Those white voters are repulsed by the gop positions and loudmouths.
A second factor is while there is a lot of resentment, the republican voters aren’t completely unified in what they want and they are dividing up and only want their own personal version of what should be done. They aren’t giving support to almost good enough. In other words, they are going purity pony.
I am afraid to count on our luck continuing, but that is why I think they haven’t actually gotten their way, so far.
I wish the Democratic Party would come up with a Federal plan to end gerrymandering. Some scientific, math based formula that would be hard to manipulate, very catchable when it is manipulated, and with an enforcement mechanism that would mostly be pre election.
We need the supreme court appointments.
Another thing we need is to enforce anti-monopoly rules on the media. IMO the consolidation into just a few companies holding all the outlets has resulted in dreck.
mtiffany
@EconWatcher:
The Republicans are relying on their base ‘knowing’ for certain what they’re lying about and what the candidates will really do once elected. But the problem is that if you think you can spot what they’re lying about, you’ve bought into the first step of the con — that you’re smarter than the con man. What the Republicans are doing with their base is just a very-dressed up version of three-card monte.
Matt McIrvin
@gvg: Sam Wang has been working on a statistical standard for gerrymandering that is designed to be workable in court:
http://election.princeton.edu/2015/11/02/supreme-court-brief-harris-v-arizona-independent-redistricting-commission/
The theory here is that courts have ruled in the past that gerrymandering is potentially subject to court intervention, but in practice not attackable because there has been no solid standard for when it is happening. So he’s trying to fill that gap.
MomSense
@gene108:
That article about Beattyville absolutely could have been written about some of the towns in Maine that lost their paper mill decades ago and have never recovered. You see homes with blue tarp for a roof and layers of plastic over aging/broken windows. They are justifiably angry. The genius of the Republucan messaging machine is that they channel that anger into voting for the same elites who closed their mill down after raiding their pension system. It’s insidious and evil and mind blowing as all hell.
Matt McIrvin
It’s not just Republicans who think this way. One of Michael Moore’s major arguments when he was trying to convince liberals to vote for Nader in 2000 was that Democrats worried about abortion rights should calm down, because Republicans were lying when they said they’d ban abortion: they’d never really do it, because they needed it as a wedge issue. So it wouldn’t hurt so much to get George W. Bush elected as punishment for the Democrats’ right-deviations.
Well, Bush got in, lots of other Republicans got in, and today Roe v. Wade is theoretically still standing, but abortion rights and access have eroded to the point that it’s effectively dead in much of the country. And as far as I can tell, the only thing keeping it from being overturned outright is one or two Supreme Court appointments. That, to me, was always the biggest weakness in the argument: the people really in control of whether Roe goes away are Supreme Court justices, and when those guys are conservative they’re conservative true-believers. Nobody is going to order them to keep Roe in place for electoral advantage.
Satby
@EconWatcher: My mother is the same way, when I point out that the Republican party plank includes privatizing SS and Medicare, she insists they don’t really mean that; she’s 84 and getting a bit senile but she’s aware enough to know all that won’t directly affect her anyway. But point out it screws her children and that’s when the “they don’t really mean it” starts.
gene108
@Cermet:
From The Guardian article linked above, the people in Beatyville, KY view Democrats as the party of big cities and only care about urban folks, and do not care about rural folks.
The voting patterns are very tribal, i.e. an us versus them mentality.
Other than needing those folks to win elections, I am losing sympathy for them.
gene108
@MomSense:
When the choice is voting for good white Republicans, who may or may not care versus voting for nigger-loving Democrats, who’ll give all your money to urban folks, the choice is pretty clear.
The idea that a politician can be for everyone, by proposing universal heatlhcare for example, seems to escape them. It’s either us or them and the Democrats are them.
Matt McIrvin
Also: when people characterize Trump as the most moderate of the Republican candidates, they’re implicitly or explicitly assuming that his ethnic-cleansing/border wall proposal is just a lie, or that since it’s practically infeasible, it can just be discounted entirely.
WaterGirl
@BillinGlendaleCA:
This is exactly how we got the evil republican governor in Illinois. (whose name I cannot bear to say)
stupid, stupid, stupid
Matt McIrvin
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
That map of uninsured vs. Medicaid expansion that was going around a while back seemed to imply that, of all the states without Medicaid expansion, Virginia was suffering the least. That may be because it’s a relatively rich state, thanks to so much of the federal government and its contractors living there, and poor Virginians might well be as bad off as anyone. But it means that there’s a relatively large constituency who just aren’t affected.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@gene108:
That’s because of the Civil War, like Kansas. Eastern Kentucky was the pro-Union part of the state.
Elizabelle
@ Richard: thank you for this thread. Mr. Blackburn’s situation is precisely what I wanted to see discussed here at BJ. (I put up a comment with the same excerpt the day two other BJ’ers first linked to the Wonkblog post, but FYWP eated it.)
And on the heels of the Guardian’s reporting from Beattyville.
Will catch up with your comments now. I’d love to hear some practical suggestions on how we could help folks born into these circumstances (OK, as Kentuckians) and how we get them to see that voting can make a difference, when done more intelligently. Right now, the voting is done barely at all.
That’s a huge problem for Democrats/non-plutocrat-oligarch enabling politicians.
Renie
@gene108: That is a fascinating article he posted. The mindset of the people who felt it was the Lord’s way to work hard and not take welfare, even though there is no work for them there and they are on welfare, is unbelievable. While on welfare they look down on others who are also on it because the others could get jobs if they tried – where these jobs are I don’t know. The article also discussed how the local paper is big time anti-Obama describing how he is “trying to destroy the United States as we know it.” Then there is a group called Friends of Coal who come into the town and have convinced the people that it is Obama’s fault that the coal industry is dying even though the industry has been on the decline for decades. There was also a fascinating 20 minute video of LBJ’s war of poverty. Much of the stuff LBJ talked about would still be true today. To top it off they all think Mitch McConnell is great but what has he really done all these years to help them.
Keith G
The deal is, we have to reach these folks. We won’t get all of them and we might have to be very lucky to get nearly half of them. Nonetheless I doubt that the Democratic Party can survive if it stays a coastal party.
Additionally, its going to be a multi-generational project. Which is probably why so many people feel no sense of urgency in beginning it in the first place.
Beginning with the defeat of Barry Goldwater, conservatives began constructing and then implementing a very long game. The needed change for that did not come from on high. Block by block, school board by school board, town council by town council these battles were fought. It amazed me when I moved from Ohio to Texas how similar the script was.
So when a guy from Appalachia or Cut and Shoot, Texas mouths off about their view of liberal policy, it is the result of 40 years of nearly uninterupted, concerted effort to paint the picture they are seeing. And for large stretches of that time, there was not a counter argument being made in a language they could understand much less accept.
Paul in KY
As a fellow Kentuckian, let me just say to Mr. Blackburn: Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Jack Conway wasn’t the most scintillating candidate, but he made it very clear what Matt Bevin was going to do (as did Mr. Bevin) on KYNect, etc.
Paul in KY
@gene108: Eastern KY used to be heavily Democratic. When your teacher was named, he was from an outlier family, IMO.
ruemara
I have deep sympathy form these people. I also feel they can go fuck themselves. They choose this every time. You don’t have to be ill informed, nor do you have to vote repub every time. In fact, you could look yourself in the eye and say “i am on welfare. I need medical coverage. No Republican has a better offer for me, even if blacks are going to benefit too.” But they won’t. You will never get them to stop believing in bullshit, because reality is unpalatable to them. Ignorance and racial spite is like candy to them. This is a simple, logical pattern. If X hasn’t made things better, chose Y. If I can train a rat to do it, why can’t these humans do it? Because they refuse to. And it’s not that they believe that republicans lie, either. They believe that they won’t be affected, but those other undeserving bastards over there, they’ll get what’s coming to them. If that mentality ever shifted, those areas would at least be purple and their pain could be eased. All you can do right now is write op eds to try to explain it and send a donation to rural poverty medical clinics. Which is a shame, since every human deserves better than that.
Original Lee
I think the late Werner Klemperer (Col. Klink to most of us) probably had it right. He had a interview (sorry, no linky – the google is not finding it for me today) where he talked about how his parents would argue with their friends about what Hitler was really trying to say in his speeches, and there were always a few who somehow convinced themselves that Hitler didn’t really mean it, or that he really was talking about someone else. So I think that’s what’s happening with a lot of these folks who are voting against their best interests. They think the politician is lying, or just saying something to get elected, or they think they know what he or she will actually do and ignore what they say while campaigning.
Tripod
Democrats did fine in eastern KY when union miners had coal to extract.
The human activity (coal mining) that created these communities is gone, and that’s that. Residual populations stuck in these situations tend to the reactionary, whether it’s rural Maine or ghost towns in western OK and KS.
Just a note on how remote this region is – get inside of that ring of Interstates (77,64,81,75) in the KY VA WV TN border region and it’s a whole lot of nowhere. There isn’t any economic activity that can’t be done somewhere else at a lower cost.
J R in WV
I grew up in southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky (where my grandma was from) and when I was a kid, every living room had a older picture of FDR, and a newer picture of JFK on the wall.
These weren’t Republicans, not at all. From my birth for 50 years no Republican was elected to office of any kind from the county I was born in. Even though my dad was a republican… all his work for the R candidates went for naught!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I’ll disagree with you slightly — I do think that they believe that all politicians are liars, so when Democrats say they want to improve the social safety net or get everyone healthcare, they’re lying, too. And when everyone is lying, you may as well vote for the people who are telling you the lies you want to hear.
In one of his Left Behind posts, Fred Clark brought up a really good point that I hadn’t realized before — evangelicals have taken the verse in the Bible about how warmongers will come to you talking about peace and used it to convince people that *anyone* who talks about peace is automatically a warmonger in disguise. Which of course means you can only trust the people who openly promise war and destruction.
And, yes, I think that this kind of conspiracy-minded belief lets people feel smart even when they’re poorly educated and have limited sources of information. No one likes to feel dumb, including (maybe especially) dumb people. So the con grinds on.
Bobby Thomson
@Watchman: as between those two posts, Zandar’s is the one rooted in reality.
Why did you drop the silent k thing?
PatrickG
This post suffers from an amazing factual error that nobody has pointed out yet: everybody knows the real hippies live in Lexington!