Why Do They Vote X?

     There’s a gag from the 1912 campaign for president, when former president Theodore Roosevelt was campaigning on the Bull Moose (Progressive) ticket:

     While Teddy was giving a campaign speech, a man in the audience leaped to his feet and cried out: “I’m a Democrat! My father was a Democrat, his father was a Democrat, and his father before him, so I’ll always be a Democrat!”
     “Well, Mister,” Teddy replied, “If your father was a jackass, and his father was a jackass, and his father before him, what would that make you?”
     The heckler replied, “A Bull Mooser, sir! A Bull Mooser!”

     I’d say Roosevelt lost that exchange. But it’s a good lead-in for my topic of the moment.

     Why do people vote “loyally:” i.e., always for the candidates of a particular party? Some of the reasons are well known:

• It’s a “family thing,” as in the gag above;
• “This is how the people I do business and socialize with” vote;
• The party platform is good on a single issue that’s critically important to the voter.

     The habit becomes questionable when the reason is false-to-fact. For example, what if you vote for Republicans specifically because of the GOP’s platform stance on abortion… but the behavior of its elected officials has contradicted that stance for some time? Why continue to vote Republican?

     A great many people have voted Democrat over and over because they believe the Democrats “care about the people,” especially “the poor.” Putting calipers on how well elected Democrats and Democrat administrations have served “the people” can be trying, but federal statistics suggest that “the people” have done best under Republican regimes – and that includes “the poor,” however we might define them.

     Sometimes a party’s stance on an issue depends vitally on slandering the position and performance of its major opponent. For example, Democrat spokesmen have striven to color the GOP as “racists.” The propaganda has largely been successful… yet it’s notable that Democrats are the ones relentlessly promoting racism. Yes, it’s racism against whites, but so what?

     But the “family thing” is the most perplexing. Over the century behind us, the major parties have exchanged positions in just about every way. The Republicans were once an inflationist and interventionist party; no longer. The Democrats were once a hard money / tight budgeting party; those days are more than a century gone. Yet those family-based attachments persist.

     You can tell Smith that the party he supports has been hurting him and those he loves for decades… and more likely than not Smith will still give that party his money and his vote. Which brings us to today’s graphic, once again shamelessly stolen from Mike Miles:

     Yet Democrats claim to be for “the people” and “the working man.” Tries one’s credulity, doesn’t it?