November 08, 2004
It's the stupid, stupid
I think a case could be made that ignorance played at least as big a role in the election's outcome as values. A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that nearly 70 percent of President Bush's supporters believe the U.S. has come up with "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda. A third of the president's supporters believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And more than a third believe that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion.Posted by Norwood at November 8, 2004 06:10 AMThis is scary. How do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put that part of their brain on hold? No wonder Bush won.
The survey, and an accompanying report, showed that there's a fair amount of cluelessness in the ranks of the values crowd. The report said, "It is clear that supporters of the president are more likely to have misperceptions than those who oppose him."
You *can't* make a rational political pitch to these people. So at least 40% of the electorate is unreachable by Democrats, right off the bat, simply because they refuse to let reason into their tiny little brainpans.
And it's not just this shit, either. It's all that stuff about the Invisible Cloud Man, who punishes us for saying certain words or having sex in certain ways. Reaching out to people who vote against their own interests, because somebody told them the Invisible Cloud Man would want them to, is a waste of time and resources. Better to try to supress that part of the electorate instead (yeah, I know - but face it, democracy is dead in this country. Why pretend otherwise?).
Posted by: spencer at November 8, 2004 03:40 PM