Values of the Common Man

This column by New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof illustrates a few mistaken assumptions liberals have about working-class Americans and the considerations that inform their vote. Kristof essentially says that the working poor just don't know what is best for them.

I'm writing this on tenterhooks on Tuesday, without knowing the election results. But whether John Kerry's supporters are now celebrating or seeking asylum abroad, they should be feeling wretched about the millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses who ended up voting - utterly against their own interests - for Republican candidates.

One of the Republican Party's major successes over the last few decades has been to persuade many of the working poor to vote for tax breaks for billionaires. Democrats are still effective on bread-and-butter issues like health care, but they come across in much of America as arrogant and out of touch the moment the discussion shifts to values...

"The Republicans are smarter," mused Oregon's governor, Ted Kulongoski, a Democrat.

"They've created ... these social issues to get the public to stop looking at what's happening to them economically."

"What we once thought - that people would vote in their economic self-interest - is not true, and we Democrats haven't figured out how to deal with that."

The false assumption here is that social issues and economic issues can somehow be separated.

For example, a liberal could try to convince me that its in my interest for the federal government to cut me a check for $10,000 or to provide me with a lifetime supply of beer. Both of those things would conceivably be in my economic interests, so why wouldn't I want to vote for a candidate who promised them to me? The easy answer is that I don't really want to live in a country where wealth can be so easily transferred out of the hands of those who earned it legitimately to those who have no just claim to it.

Mr. Kristof and other liberals don't seem to understand this deep-seated moral aversion to Robin Hood economics. Maybe respect for other people's property doesn't mesh with their concept of social justice. Maybe they don't pay much attention to the Tenth Commandment, which forbids covetousness. By failing to address their own ignorance, they'll go on believing that their condescension is justified as they face the blank stares of working-class Americans.