Without a doubt, the number one issue for this election was
the economy; at least it should have been. So why did the Republicans win? I look at the results of elections for such disparate
subjects as the election for governors and minimum wage. If asked before the election,
I would have guessed that state by state, the elections would have gone exactly
the other way from what it did, which is to say Republican areas, or red states,
would have voted republican governors out of office, certainly not vote more of
them into office, and would have voted solidly against raising minimum wage. In
other words, voters turned my preconceived notions upside down, which means it
is time to reevaluate my thinking. Of course, Republican led voter suppression and
gerrymandering depressed Democratic voice, but there was more.
I had supposed that gerrymandering intentionally shifted the
majority to favor red precincts. Even a cursory glance at a red-blue map shows
the country is entirely red sprinkled with small blue areas representing population
centers. In other words, statewide
elections would yield different results than precinct elections yield. My
evidence for this was that Republicans have control of the House of Representatives
while Democrats control the Senate. This
result was just the opposite of what the founding fathers thought they had
designed into the constitution; they designed the Senate to represent area;
thus, giving equal power to both large and small states and they designed the House
of Representative to give large population area more power than low population
areas had. The balance was between population verses area. As every school age
child knows, this satisfied leaders of the 13 original colonies sufficiently to
entice them to ratify that document. With this recent corruption or shift in
electorate structure, I reason this
election should not have favored the election of republican governors as it did.
The election result was a shock to me; clearly, voters, at
least those who voted, elected republicans who had worked diligently to harm
their best interests. What is highly significant is that they did this in spite
of gerrymandering; in other words, the vote outcome was not a fluke. The people
elected, or reelected, governors who had destroyed public education, destroyed
labor rights, reduced neighborhood firefighters, and police protection, had given
great tax breaks to corporations thus shifting the tax burden to workers, etc;
thus, in the spirit of Reagan, they shifted money from the workers to the top 1
or 2%. Also well known is the fact that in site of increased productivity, wages
are stagnant or even are going down. It is common knowledge that everyone recognizes
income disparity is bad for the working class, yet his or her votes seemed overwhelmingly
against their own interest.
I suggest my interpretation is wrong. Apparently, in their minds, they did not vote against themselves. If that was the case, what did they think
they were voting on? The outcome of the vote on minimum wage, wherever it
was on the ballot, is a clue to what happened. In every instance, the people voted
in favor of increasing the minimum wage by large margins; however, on the same
ballot, they voted for Republican governors (or candidates for other offices) who
had openly campaigned against raising minimum wage. Equally confusing, they
vote for candidates who support positions that poll after poll indicates 70 to
80% of them oppose, such as privatizing public education, who are opposed to
gun control, who expressed a desire to deregulate businesses, to remove environmental
control of industry, etc.
Obviously, economic issues were not what drove people to the
polls. The people who voted were not voting on economic issues. They were
voting on something I, as a liberal, do not endorse; they seem to be rebelling
against social injustices as political issues, which democrats from across the
nation all agreed on. This point may be lost in the rhetoric because we tend to
isolate each issue as a separate issue and not look at them collectively. In
addition, they are hard to talk about issues because to oppose them is looked at
as being politically incorrect. This became clear to me as I looked at the people
standing in line at my polling place. I saw a majority of old white men; I saw
this as telling; my state is the state where Jessie Helms, the racist, was unabashedly
elected for years; the only way to get him out of office was to wait for him to
dies, which he did. It is a state where no one will admit to being a raciest.
The nature of voters in my neighborhood is telling, because
I live in a conservative neighborhood, in a liberal county in a conservative
state. I live in a southern state but in a county that people from the Midwest
populate—Research Triangle Park where workers are highly educated liberals. In
my state, poll results indicated people in all rural areas voted overwhelming
Republican, the same ones who had voted for Jessie Helms; thus, I use the word ‘microcosm’
for my neighborhood. The evidence is overwhelming; my state is clearly suffering
from the consequences of having a Republican governor and legislature. Also evident,
our State government has severely suppressed black voters, has cut $500 million
for the education budget thus trashing schools in black neighborhoods, and
shifted the tax burden to the backs of the workers while giving the rich tax
breaks. Yet, in spite of all the evidence, the people in the state voted in
support of a Republican senate candidate, the man who was the architect of the
states economic chaos and worker demise; all things we openly say. However, the
people, who voted, did not vote because of the economics; they voted for
another reason—guess what.
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