Why the Poor Vote for the Right (and Stop Demanding More Equality)

Are we really sure that that's what's been happening? The democrats have fundamentally abandoned the working class in favor of stupid wedge issues. It was the "progressives" who chose to shift their campaign focus onto gaining more privileges for trans women, abolishing the police force, endorsing Islamic supremacist groups tale of their own victimhood, and denying the basic right for country to have an immigration policy. I don't see how any of this is aimed at the working class.

I don't think this is new. When I moved from Australia to America in 1992, I was struck by the much greater identification with cultural ideas rather than wealth and class compared to Australia in the 1980s and '90s. I was attacked on a radio TalkBack show, because I suggested that Americans didn't seem to vote according to wealth status like they tended to in Australia. One of the callers said they were happy to have a lower income and lower taxes and therefore less redistribution of taxes if it meant "living in a freer country". They criticised the almost transactional nature of politics without belief that I was proposing as the norm in Australia. So I really don't think this is a new thing for the US.

> “The left,” Tabellini concludes, “has underestimated the fact that culture can matter more than income. But as long as it insists on talking only about inequality, without addressing the identity theme, it will continue to lose out among its own former constituency.”

Is an interesting conclusion, since that seems askew from the kind of left which has predominated recently. Though it may amount to analysis of the modern left which says that they permit cultural identity to be the most salient political factor if you're one of their favoured "oppressed identities" whereas, if you arent, then you have to be analysed in purely economic terms.

I'm not entirely convinced by the analysis. Is a politics of identity displacing traditional "economic politics" -- or is it that economic politics has become a matter of identity? Eg., consider that 20-year-olds today face a society economically designed to privilege certain identities through corporate affirmative actions and the like. Policies who could only plausibly morally target the older generations where salary gaps exist -- yet have a disproportionate impact on younger groups with no such disparities (or the converse, as in the UK where young women slighly out-earn young men).

And eg., do people feel immigration has created economic deprivation at home (and so on) -- is all this just not a displaced class analysis?

We might assume not because, by economic analysis, immigration cannot really explain the "economic concerns" which are attributed to it -- but do the public know this? Or is the failure of the welfare state, of popular government policy and regulation really just misattributed to immigration (or, to these "other" identities)? Is this just a matter of spurious correlation: as western birthrates plummet, goverments are heavily endebted and unable to provide high quality services, the public observe increased immigration?

This analysis fails to realise the degree to which these "identities" have become specailisations of economic classes by policy, law and accident.

I don't see this as new. It's been more urban vs rural than money vs poor for as long as I can remember. Maybe it was different when union's were a bigger topic 50+ years ago.

I see this as incredibly challenging for the American Democratic Party to overcome. A conservative is very clearly defined and makes up a huge portion of the country: white and religious. The inverse of this (multicultural, non-religious or non-Christian, many different races/nationalities) is much more challenging to speak to and motivate.

A republican ad can cast a standard white nuclear family wearing some blue jeans and their base will love it. Democrats don’t have a super obvious cast (and message).

From the article:

> “The left,” Tabellini concludes, “has underestimated the fact that culture can matter more than income. But as long as it insists on talking only about inequality, without addressing the identity theme, it will continue to lose out among its own former constituency.”

In my experiences, the Left / Democrats have abandoned the wage workers and labor quite along time ago. The justification was that Republicans catered to Big Business, along with their near-endless coffers of money. Democrats had to cater to their own groups that had money, and labor was NOT one of them.

Another money issue is that, in general, democrats tax the 50%-99% heavier to redistribute to the 0%-50% class. Republicans undo that. Yet nobody touches that 1% at the top, so real effective changes are really never seen, and haven't been seen since FDR.

Basically, I think culture has taken over income as a major political point because both politician groups have been able to phase it out by intentionally refusing to address it. Something else took hold, and that's identity politics.

If people saw massive, rapid change from taxing the 1% and real monetary gains quickly, identity would be shoved by the wayside quite fast.

I think the only thing that doesn't quite make sense to me:

> The model takes into account the fact that parties are historically connected to specific social groups: the right with the upper classes and religious conservatives, the left with workers and progressives.

I would posit that both the right and the left have "upper classes" and "workers"

The last paragraph even says:

> “The left,” Tabellini concludes, “has underestimated the fact that culture can matter more than income.

Seems like mixed messaging.

This is more about the shifting of media platforms from mass broadcast to targeted messaging to tiny slices of demographics.

It's not unique to the right, although the right wing messaging is simpler and more broadly applicable. Progressives in recent years like to characterize everything as discriminatory. Every issue from arresting criminals, to awarding contracts to schooling is delivered through that lens. The reactionary message is a variant of the effective Bill Clinton style "I feel your pain", with the prescription that you need more pain to get to some nebulous future where your problems go away. The difference is that the progressive message is delivered to the slice of demographic and resonates mostly there. The reactionary message is broadly appealing to everyone's anxiety -- even people who dislike MAGA often identify with the problems identified.

It about the delivery. The best example of this is the much-maligned (in the right wing space) 1619 project. Nobody actually reads books, so the soundbites matter, and by tying the work to the relatively narrow racial component in those soundbites, it weaponized the topic for racists. Those MAGA white guys need to have the irony shoved in their face. That the same class of rich aristocrats who pushed their indentured servant ancestors to the periphery of civilization, then conscripted them for the freedom to own other humans to suppress their wages, and that they have more in common with the decendents of slaves than some land barons.

But that didn't happen, and the messaging picked up and hammered by the right is: "Those" people (pick your villain) want to steal your heritage and hate everything that is America. Obviously, that resonates with alot of people.

Funnily I know more ultra-religious hispanic and asian people than whites. Somehow the Democratic Party thinks that minority = progressive.

This seems like a pretty accurate summary to me.

Both the "right" and "left" are now more defined by identity politics than economic class. My impression is that both of these "identities" have been promoted and popularized by the two main US political parties.

I call these two identities: wing-nut and woke-nut.

Whenever you find that you are in total agreement with one group, and in total disagreement with the "opposing" group, you will find yourself in a state of having completely abdicated your individual agency. You are now a part of group think.

As such, I've been a detractor of "identity politics" since it's emergence as a dominant US social force.

With "identity" the party no longer has to focus on benefiting the constituents, it can rely on pursuing virtue posturing. This is true for both parties.

But, "identity" is a purely abstract entity. It exists only in a person's mind. "Economic class", on the other hand is determined by forces and conditions external to an individual's identity selection.

This means that regardless of a person's choice of "identity", their "class" remains unchanged.

And under both Clinton and the cheato, the working class is abandoned by both parties.

Those least educated, and most vulnerable to online misinformation, will be the most disadvantaged by this, regardless of their "left" vs "right" identity choice.

This is great for both parties, because it entrenches their incumbent position, without requiring material progress for their constituencies.

I find interesting that most comments here are about the Democrats.

However I should point that this is not an American-only issue. Poor people are strong supporters of the AfD in Germany, Bolsonaro in Southern Brazil, the National Rally in France, Erdogan in Turkey, Bukele in El Salvador, Orban in Hungary, etc. On the last Canadian election a great part of the votes lost by the socialist NDP went to the Conservatives, not to the Liberals.

And, also, is not new. Mussolini, Franco, Vargas (Brazil), Peron (Argentina) and other fascist dictators had a strong support from poor people. Gramsci complained a lot about it.

My take: what poor people like in these strong men is a feeling of stability and security. They all promise to be a guardian about some sort of external threat: immigrants, criminals, minorities, etc.

Poor people are scared and they desperately want stability.

>The heart of the model is simple and radical: people choose the identity they feel is most relevant to the social conflicts of the moment.

A lot of this is in Kondylis (30+ years old)

My take: the people voting for right wing candidates don't believe in "redistribution" which IMO is not a proper function of government. The left really wants to take the nation's wealth and give it to people it deems to be deserving of it; the people voting for the right wing disagree wholeheartedly. As do I. Get your hands out of our pockets.

Not sure why this was flagged. It's an interesting discussion about an important topic, and the discussion is quite civil (at least until now).

Edit: now it makes sense. It's getting worse, in particular downvoting. We still need to learn to discuss difficult topics in a civil manner.

The culture wars are just a manufactured distraction.

The true goal is what is now unfolding in the USA: the rich take over the government and democracy will be destroyed.

Congrats Peter Thiel. You won.

Meanwhile the temporary embarrassed millionaires of HN will still defend what is happening, they still think they will somehow come out on top. They think they won’t get hurt.

I wonder if I will witnesses a turnaround for the better in my lifetime.

This is a commonly known social phenomenon. High intelligent people gravitate towards subjects of policy and low intelligent people gravitate towards subjects of identity. High income social classes tend to contain a higher mix of high intelligent people than low income social classes.

EDIT

Ironically, as this comment receives down votes the comments rising to the top resolve to factors of identity.