I just read John Cassidy’s New Yorker blog about last night’s election. As always, he analyzes stuff better than most political observers.
His piece, “A Disastrous Night for the Democrats,” points up, as have other commentators, that the exit polls indicate that the major concern of most voters was the economy. And that, of course, prompts fairly rational minds like mine to ask the penetrating question, “Huh?”
But I don’t mean to persevere on the question so brilliantly asked by Thomas Frank in, “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”− and the rest of the United States citizenry. Which is: why do voters who say they are concerned with the economy and jobs elect politicians who were bought and are fully owned by corporate oligarchs who have no interest whatsoever in providing people with jobs?
And the morning radio news reminded me that while people say they’re worried about the economy, i.e., their own economies, their jobs, their children’s prospects, their own retirement, the Big Economy is soaring: corporate profits were huge this year, and the stock market levitated to stunning heights.
Well, I found the answer to the question of why Americans vote against their own expressed interests at the bottom of Cassidy’s piece. As I scrolled down to see what else I might read, I noticed this, obviously a lead-in to an ad: