But quite aside from charges of brainwashing and duping, it's fact that Nathan knows that most voters to not even attempt to make these calculations. As studies Doug has posted show, most voters do not even know the positions of the candidates: thus, for example (this is anecdotal but not inaccurate), the reports of voters who think that Gore would (or could) support gay marriage or take away their guns.
One might argue that it is rational for voters not to spend much time or energy informing themselves of these matters or deliberating on the issues, because their individual influence is vanishingly small, but I don't think Nathan would agree with the reasoning here. Or that voters form a generally accurate picture of the candidates without doing so: for example, Gore would be more supportive of gay rights and gun control. But Perhaps the voters would decide differently if they knew of the candidate's actual positiosn and the president's real powers.
In any case, the issue of why workers support the bosses' parties is not an easy one. I suspect that we are dealing with a coordination problem of great proportions, which explains why it is rational for workers to do so as long as other workers have not created an alternative; and that they have not done so because the disproprortion of resources makes the cost of doing that discounted by the prospects of success very high; this, moreover, in a context, framed by the particular history of the US, with racism, etc, in play. See here Cohen & Roger's old but good On Democracy. But I have to go feed my kids.
--jks
>Nathan Newman <nathan at newman.org> wrote:
>
> > Nader supporters act as if voters are all a bunch of mindless pawns -
>Dem
> > supporters being stupid masochists and now even potential Nader
>supporters
> > mindless victims of "liberal Dem" propaganda.
>
>It's impermissible to differ with working class voters over which vote
>would be rational, OK. The only irrational voters are elitists who vote
>against Democrats out of a false sense of superiority, OK.
>
>But now how do you explain working class votes for Bush?
>
>Tom
>
>Tom Waters
>Bronx, New York
>tjwaters at earthlink.net
>
>
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