[lbo-talk] It wasn't about "moral values"

[John Lacny]

Look, I just don't buy the idea that this whole thing was about 
"moral values." First off, if the exit polls were so inaccurate in 
measuring who people voted for, why were they accurate in 
measuring what motivated them? I'm sure that a lot of Bush 
supporters listed "moral values" as the motivating factor for 
why they got out to vote, but those people are the organized 
Christian right base who are going to vote in the first place. 
It's true that the anti-gay ballot initiatives in places like Ohio 
must have brought them out in droves, but the bottom line is 
that there just aren't enough of them to swing an election, 
especially in swing states. My hunch -- and I will relent on this 
point only when I see very convincing numbers to the contrary 
-- is that "moral values" came up as an issue because the 
large and militant plurality of voters who listed it are the same 
hardcore group of people who turn out for the Republicans in 
every election. That's not what got Bush to a majority. 

(All this assumes that there was no election tampering that we 
couldn't see, of course. But no one except us is talking about 
that.)

My reason for feeling this is more than anecdotal, I think. Every 
weekend for months -- and in concentrated fasion for the past 
several weeks -- I have been walking in western Pennsylvania 
talking to working-class voters and to union members especially. 
Now, of course we won Pennsylvania and of course among union 
members and the working class generally we did even better, 
but there were inevitably Bush people in the mix. And only once 
out of the hundreds of people I talked to did I run into someone 
who was clearly on the religious right "moral values" program. 
A few others expressed reservations about abortion, but 
surprisingly few considering that this is a heavily Catholic region, 
and I have encountered that in a more widespread fashion in 
other years. People I've talked to who were doing the same kind 
of work said the same thing.

No, the reason Bush won is for the same reason that we have 
always thought he might win: because of the "terrorism" and 
"national security" stuff. Bin Laden putting out that tape is 
probably what did it in the end. He has quite a knack of helping 
Bush at critical moments. (And of course, this inevitably works 
with white people above all, which is one of my other obsessions, 
but which is also true.)

I know this makes four posts for me today, but I figured I'd bring 
this up since I think the discussion on this matter has gone off the 
rails. I think we're all picking up on a piece of conventional 
wisdom that has been widely circulated in the media for the past 
day, but is not likely true.

- - - - -
John Lacny
http://www.johnlacny.com

Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.