In short, things to blame are not necessarily the voters, but the idiotic features of the Amerikan political system, in particular: (a) its crony capitalism embedded in the every fabric of this society (b) its populism (c) its winner takes all electoral system.
Wojtek
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All of which is true. As is the next quote:
``This public unwillingness to pay for public goods has been theorized, from a slightly different angle, by Burton Weisbrod who hypothesized the condition of "government failure." This is a condition of high demand heterogeneity (i.e. diverse interests and preferences) that prevent consensus which public goods are to be publicly funded...''
However, the underlying issue is the failure of the political system itself to perform its educational duties. The way I look at it is there are two sides to this. The voting public who has a civic responsibility to figure out what's in their best interest. And the other half, call it the political system. Citizens are not born, they are made and it is certainly the responsibility of democratic power to educate its mass base.
So then, when somebody like Obama comes along, his first duty to his potential supporters is to educate them on the facts of life. These are the facts, the concepts, and the goals we intend to accomplish.
Now most major political figures do this sort thing, but they think of it as rhetoric and propaganda for the masses.
One of the great things about the civil rights and anti-war movements of yore was the teach-in. The apparently silly formality performed a great public service, which educated potential supporters on the facts and the subject. In many respects this sort of public education occurrs on Doug's radio program and AAR. As nice as these are to hear, it is absolutely essential that anybody who claims to stand for change, has to perform similiar duties.
There are a whole host of founational necessities that such an education can accomplish. The most important are getting the facts straight and putting them in the concrete context that will stand up to any form of rational scrutiny. This lays the condition of discourse. Non-believers will abuse the facts and contexts at will, of course. The point is to have them out on the table and return to them over and over and over.
For example, Johnson's War on Poverty was pre-staged by several high profile reports by presidential commissions on poverity in America. So the war on poverty was not hatched out nothing. The contexts in which these programs were launched, were the findings of these reports. This is how the educational duties of the political system are met. Try this for example:
``In 1959. 55.1 percent of African Americans lived below the poverty line. By 1969, after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. the Black poverty rate fell to 32.2 percent.''
>From (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4081/is_/ai_n17187830)
Needless to say it is now established wisdom that the war on poverty was a failure. The above demonstrates a simple to grasp fact. The war on poverty was unprecedented success.
For each of the issues, what the Democrats under Obama must do is create the educational background or foundation in advance of major policy drives. The war. The economy. The health of the nation. The schools. The major infrastructure.... etc, etc, etc. Yes find the facts that fit the story---but we already know most of these facts are there and do fit the story.
Now that I listen to Doug on Saturday morning, we could use his Behind the News as a mini-example. This is a very traditional and well tried and true method. The Johnson administration created a whole cottage industry studying poverty.
This public education duty has been trivialized as `appoint a commission to study the issue.' But when the commission is hand selected to reveal rather than obscure, the results can be astonishing and devastating.
While most people do not exactly trust their intitutions until these are confirmed as C. Wright Mills pointed out, well let's get busy confirming the best of progressive intitutions. This approach is quite different than merely framing an issue to contextualize an issue to your own benefit---although I certainly wouldn't deny it also does that.
While I absolutely blame the voter, you're right it does no good to call them on this absurd denial of reality. So public education is the way around that problem. And it performs both an enlightenment and a propaganda function.
CG