--- On Tue, 9/9/08, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
> Personally I've always thought the median woman was
> smarter than the
> median man. If this holds up I may have to revise that :o)
>
[WS:] I would like to think so too. However, you do not have to be a female troll to be attracted to Palin - after all she is the epitome of an "all American girl" that many small town women can identify with. And if they had been undecided before - this identification may be enough to sway their vote.
As to the WP article arguing that economy may not bring people to Obama, I find that it is not surprising either. People do not rebel in defence of their wallet - as Ryszard Kapscinski once observed in his book on the emperor Heile Selassie - but the do rebel in defence of their dignity. These two are often conflated because they often occur together - e.g. people rebelling when an economic burden is imposed on them.
I strongly suspect, however, that people rebel not because they cannot carry that additional burden. They do not know life without burden, they do not even know that such life is possible. They rebel, because they perceive adding that economic burden as an insult to thier dignity, as an act of disrespect, treating them like animals of burden, as if they did not matter. It is that perceived insult to their dignity that pushes them into rebellion.
Conversely, if adding an economic burden is not seen as insult and disrespect but a "natural" turn in the way capitalist economy operates, they are unlikely to rebel at all. Or perhaps if they see that extra burden as an insult and disrespect by someone else than the party currently in power - say - by foreigners, the Chinese where "our" jons are supposed to go, the Mexican immigrants supposedly taking "our" jobs away, transnational companies concerned only about their bottom line, etc. - that will only boosts their patriotism as a way of restoring their "dignity" as a nation, and support a candidate who is the most jingoistic. That seems to be consident with the WP story. (BTW, it worked extremely well for the Nazis in Weimar Germany.)
So if you add those two factors together: middle Amerika women identifying with the hockey-mom-Palin, and bitter yokels feeling "insulted" by foreigners taking "their" jobs away - you will have enough people drawn to the MacCain camp to obtain the 50% + 1 vote majority.
Again, I sincerely hope it will not happen, but I also have enough understanding of human behavior to be really really concerned about the outcome of the November electon.
Wojtek