Saturday, September 22, 2012

Liberal War on Poverty versus the Conservative War on the Impoverished

I saw an interesting segment in an interview on current events programming which suggested that not only were 30 to 40% of the voters for McCain in 2008, and for Romney in 2012, from the lower incomes that were derided by Romney for not paying income taxes as losers, moochers, 'getters' and takers who could never be persuaded to stop thinking of themselves as victims, to take responsibility for themselves, or to stop being lazy by relying on the government to feed, house, and care for their medical needs and minimal education.

In reality, those in the lower income brackets who are black tend not to be swing voters.  Those who are white male voters, especially older white males, tend to vote consistently conservative but are more likely than their minority counterparts to vote differently from their usual affiliation. 

In other words, those older low income white males are actually, contrary to what Mitt Romney said, a significant part of those who he needs to vote for him.  This makes the failure of Romney to know who his voters are, in his statements, either an enormous mistake of fact on his part, or a deliberate misrepresentation of those facts to play on the right wing fantasy of contempt conservative wealthy people like Ryan for low income people, including those in their own political base.

If the nearly half of the 47% who WOULD have voted for Romney, who tend to be aspirational voters who want identify with people like Romney in an unrealistic hope they will someday be wealthy too. In contrast, the black voters who are not aspirational voters in the sense of having more modest and realistic goals rather than lottery winning fantasies.  Instead of voting because of their identification with how they would like to be, they vote more with a fear of which politician is more likely to harm their current lives and aspirations as the candidate they vote AGAINST.  This is significantly different from the characterization of people who vote because they are bought off by liberals with government services.

In January 1964, President Johnson in his State of the Union address launched a war on poverty, which at the time in the U.S. was at 19%.  In the U.S. in 2012 it is at an estimated 15%, after the economic disaster that began in 2007.  There is a difference of opinion as to how successful that war on poverty was at getting people out of poverty and into the workforce.

This article on Poverty and Inequality from Bloomberg adds to the accumulation of fact that refutes the ugly and inaccurate stereotype promoted by Romney, Ryan and the majority of the GOP. There is a difference, a significant difference between war on the impoverished and war on poverty.

From Bloomberg:

Poverty, Inequality Aren’t as Bad as You Think

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