Terry Kendrick - February 05, 2010
Lessons of Massachusetts Election
It’s hard to know what to make of the Republican victory in Massachusetts. Does it mean that people don’t want health care reform, does it mean that people who live in Massachusetts – I don’t know if they are Massachusians, Massachusites or what, so know I’ll simply refer to them as people who live in that particular state, -- does it mean they are happy with their version of health care reform but don’t want to have to pay for anyone else’s or does it mean their state system of health care reform doesn’t work, is still too expensive and they don’t want to go down that road again.
I don’t think we can know what this election means. But it does make me wonder about the bigger question of why we lost public support for real health insurance reform when it’s so painfully obvious that we need it. It begs the question why are people so vehement about supporting positions that are not in their best interest. Many of the people who need insurance reform the most are the ones that opposed it the loudest. For example, in Texas, a third of the population has no health insurance and over 20% of all children are uninsured, opposition to health care reform legislation in that state is running at about 87%.
A recent story in the Common Dreams newsletter tries to answer the question of why so many American voters are siding with big insurance companies and supporting a health care system that leaves them sicker and broker.
The answer is that when people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them. They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by somebody else.
I was thinking about this and wondering if it was true of me. I imagined what would happen if someone gave me a car and said I had to use it for the next five years. Even if that person said the car was perfect for me, I think I would walk around it and find many things I didn’t like and I’d be resentful of it, even if it’s the most expensive and best gift anyone has ever given me. How do they know what I like and why do I have to have this just because they said so.
But if the same person came to me with the same car and said, I listened to you and what you said you wanted – you said you wanted leather seats, this car has leather seats, you said you wanted good gas mileage, this car gets good gas mileage,
you said you wanted a sunroof, this has a sun roof, you said you like blue, this car is blue, etc, then I would likely be ecstatic about the gift. Turns out I, like most people, am just not that complicated. My like or dislike of something is all in the presentation and whether I feel like I have had any say in the matter.
The article in Common Dreams quotes Thomas Frank, the author of What's The Matter with Kansas, who believes that the voters' preference for emotional engagement over reasonable argument has allowed the Republican Party to capitalize on the art of resentment politics. You aren’t happy with your life, they’ll give you someone to blame and it’s almost always going to be someone who is actually trying to solve the problem.
The result is that many of America's poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that protects the interests of the wealthy. Thomas Frank says that whatever disadvantaged Americans think they are voting for, they get something quite different. "You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining.
It's like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy."
The Republicans have pulled off the best magic trick. They act like they represent the folks and are protecting them from those smarty pants liberals – when they are in fact representing the interests of corporate fat cats. But this shell game like all the others will leave us holding a wallet full of nothing while the carnival barker walks away with pockets full of gold. The lesson we need to learn but don’t seem to want to accept is emotion speaks louder than reality. We all want to feel heard, we don’t want to be taken for granted, we want someone to care about us and even if it isn’t true we’ll take fake caring for perceived indifference, no matter the cost. This is Terry Kendrick, thanks for listening.
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