[Peace-discuss] House Votes Today on Afghan, Pakistan Wars

[C. G. Estabrook]

Mort writes rather shamefully,  "I suspect that there's more behind your 
campaign for Johnson ... He goes to church and he's against abortion."  I 
noticed (but hardly took seriously) that David Gill seems to be prey to the same 
dark imaginings about my thought-crimes.  We were talking about war policy, and 
I took such maunderings as the sort of thing one gets from people who realize 
that they've taken up an untenable position and can't admit it.

But now I think that what we have here is an example of what Tom Franks 
described a few years ago in "What's the Matter with Kansas?" (which I saw 
published in England with the quite appropriate alternate title, "What's the 
Matter with America?").  Frank argued that his Kansas voters were in fact voting 
against their own interests by not voting for Democrats, because they were 
misled by symbolic issues on religiosity and guns.

Frank was right, but he had the matter upside down, as Larry Bartels of 
Princeton showed.  It was not the poor and working class voters who made that 
substitution, but soi-disant liberals. Bartels' surveys showed that it was the 
latter group who were far more concerned about God, guns, and abortion than 
economic issues.  (The reason that the former group didn't vote for Democrats 
was their quite accurate perception that the Democrats had given up on equality 
and substituted diversity - as Walter Benn Michaels described.)

Mort seems willing to work against his anti-war interest because of his 
preoccupation with church and abortion.


On 7/28/10 4:13 PM, Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
> Well said, Mort!! --Jenifer
>
> --- On *Tue, 7/27/10, Brussel Morton K. /<mkbrussel at comcast.net>/* wrote:
>
> From: Brussel Morton K. <mkbrussel at comcast.net> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss]
> House Votes Today on Afghan, Pakistan Wars To: "C. G. Estabrook"
> <galliher at illinois.edu> Cc: "Peace-discuss List"
> <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> Date: Tuesday, July 27, 2010, 9:25 PM
>
> Plugging for Tim Johnson is becoming tedious. So is denigrating David Gill.
>
> I'll bet on Gill's humane qualities any day over Johnson's. I suspect that
> there's more behind your campaign for Johnson than just his (recent
> opportunistic?) war issues He goes to church and he's against abortion .
> Does he still believe in the war on terror, which at least until recently he
> supported? Forget about public health and other issues such as taxes and the
> economy.