[extropy-chat] RE: Aw Nuts! Bush Wins... Bush's triumph: getting the poor to favour the rich

[Sean Diggins]

Bush's triumph: getting the poor to favour the rich
By Anatole Kaletsky - The London Times 
 
WHATEVER happens in today's American election - and the odds still
marginally favour a Kerry victory, for reasons which I explain for the
benefit of political junkies at the bottom of this page - one thing is
absolutely certain. This has not been an election about economics. In fact,
this election should refute once and for all the widespread belief that
voting behaviour in advanced western democracies is determined largely by
"pocketbook issues". 
But I would go further and suggest that this election proves something
deeper about modern democratic politics. I believe this election has been
about economics - but the influence of economics on politics has been very
different from the one that pundits normally emphasise.  
 
The Bush record suggests that the macroeconomic indicators that are usually
believed to motivate ordinary voters - unemployment, inflation and wage
growth - are less important than the policies which govern the social
distribution of income and economic power. More intriguingly, what Bush has
demonstrated is that people can readily be persuaded to vote in accordance
with the economic interests of people much richer than themselves. The fact
is that, even if Bush loses marginally today, many millions of poor and
middle-class Americans will be voting for tax and public spending policies
that are directly against their personal economic interests, but hugely
beneficial to a small elite. 

This elite, which could for simplicity be defined as the top 5 per cent of
the US income distribution (households with annual earnings over $150,499 in
2001), has not only benefited disproportionately from President Bush's tax
policies but - much more importantly - it has lost nothing from the cutbacks
in welfare that his budget deficits will surely require. Its after-tax
income had already risen by 53 per cent in real terms in the two decades
before President Bush came to power - nearly four times the increase in
living standards enjoyed by America's middle 20 per cent. These affluent
voters might therefore be expected to provide the core of the President's
support - and in a sense they do, since the great majority of wealthy
Americans continue to vote Republican, notwithstanding their supposed
distaste for the illiberal social and religious policies of the party's
dominant Right wing. 

The real numerical base of the Republican Party, however, are the
lower-income Americans whose economic interests it clearly does not
represent. This is evident in polling data that show the proportion of
Republican voters to be almost as high in the middle and lower-middle income
groups as it is in the top 20 per cent. 

Even more striking is the regional pattern of party support. As shown in the
second chart, the states solidly backing Bush are much poorer than the ones
supporting Kerry. In the British context, it is as if Glasgow and Merthyr
Tydfil were reliably voting Tory, while Henley and Kensington were Labour
strongholds. 

The political triumph of the American Right has been to advance relentlessly
the economic interests of the country's richest people, while emphasising a
swath of moral, social and foreign policy issues that motivate - and
certainly distract - middle-class and poor voters. 

This has been a spectacularly successful strategy which the elites in other
countries, including Britain, are likely to follow if they feel that their
interests are seriously threatened by a resurgent Left. 

How can I jump to this broad conclusion, especially after stating that Bush
will probably lose the election today? Because the most striking result of
this election is already clear. The fact that Bush has any chance at all of
re-election is evidence enough of the Republicans' political success. After
all, his economic policies have resulted in unprecedented job losses, his
tax reforms have produced a massive shift of income from poor to rich, his
public spending plans have favoured corporations at the expense of jobless
families, his foreign policies have plunged the nation into war on false
pretences and failed to bring to justice the perpetrators of 9/11. 

By almost every economic criterion, the average American voter has had a
very hard time during the past four years. Unemployment has risen, per
capita income growth and real wages have stagnated and Bush has been the
first President since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs.
Even inflation, which has remained remarkably low and stable at about 2 per
cent on the official figures, is widely perceived to be much higher than the
Government admits. 

According to the Conference Board's monthly survey, public expectations of
inflation in the next 12 months are now 5 per cent, almost the highest level
in the survey's 13-year record. 

Moreover, the economic misery has been worst in the manufacturing states on
whose voters President Bush now depends for re-election. The US
manufacturing sector has suffered a net decline of 20 per cent in employment
in the past four years, implying that while most of the US economy has
managed to tread water reasonably comfortably since President Bush was
elected, the manufacturing states really have suffered their worst economic
setback since the 1930s. 

On any objective reading of this evidence, President Bush should already
have been consigned to history. Yet he is now within an ace of re-election.
And even if he loses, most of his policies - especially on tax and public
spending - will remain intact. In other words, the Republican Right has won
the US policy debate on all the important economic issues, whatever happens
today at the polls. 

Having said all this, why do I think that Kerry may win? Simply because all
past experience suggests a marginal advantage to the challenger when the
final polls show an even split. As Richard Medley, of Medley Global
Advisors, one of America's sharpest and successful political analysts, puts
it, there are two rules of thumb for analysing the final round of polls. 

The first is to watch the President's approval ratings. This approval rating
- based on a broad and seemingly meaningless question about whether the
voter has generally approved of the President's performance - is probably
the statistic that has had a generally confident White House seriously
worried. No incumbent President has been elected with a job approval below
50, but Bush's has hovered just below the critical 50 per cent mark for most
of the period since the election campaign began. 

Secondly, all attention in Washington has turned to the final round of
voting intentions surveys, collected on Saturday and Sunday. Here again Mr
Medley and other politicos suggested a simple rule of thumb: if Bush ended
up below 50 per cent in the final Gallup poll and in the average of all
polls published by RealClearPolitics.com on Monday, then he would probably
lose the election. For some reason, historically, incumbents never do better
than their final poll numbers and most often do worse. If he's above 50 per
cent in those polls then he'll probably win. 

Well, what is the answer? The final Gallup/CNN vote projection published
yesterday had Bush with 49 per cent of the vote, exactly even with Kerry.
However, the actual Gallup sample, before the firm's adjustments for
expected voter turn-out, was slightly less favourable to Bush, with 46 per
cent of registered voters backing Bush against 48 per cent for Kerry. 

Turning to the average of the latest polls surveyed on
RealClearPolitics.com, this put Bush at 48.5, ahead of Kerry's 46.7, but
still a tantalising 1.5 points below the magic 50. Given that in 2000, Bush
was 2 points ahead of Gore in the final Gallup projection and also in the
average of all the polls released just before the election, this is a very
uncomfortable position for the incumbent. 

After all, Gore ended up winning the popular vote in 2000 by a half-point
margin. And the gap between national and state poll trends looks slightly
less favourable to Bush this time round.