How stupid is the American electorate?

[ottermax]

hm... I always digress to this statement when talking to fellow Democrats but I have other ideas.

I think the biggest problem in America is a selfishness that is held by the strong majority of the population. Maybe I am merely naive, but Americans seem so concerned about their individual selves. I probably would care more if I wasn't a college student being funded by my parents for the next few years. Still I care a lot about how we as Americans treat those at the bottom, the greater environment, and those who cannot speak for themselves. Voters vote for their own interests, but it is disappointing that voting has become such a selfish act. It is no longer about what is best for our country, but what is best for the individual.

What concerns me about this is that it has made America such a weak player in the world. We are so caught up in appeasing 20% of the population who switch their votes based on their selfish desires, that we forget to care about the greater good, the bigger picture. Look at China, the gov. there has so much power and control but it is effective because it quells the outspoken opposition. Now I would never ever support our country becoming such an authoritarian dictatorship, but I believe that we could learn a lesson about Patriotism from the Chinese.

I'm sure that Republicans would accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic, but I believe that the most patriotic Americans are the ones who don't really care who's in office as long as we are working together for us as a whole. When we become selfish, we become short-sighted, and we become weaker.  That makes us look stupid and the whole world is watching.

[Marokai]

To the question, "How stupid is the American electorate?"

Nearly 115,000 people voted for this man in an Oregon congressional district. (Warning, those with short attention spans need not watch this video.)

But no, of course not, Americans aren't stupid. Not at all. That man is perfectly rational.

[Former Moderate]

To the question, "How stupid is the American electorate?"

Nearly 115,000 people voted for this man in an Oregon congressional district. (Warning, those with short attention spans need not watch this video.)

But no, of course not, Americans aren't stupid. Not at all. That man is perfectly rational.

Blah, blah, blah.

Larry Pressler walked into a closet thinking it was an exit, and was routinely rated one of the more dimwitted members of the Senate. But he still got sh**t done for South Dakota and upheld a number of conservative principles that the voters supported. On the other side of the aisle, Patty Murray is far from a nuclear scientist, but she votes from a liberal angle, which is what people in Seattle want. So they vote for her.

When given the choice between two candidates, one conservative and one liberal, the people are going to base their vote more on the candidates' political beliefs than on any other factor. This means, of course, that both Democrats and Republicans wind up supporting candidates they know to be relatively dumb and/or corrupt people, but that doesn't mean they're stupid -- it means they've made a decision to weigh a government that reflects their beliefs higher than a government that won't store away a few thousand bucks in a freezer every now and then.

You can talk about Rick Scott, Marco Rubio, and "insider" Dan Coats (who beat out fellow insider Brad Ellsworth) all you want, but the bottom line here is that "voters are dumb because they elected Republicans. If they were smart, they would have elected more Democrats."

[All life is a blur of Republicans and meat.]

Some of the most extreme nutters lost, thankfully.

Brady, Angle, O'Donnell, Paladino, etc.

[pshute]

Stupid enough to elect a ZERO to the WH in 2008

But not stupid enough to elect a DEM corporate lobbyist to the Congress from NH!

[pshute]

Vice P.!!!

Where do we start??  You trot out Rachel Maddow as some sort of truth sayer??

I suggest you take a strong laxative and learn a bit of math and open the eyes a bit.
If you want to know about anonymous donations, ask the President why he STILL
has not revealed the source of millions of dollars to HIS campaign in 2008.

But don't ask me, ask someone you might actually believe (not that a fact would matter to you), Pat Caddell.

[nhmagic]

Yes, liberals whining about the election...yay

They call anyone who votes for a republican stupid, yet Patty Murray, a woman who claimed Osama bin Laden's been out there building day care facilities for his people, has a chance to be elected to a 4th term.  Give me a break...

[True Federalist]

What concerns me about this is that it has made America such a weak player in the world. We are so caught up in appeasing 20% of the population who switch their votes based on their selfish desires, that we forget to care about the greater good, the bigger picture. Look at China, the gov. there has so much power and control but it is effective because it quells the outspoken opposition. Now I would never ever support our country becoming such an authoritarian dictatorship, but I believe that we could learn a lesson about Patriotism from the Chinese.

Not really.  China's number one problem these days is corruption that causes them to make decisions that are not in the best interests of the country and that makes it difficult to institute reforms that the national government realizes would benefit China but are stonewalled at the local level because they take money out of the pockets of local graftmeisters.  The problem is, the Chinese have no effective way of controlling the greed of the local mandarins under their current system.  So they try to tamp down the public discontent by making examples of the most egregious cases and playing the jingoism card.

The Chinese government is riding the back of a tiger and knows it. What worries me is if China gets someone over there like Milosevic in the former Yugoslavia who doesn't care how much damage the tiger does so long as he is still in charge.

[ottermax]

What concerns me about this is that it has made America such a weak player in the world. We are so caught up in appeasing 20% of the population who switch their votes based on their selfish desires, that we forget to care about the greater good, the bigger picture. Look at China, the gov. there has so much power and control but it is effective because it quells the outspoken opposition. Now I would never ever support our country becoming such an authoritarian dictatorship, but I believe that we could learn a lesson about Patriotism from the Chinese.

Not really.  China's number one problem these days is corruption that causes them to make decisions that are not in the best interests of the country and that makes it difficult to institute reforms that the national government realizes would benefit China but are stonewalled at the local level because they take money out of the pockets of local graftmeisters.  The problem is, the Chinese have no effective way of controlling the greed of the local mandarins under their current system.  So they try to tamp down the public discontent by making examples of the most egregious cases and playing the jingoism card.

The Chinese government is riding the back of a tiger and knows it. What worries me is if China gets someone over there like Milosevic in the former Yugoslavia who doesn't care how much damage the tiger does so long as he is still in charge.

Everything you said is true. I think I was just trying to point out that the polarization of the US could become a fatal flaw, and China is an example of a country that has unity and is functioning better in some aspects than America is at the moment. Obviously China has many flaws, but it's unity is one of its strengths.

[Marokai]

A response without substance-less snark. Color me stunned.

To the question, "How stupid is the American electorate?"

Nearly 115,000 people voted for this man in an Oregon congressional district. (Warning, those with short attention spans need not watch this video.)

But no, of course not, Americans aren't stupid. Not at all. That man is perfectly rational.

Blah, blah, blah.

Larry Pressler walked into a closet thinking it was an exit, and was routinely rated one of the more dimwitted members of the Senate. But he still got sh**t done for South Dakota and upheld a number of conservative principles that the voters supported. On the other side of the aisle, Patty Murray is far from a nuclear scientist, but she votes from a liberal angle, which is what people in Seattle want. So they vote for her.

Seems like she knows enough compared to perpetual candidate Dino Rossi.

When given the choice between two candidates, one conservative and one liberal, the people are going to base their vote more on the candidates' political beliefs than on any other factor. This means, of course, that both Democrats and Republicans wind up supporting candidates they know to be relatively dumb and/or corrupt people, but that doesn't mean they're stupid -- it means they've made a decision to weigh a government that reflects their beliefs higher than a government that won't store away a few thousand bucks in a freezer every now and then.

This is complete garbage.

American voters, for the most part, don't care about someone's policy. They don't have some sort of solid set of principles that they stick to election after election, that's completely ridiculous. Sure, most Democrats usually vote for Democrats and most Republicans usually vote for Republicans, but all those "swing" and "Independent" voters jerk wildly back and forth so often that it is impossible to suggest that those voters have any sort of coherent ideology.

Ohio voted comfortably for Sherrod Brown in 2006, easily one of the most left-wing Senators Ohio has ever really had. Brown is probably one of the most populist anti-trade Senators in the chamber.

Rob Portman was elected by an even wider margin than Sherrod Brown was, even though most Ohio voters (two thirds!) oppose free trade deals such as NAFTA on the grounds that it hurts the Ohio economy. Rob Portman is one of the most rabidly free trading individuals you could ask for, he was the number one recipient of money from the insurance industry and commercial banks this year.

Ohio is just one example. If you sit down and look at a bunch of different races, you could come up with a dozen more. Voters in Ohio clearly didn't change their minds about trade or business, or whathaveyou. The large margin in favor of Portman makes no sense if you try to arrive at explanations under the assumption that American voters actually have some sort of coherent ideology and set of principles that determine their votes.

Americans don't vote on policy. If they did there would be at least a shred of some sort of consistency in voting patterns and who wins. People vote based on stupid news stories, nonsense issues, national "mood", personality, how their friends vote, etc. You are wildly overestimating the intelligence of the average American voter if you think there is any sort of coherence to their choices.

People blame Obama for TARP. A decent chunk of the population doesn't think Obama was born in the United States. A large portion of the voters think that healthcare reform has "death panels" that will kill the elderly. Most republicans, if not most voters over all, erroneously think that Obama has raised taxes and refuse to believe the stimulus included any sort of cuts. The list of popular public misconceptions that are routinely abused goes on and on and they approach a level of absurdity that I can't find any sort of equivalent to in the recent American political history.

You can talk about Rick Scott, Marco Rubio, and "insider" Dan Coats (who beat out fellow insider Brad Ellsworth) all you want, but the bottom line here is that "voters are dumb because they elected Republicans. If they were smart, they would have elected more Democrats."

Sure, people vote based on the lesser of two evils from time to time, it's a sad reality of our political system, but that has nothing to do with this. The tea party movement was basically based on the idea that there is no such thing as a "lesser of two evils" option for them. Where do you even think Marco Rubio and Rick Scott came from?

Influenced by tea party thought, Rubio rose to prominence on the basis that Crist was far too moderate to elect to the Senate (even though the only moderate thing about him was something other Republicans supported privately but publicly said they hated, the Stimulus) because the far right didn't want someone who voted with them 80 or even 90 percent of the time, they wanted Marco Rubio. Rick Scott won because he was considered the "tea party candidate" because he was more solidly right-wing than his opponent.

Joe Miller was the tea party candidate and rose to prominence because Republican primary voters thought Lisa Murkowski was too moderate to support, even though she is, for the most part, a doctrinaire conservative. Christine O'Donnell became the primary winner in Delaware because Republicans in the primary didn't want someone who voted with them the vast majority of the time, they wanted a purist. Rand Paul won the primary because his opponent was considered too moderate.

All of these people rose to power and far, far more because the entire movement, the entire influence of the movement, what the very movement itself was based on was refusing to accept people who were establishment candidates (supposedly) and wanting candidate who were far-right wing purists on policy, not even a teeny tiny bit out of right-wing-ville.

Nearly half of Indiana voters identify with or support the values of the tea party. For those people to vote for Dan Coats is a freaking joke. Coats is the very definition of an insider. It's completely inconsistent with the supposed values of this crackpot "movement." Do I expect those people to stay home and not vote? Perhaps not, but it's no less inconsistent, no less completely hypocritical, no less stupid, regardless of that. You can find dozens of examples like this guy.

It's precisely the same for someone like Art Robinson to get nearly 115,000 votes. I don't care if he's the lesser of two evils, the guy is downright insane. AIDS is a government conspiracy, low-level radiation is good for you, selling home-school curriculum with books from a racist author, the list goes on. So what if dude is the "lesser of two evils" (even though that is clearly a phenomenon that the tea party is supposedly inherently opposed to), he's still a psycho and there's no justification for voting for someone like that anyway.

You may think so for some absurd reason, but I can't even think of any sort of left-wing equivalent to an Art Robinson. Alan Grayson was crazy and bombastic at times, but even he at his worst just called Republicans "neanderthals" and his screed on the house floor about Republicans was basically just a tasteless variant of "Republicans hate the poor." You can't really compare people like that, even though it might be cute to try.

[nclib]

If you can't beat 'em, call 'em stupid.

Of course not, they're not stupid at all. The American voters care deeply about the deficit, so they made the intelligent decision of electing Marco Rubio who proposes adding trillions to the deficit with further tax cuts.

And it's really unfair to call Americans stupid when they clearly care about electing outsiders. Throw the bums out! They want new faces in Washington so they can change the system, so of course they would elect Dan Coats, former politician and corporate lobbyist.

Americans also care very deeply about honesty. They want principled politicians they can believe in! So obviously they support people who massively defraud Medicare such as Rick Scott.

You are very very right, Mr. Moderate, at how outrageous it is to even imply that most American voters are inconsistent uneducated misinformed dolts.

Americans, especially those in the Deep South, also hold strong convictions on family values. That's why Louisiana re-elected David Vitter since he clearly follows true family values such as having sex with a prostitute.

[Vepres]

So Marokai, those swing voters who voted for Obama were idiots, then, too, right?

[Senator Libertas]

Stupid enough to (re-)elect Harry Reid, Lisa Murkowski, Andrew Cuomo, Kirsten Gillibrand, Chuck Schumer, Michael Bennet, Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray, John Lynch, Mark Kirk, Dan Coats, Peter Shumlin, Dick Blumenthal, Lincoln Chafee, Joe Manchin, Chris Coons, etc., etc...

So yes, pretty freaking stupid.

[Marokai]

So Marokai, those swing voters who voted for Obama were idiots, then, too, right?

Logically it would make sense fr a significant portion of them to be, I suppose. Though it's not entirely fair to compare voting for Obama to voting for some of the Republicans on offer. There's also what is objectively true and not true. If you're voting against Obama in 2012 because the stimulus didn't cut anyone's taxes, then you're an idiot. (I speak generally of course.) You also couldn't compare voting for Obama to voting for Art Robinson, for example. On the surface you're mostly correct though, yes, in the simple assumption that a good chunk of Obama voters are stupid. (Though, again, I think most people misunderstand the Republicans more than they do the Democrats in what people think they stand for.)

[Vepres]

So Marokai, those swing voters who voted for Obama were idiots, then, too, right?

Logically it would make sense fr a significant portion of them to be, I suppose. Though it's not entirely fair to compare voting for Obama to voting for some of the Republicans on offer. There's also what is objectively true and not true. If you're voting against Obama in 2012 because the stimulus didn't cut anyone's taxes, then you're an idiot. (I speak generally of course.) You also couldn't compare voting for Obama to voting for Art Robinson, for example. On the surface you're mostly correct though, yes, in the simple assumption that a good chunk of Obama voters are stupid. (Though, again, I think most people misunderstand the Republicans more than they do the Democrats in what people think they stand for.)

Arrogance is not a virtue...

[Marokai]

If I said no, you would've called me a hypocrite and a hack. I'd rather be arrogant than that.

[??????????]

If I said no, you would've called me a hypocrite and a hack. I'd rather be arrogant than that.

People want different things, just because they don't conform to your idea of a perfect world doesn't make them stupid. Their are plenty of ignorant voters, those are the ones who go into the voting booth completely uninformed a pulling a lever for a party above all else. And weren't you the one who railed on last week about how we needed experienced people elected and that they'd become insiders any way?

[Vepres]

If I said no, you would've called me a hypocrite and a hack. I'd rather be arrogant than that.

Oh, you're a hack, too, don't worry

[crypto-fascist superhero]

At least if we go by Massachusetts, there were a lot more uninformed Dems than uninformed GOPhers, given the result of the auditor race.

[Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Marokai, you don't have the right to define who is a conservative and who is a moderate. That is defined by the the politics of the day. Obama's adjenda is the left of American politics, as such opposition was bound to occur amongst conservatives. With his adjenda toping the charts in importance amongst Republicans, there was no room for those who had supported parts of Obama's adjenda or what became his "adjenda" because the Conservative movement defined itself in opposition to those policies (Stimulus, Cap and trade, Amnesty, Card Check).  The problem is also that liberalism in itself is inherently arrogant and elitist, as demonstrated by this thread. Because they think the only way to move forward is to progress with the next thing on the progressive utopian wishlist. If the economy was to recover it had to be because of that, it couldn't happen from the bottom up or heaven forbid inspite of it. Think of Pelosi's statement, "Everything we do is about jobs", as evidence. Thats why I would laugh at obama's "car in a ditch" analogy everytime he used it. The economy hasn't benefited from any of the opressive regulations in the Health care law or the financial bill, and yet as Pelosi, says "Everything we have done is about jobs". Its not, passing Health care and Financial Reforms, while reasonable responses to problems, are not a benefit to the economy except in the extreme long term and then it will be marginal at best.

And yet the Republicans are stupid. Obama went around this country repeating over and over again that the Republicans had caused the economic meltdown and "drove the car into the ditch" when the facts are clearly to the contrary. The Real-estate bubble was a GLOBAL phenomenon that had its roots in the post USSR collapse economy. The economic policies which were contentious under Bush had driven unemployment down to 4.6%, while the de-regulation that could be blamed for the collapse was passed under a Democratic President with wide bipartisan support. Under Bush we saw the first "REGULATION" bill in decades in the wake of enron, although its success is debatable, it is clear that Bush did more to "Regulate" Corporate America then did any President since Richard Nixon. The 2007- 2009 recession was set in stone years before due to actions by both parties, long before Bush took the oath of office. Stupidy runs both ways. Is Obama not relying on the stupidity of voters as well?

At the "Rally to Restore Sanity" there were several instances of people who couldn't distinguish the term "Keynesian" from Kenyan when asked about Obama's economic philosphy. Yet we hear that the tea party is full of a bunch of dumb hicks and nothing is said about the stupidity of the dumbs and lemmings who insist on voting for Democrats every damn election time. Why do Democrats think they can ignore or pretend the market does not exist, that they can live separate from it? I think its stupid the Democrats thing they can bring down costs by reducing reimbursement rates to doctors. Simple economics and the economic response by doctors will dictate that if its not financially profitable to offer care, they won't. Fewer doctors, means higher costs. That reaks of stupidity and arrogance to me, and yet it permeates the left. The Market isn't something you can regulate unless you understand and accept how it works first. You try to fight it and you will pay, by making the problem worse. That is one of many reasons why the Health Care law is considered attrocious, why it won't reduce costs, and why many view it as a trojan for single payer.

The arrogance is a product of dimissive elitism. Liberals think there isn't the slightest possibility that the things they support can fail or not work the way they want them to. Guided by 100% confidence that they are right, they can dimiss the opposition as being less enlightened they they are.

Its not that the American people are stupid, it's that Liberals in general are too arrogant, that they can't even for a minute engage in assessing or re-evaluating their actions and goals. This is why Obama, praised as the greatest communicator since Reagan, failed to explain and articulate why what he did, needed to be done. It's just too damn easy to hide and cower behind the excuse of the "American people are just too dumb for us and our brilliant ideas". The American people have a short attention span and if you can't deliver and can't bring yourself to explain why you failed to deliver when they wanted, effectively, well you are going to lose. The American people don't give a crap if everything is perfect with complete social justice, they care that you give them what they want, if you don't you are gone. It is as simple as that.

[Free Palestine]

Hurr

People aren't stupid because they vote for people like Sharron Angle.  There are plenty of people who liberal hacks label "stupid" who are actually very intelligent.

Really, some of the most dumbass people I've known have been liberal Democrats.  Though, there are plenty of smart people who are liberal Democrats.  I've heard a lot of stupid, non-fact based garbage coming from some people at my college.  It's not a matter of ideology.  Your political ideology has no relation to how intelligent you are. 

Though I will agree that Americans are pretty stupid, overall.

[shua]

Yes, the American people are very stupid, and I think the Democrats should continue to tell them so for the next two years.

[Badger]

No, not stupid. Short memoried, and justifiably scared, but not stupid.

[Californian Tony]

A colossal majority of people in most of countries are stupid. Americans have the same share of stupid people, but stupid Americans tend to be more stupid than stupid people in other countries. That's this country's main problem.

[I left.]

A colossal majority of people in most of countries are stupid. Americans have the same share of stupid people, but stupid Americans tend to be more stupid than stupid people in other countries. That's this country's main problem.

Stupid in different ways, I'd say...not more stupid. Look
at the Greanpeace idiots trying to block the atomic waste transport in France and Germany...