BREAD AND BUTTER ISSUES? OR CULTURE WARS?
We rethink the week with Stephen Pimpare, a nationally recognized expert on poverty, homelessness, and U.S. social policy, and professor at the University of New Hampshire; Dean Spiliotis, Civic Scholar and Presidential Scholar at Southern New Hampshire University; and Shawn Sebastian, the Iowa Organizing Director of the Working Families Party and Movement Politics Organizer for Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement.
In connection with the Democratic presidential race in Iowa and New Hampshire, we discuss issues that actually pertain to the entire country. For 40 years now, wages have been stagnant, standards of living have been declining for the working and middle classes, and families have to put in more labor in order to earn less of a household income. We ask why so many voters seem to cast their ballots for candidates who advocate positions that are “against the voters’ own interests.” This may be true of voters’ *economic* interests.
But voters are moved by other interests as well — social and cultural factors, for example. While their financial terrors may seem to them intractable (at least they don’t envision any candidate providing them much economic relief), many conservative voters are opposed to abortion, vehemently anti-immigrant, upset about the bi-coastal liberal-progressive elites, against homosexuality and gender equality, and afraid that discrimination against white males may now exceed discrimination against minorities and women. These “culture war” issues give such voters a way to explain why they are losing control over their lives. Maybe their economic woes can’t be easily resolved by any political candidate, but at least someone like Pres. Trump is willing to speak loudly about all these issues and win over people’s emotions.
