Voting Against Ourselves

Let's imagine you have a political party that wants to succeed in democratic elections, where the rule is "one person, rich or poor, one vote". Then imagine further that a very important item on this party's agenda is to further the interests of corporations and very rich people. Won't this party have a very difficult time getting people elected? Corporations can't vote at all, and almost by definition, there are very few very rich people.

How to increase the influence? How to get a large percentage of the not-rich people out there to vote for this party's candidates? This is a very real problem for this party: without the not-rich people's votes, there is no hope of getting anyone elected in a free, democratic election, and not-rich people can't be expected to vote for candidates who announce that they intend to make it easier for rich people to get richer, and make it easier for corporations to make bigger profits, by whatever means.

One way out of this dilemma would be relative silence about the important goal of helping rich people, and at the same time be rather vocal about smaller issues, that many not-rich people care strongly about. These smaller issues can be chosen not to interfere with, and may even assist, the important agenda. They don't have to have any particular cost attached, and there need be no particular urgency to produce any results with respect to these side issues. Examples of these kinds of issues are gun control, abortion, gay rights, and religiosity. Any issue will do, in which some not-rich people may have some expectation that the opposing party will not act the way they want. The more emotional an issue it is, the better.

After choosing one of these issues, our rich people's party simply has to take an opposing stand, one that the related segment of the not-rich population will be relieved to hear. Beyond that, all that is required is to talk about it. Talk about it to exclusion of any other topic, especially the important goal of helping rich people. No other action is required, ever. It would probably detract from the effectiveness of the side issue if one were to go back one's word, and for example, put some restrictive gun controls in place, but no positive results are required.

A complete lack of any real progress in easing gun controls in eight years is easily forgotten and forgiven. The anti-gun-control people will vote for you as long as you say you are opposed to gun control. The anti-abortion people will vote for you as long as you appear to resist abortion. The anti-gay people will vote for you even though there has been no rollback of gay rights in eight long years. And, most amazing of all, Christians will vote for you, even though you have started two wars that have killed many tens of thousands of people, and refused to help a population in Africa that has been the victim of relentless genocide. So you get all these people, who are passionately interested in these issues, to vote for you, and the only thing it costs is the time you spend talking about your concern over these issues.

This seems to be quite a reasonable scheme to acquire a lot of voting support for a party that really only acts in the interests of large corporations and rich people. If there is something going on in the real world of legislative activity that contradicts the way this scheme works, I am interested in hearing about it.