Moment of Truth
Like so many of us, a friend was disturbed and puzzled by the confused outcome of the last presidential election. He was especially troubled by the large numbers of low-income whites who voted for George W. Bush. Knowing that I shared at least some of his puzzlement, he wrote to ask if I would like to join in a print dialog with him about why low-education, low-income voters so often vote against their own self-interest. I declined the invitation mainly because I felt I didn’t have enough knowledge of history, economics, and demography to do justice to such a topic.

Days passed and I found my thoughts kept turning back to my friend’s proposal. A moment came when, for some reason, I turned the mirror which my friend and I were so ready to direct at the mass of voters onto myself:

"Did I," I asked myself, "vote in my own self-interest?"

I looked in the mirror. Looked away. Looked back. The surprising, grudging answer that I forced from myself was: "No, I did not vote in my own self-interest."

Backstory
I am white, educated, and while not rich, sufficiently well-off that money is not a problem. A house with more space than we really need. A well-planted yard bigger than we really need. All the electronic goodies, some in duplicate or even triplicate (3 computers). A freezer packed with custom-ordered food.

You get the picture. Just another affluent household riding the crest of the wave of the boom of the 1990s.

But I consistently vote left-of-center. Depending on the circumstances, I vote anywhere from near-left to as far left as they let on the ballot. Clearly, I saw for the first time, not in my own self-interest.

Any intelligent, self-interested person with this level of affluence would vote the straight Republican ticket, putting people in power whose aim was to increase the wealth of those who already had wealth and to secure that wealth for their children.

But I don’t vote that way. And I was forced to see clearly that my own pattern of voting was as much at odds with my own self-interest as was that of the low-income masses who consistently vote for their monied masters.

What was going on here?

I grew up in a working-class family where the mere mention of the words "Eleanor Roosevelt" would produce scowls all around. Where the conventional wisdom was that Herbert Hoover was a scapegoat for the Democrats. Where there were only two three-letter words spoken with reverence: "God", and "Ike".

Something was amiss.

Self-therapy
Examining my behavior, I came to the conclusion there were two me’s here, Daily Me, and Voting Me.

Daily Me was the one that inhabited the affluence and more or less took it for granted. But come election day, the me that walked into the voting booth was a different creature.

Voting Me most emphatically did NOT vote in the best interest of Daily Me, always punching holes beside names of candidates who promised equality of opportunity, equal protection of the law, universal health care, respect for the environment, universal free education, etc.

Who, I asked myself, was this stranger who was casting progressive votes in my name? He certainly seemed to have little in common with the repressed, closet-Republican me who enjoyed so many of the perks of extremely unequal income distribution.

The light, as the evangelists say, dawned: That second, progressive me was the me that I thought I should be. The me I wanted to become. A better, less selfish, more generous, forgiving, accepting me. That was the me that disregarded the affluent me’s obvious self-interest and consistently voted left. No matter if that second me’s votes might result in a certain social disorder, disruption, bringing about a redistribution of wealth and a subsequent decline in the affluent me’s living standard…

This was, let me tell you, no easy self-portrait to look at. I really did not want to think of myself as a closet-Republican, but there it was. Hard to deny.

Topsy-turvy
Patronizingly, I quickly turned my attention back to the low-income masses who had started this train of uncomfortable thought. How much easier it is to ponder the shortcomings of others, especially when those others have a lot less education (and wealth).

And almost as quickly I was forced to see a similar dichotomy in "their" voting behavior.

From my comfortable perch, it seems clear, in terms of self-interest, that "they" should be voting the straight Democratic/Progressive ticket all the time. But they don’t. Why? (Here comes the light again.) Because, when they vote Republican, they are voting not as the people they are, the people who (often desperately) need universal health care, clean air and water, good and safe schools and streets, etc.

They are in fact doing exactly as I do. They vote as the people they think they should be, the people they want to become, namely, rich Republicans: people with enough money that they don’t have to worry about money (or so they think), with enough security that they don’t have to worry about their children’s welfare (or so they think).

This schizoid analysis of voting behavior also makes understandable the troubling out-of-pocket voters: black Republicans, gay Republicans, female Republicans. Those puzzling voters are people who have somehow fallen through the cracks of oppression and exploitation. They’ve made it (think Clarence Thomas; think Colin Powell). They’re on the fast track toward affluence and security so of course they’re going to choose to vote for their role-models, the guys and gals above them who’ve made it big. They have—praise the Lord—escaped the oppression. Why should they look back?

High-education, low-education, high-income, low-income, we vote hopeful illusion. Which means we all, at the moment we step into the booth, are schizoid. We vote NOT for what we are but for what we hope to become. The rich, to get richer. The poor to get less poor. The educated (you ready?), to get wiser.