The American Voter: Stupid and Ignorant

Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense

THE AMERICAN VOTER

STUPID AND IGNORANT

BY WALT KIENIA

THE AMERICAN VOTER

Stupid and Ignorant

Copyright: 2015 Walt Kienia, All Rights Reserved.

Yup, that’s right, I own this bitch!

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 9781310632372

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold

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work of this author

Front cover photo: 0363.jpg, BY CC-A, www.elaking.com

Cover background image by Shutterstock.com

Cover design by Richard de Meij

Dedicated to the millions of people who stumble into a voting booth without the slightest idea of what they are doing…and to those who report, correctly and incorrectly, on this stupidity.

Thank you.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Hold on a Minute

Let’s preface this story with one undeniable fact: Americans can be a stupid bunch. General stupidity is as much of a part of American life as self aggrandizement is to the career of Oprah. In nearly every facet of life, there is a subset of the population who are fortunate that breathing is involuntary.

Politically Speaking, You’re Stupid

Only half of the people eligible to vote actually vote, and half of that bunch don’t have a clue as to what they are voting for.

Historically Speaking, You’re Stupid

If we look at the pages of history, we can see that stupidity and ignorance have never been in short supply.

"It Was the Goddamnest Thing..."

John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson reveal that voters are attracted to Hollywood and hayseed.

What the Hell Were They Thinking?

Vietnam, acid, weed, and Richard Nixon’s two election victories.

The Fucked-up Campaigner

Gerald Ford appeared incompetent, Jimmy Carter was incompetent, and Ronald Reagan took advantage of both.

"Where’s The Beef?"

Go out on the street and find one person who can tell you who Ronald Reagan defeated in 1984 and who George H.W. Bush defeated in 1988.

Stupidity and the Hollow Man

Voters discover a Democratic candidate with a personality.

America Elects George W. Bush...Twice!

If George W. Bush was so dumb, what does that say for the voters who elected him...twice?!

Hope, Change, and Stupidity

Americans abandon rational thought processes and pull America into its worst period since the Civil War.

Statistically Speaking, You’re Stupid

This is why oddsmakers in Vegas shy away from offering betting lines on presidential elections.

Excuse Me, I’m Stupid

Liberal apologists seek to defend the stupid and the ignorant.

Politicians Think You are Stupid

The person you are voting for thinks you are a dimwitted peasant - and they thank you very much.

You’re Stupid - End of Story

I’m sorry if you are offended by this story...wait, no I’m not; smarten’ up, dumbass!

Appendix

Connect With the Author

Hold on a minute…

Let’s preface this story with one undeniable fact: Americans can be a stupid bunch. General stupidity is as much of a part of American life as self-aggrandizement is to the career of Oprah. In nearly every facet of life there is a subset of the population who are fortunate that breathing is involuntary. We see and hear of them every day out on the street, in the workplace, at the DMV, in Dunkin’ Donuts (in front of and behind the counter), on our news programs and newspapers, on Entertainment Tonight, on Facebook, and in the gut of our government. Hell, there’s probably one sitting right beside you at this very moment. Even when taking the obvious out of the equation, the loyal CNN viewer, we still cannot go a day without witnessing or hearing something that makes us pause and utter those same words uttered by Chief Crazy Horse at a grassy knoll called Little Bighorn nearly a century and a half ago: Stupid bastard. So, in the context of this story, while some run about ingesting kitchen cleaning products (hence the warning labels), there are also far too many who bring their dim witted approach to life into the political arena. Americans vote stupidly.

White dudes like to do shit like that...

...vote for the wrong dude as a goof.

They get drunk and shit and go like:

Let's vote for Jesse Jackson ! (laughing)

I just voted for Jesse Jackson ! (more laughing)

And next day would be

like this: What!? The mother fucker won!?

- Eddie Murphy, Delirious, 1983

CHAPTER ONE

Politically Speaking, You’re Stupid

Only half of the people eligible to vote actually vote, and half of that bunch don’t have a clue as to what they are voting for. Pollsters report time after time that the general public shows an overall lack of interest in politics, yet many of these people will nonetheless show up to vote. In 2008, 61% of eligible voters said they had voted but only 43% of eligible voters said that they followed politics very closely.¹ Surveys abound that show the American people have a general lack of knowledge about government and politics, yet many of these dumber-than-fifth-graders show up on Election Day. In November of 2008, Barack Obama received 53% of the popular vote; less than 2 years later 41% of those surveyed could not name Obama’s Vice President.²(if you’re googling, it’s Joe Biden). Political scientist Robert Putnam, Ph.D., told us in 1995’s Bowling Alone that since the advent of television our civic and political minded society has eviscerated like an Al Gore political career. However, once every four years far too many of these civically absent people will get all warm and excited and stumble into a voting booth with God knows what on their minds. We are uninterested, ignorant, and lazy when it comes to choosing those who may decide our fate, yet we still vote.

When it comes to voting we are stupid and ignorant. The stupid voter syndrome cannot be fixed or controlled. Society will always have its morons and democracy allows for the participation of even the dullest life forms. We will always have those like Ms. Caryn Johnson, better known as Whoopi Goldberg. Ms. Johnson has such a grasp of reality and political issues that she once questioned whether she should fear a return to slavery in the U.S. if John McCain were elected in 2008³ (no, Whoopi, that would be the wrong Party). Of course, she did bring this up on The View, which is basically Sesame Street for adults; apologies to Sesame Street. Ms. Johnson’s voting logic runs contrary to a post which appeared on the Huffington Post, a web site that does its damndest to support radio host Michael Savage’s contention that liberalism is a mental disorder. The writer of this post contends that when it comes to voting, women are too smart, informed, and astute at reading between the lines to be fooled by political rhetoric and niceties.⁴ And then there is Whoopi. Furthermore, the left tilting Post would not use such rhetoric and niceties when discussing Governor Sarah Palin.

Obviously Ms. Johnson is not the only moron who has ever entered the voting booth. There are also those on the so-called conservative side who suffer from mental inequities. A blogger on the web site Loose TN Canon listed some of the retarded reasons voters were choosing John McCain.⁵ Apparently many conservatives felt that, among other things, Barack Obama would let blacks take over, Obama was the antichrist, Obama is a Negro and is not to be trusted, and like most Negros, Obama uses drugs. Based on these quotes, it is not surprising to learn from a 2008 Zogby International poll that of those polled voters who voted for Obama, only 14% of them stated that they were NASCAR fans⁶ - however, Obama received a larger share of the NASCAR vote than McCain received from the black voting bloc.

Despite the evidence, the stupidity of the voter is ignored when the experts give their analysis of an election. You will never hear Wolf Blitzer tell his audience that the election may come down to the candidate who can best hoodwink the American voter. You will hear them talk about the importance of blue states, red states, and the independent vote, while turning issue voting into a discussion on which candidate had the best and worst sound-bite on the issue while making it all appear analytical, professional, and legitimate – and let’s not forget practical. They will cite so much evidence and use cute little maps and graphs created with the latest technology, handpicked polls, and handpicked expert commentary which appears to fit their analysis in order for them to remain politically correct and to appear politically and socially relevant. You will never hear one analysis that comes out and says that when it comes right down to it, the voters are dumb as hell and not much of what I just said matters a whole hell of a lot.

The Bush/Gore election of 2000 is a fine example. There have been so many articles and books written about how Gore did not really lose that election (imagine what could have been if his own state had voted for him) that one would expect Ken Burns to soon be releasing a PBS documentary on the issue. Dirty politics, partisan judicial decisions, and outright corruption have been the top analytical bogeymen in most analysis of the 2000 election. Less has been written of the fact that many Floridians in 2000 could not grasp the whole ballot voting concept while also being totally ignorant on how to vote for a president in this country. While not intending too, a referenced New York Times report actually provides us with the evidence of the voters’ stupidity in Florida during the 2000 election.⁷ It was reported that in one Florida county it appeared that many voters thought it was common to vote for more than one person for President – what the hell was this, a hedge bet? The report cited the fact that since the candidates for President were spread over two pages of the ballot, the voters became really confused. Being none too bright and even less intuitive, many voters chose a presidential candidate on each page, effectively voiding their ballots. Perhaps this was a result of the aged culture in Florida who spend much of their time at the many Florida pari-mutuel windows and thus thought that they could pick a quiniela in the presidential race.

It takes a smart person to realize how stupid he is. No president in recent memory has been ridiculed for his lack of intelligence as much as George W. Bush had been during his two terms in office. Critics denounced his degree from Yale and focused on his many misspeaks, Bushisms, to paint a picture of a man occupying the White House as being a complete imbecile, inept, and an intellectual embarrassment before the entire world. Before his first election, the New York Times quizzed its readers on Bush with the front page question, is he smart enough to be president?⁸ Bush’s perceived low intelligence quotient gave rise to a cottage industry for book authors, television writers, comedians, and non-professional media hacks, backed by Soros-like money, to wage an insulting and shameful personal vendetta against a sitting president for eight years, the likes we hadn’t seen since the administration of John Quincy Adams.⁹ However, what the New York Times, perceived funny people, and self-perceived smarter-than-Bush people everywhere failed to ask was, what did the election of George W. Bush say about the voters who elected him…twice?

When not droning out and stumbling through life like a member of the living dead, far too many Americans vote with ignorance. Contextually, this ignorance is based on a willful and wanton effort to be uneducated, uninformed, and uncaring about most things political and governmental – except when we’re looking for a handout. We attack little else in such an earnest manner as we do in avoiding factual information while carrying out such an important task as voting. It’s like CNN avoiding objective, professional news reporting.

Those learned men holding more degrees than a thermometer who have put the political behavior of man under a microscope, have long held that the citizenry could vote without turning on a light – and they often do. Preeminent political scientist V.O. Key, Jr., president of the American Political Science Association in 1957, said in the posthumously published, The Responsible Voter (1966), To be sure, many voters act in odd ways indeed. Even those whose vocation centered on studying the curious actions of man outside the political field were often drawn to this little ant colony called the American voter. Sociologist extraordinaire Paul Lazersfeld, a one-time budding socialist political organizer, brought his love for mathematics and mass communication into the election arena and left us with this missive: If the democratic system depended solely on the qualifications of the individual voter, then it seems remarkable that democracies have survived through the centuries.¹⁰

When we denounce the trivial nature of our political campaigns, we do so without realizing that those engaged in these pursuits are also aware of the citizenry’s detachment from substantive knowledge and issue based politicking, and thus they give the people what they want and can understand. While running against President Jimmy Carter in 1980, Ronald Reagan told the San Francisco Chronicle that people were virtually totally uninterested and uninformed about politics,¹¹ leaving his assistant campaign manager to reason, I think appearance is more important than a whole bunch of facts.¹²

"The other day I went to the gym. There is a cute virginal-like 20 year old girl that works behind the front desk. She is so sweet and it seemed like she has a good head on her shoulders. I asked her, ‘So, are you going to vote?’ She said, ‘No…’ I got defensive, ‘Why not?’ ‘Because I don’t really get into all that political stuff…’ I asked her, ‘If you were going to vote, who would you vote for?’ She explains, ‘Obama probably. I saw him on the Tyra Banks show once and he seemed pretty cool."¹³

He seemed pretty cool.

Sadly, this sort of dementia is how many of us decide who should be running the most powerful country in the world. This is how the truly ignorant and those lacking any knowledge beyond what they see on the Tyra Banks Show, The View, or some other medium of mind-numbing entertainment, cast their vote for President of the United States. This is how they do it. This is how people who do not get into all that political stuff stumble into the voting booth and cast a vote for the candidate who seemed pretty cool.

As Barack Obama’s fantasy appeared to be morphing into imminent reality in 2008, some in the media, rather than ask about the intelligence of a particular candidate (or in the case of 2008, the vice presidential candidate), instead, dared to ask whether the voter was smart enough to vote. The ABC news magazine program 20/20 - while surely angering liberals who were content with their lock on the stupid vote - had their doubts about some voters being able to cast an intelligent vote. John Stossel’s report, Should Uninformed Voters Be Casting Their Vote on Nov. 4,¹⁴ questioned whether the lack of general civic knowledge ought to disqualify a person from voting. While lacking in what political scientists would refer to as a representative sample of the voting cohort, Stossel’s report did reveal that some voters are plainly ignorant when it comes to matters of government, history, politics, and geography.

Captured in Stossel’s piece were voters who couldn’t name the number of states in the United States, couldn’t name how many senators there are, and those who thought the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade concerned issues of segregation or race (somewhere there exists a hilarious bit about how someone even thought Roe v. Wade were the options George Washington considered when crossing the Potomac). Stossel’s report also revealed that in the midst of a very contentious presidential campaign, there were voters who could not identify the vice presidential candidates, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. While few could identify Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, almost everyone recognized Judge Judy. Stossel’s 20/20 segment included the thoughts of Bryan Caplan, BA, PHD, George Mason University professor, fan of role playing games, and author of The Myth of the Rational Voter (2007). Kaplan said that …if you don’t know what you’re doing, you are not doing the country a favor by voting.

Surely there are those out there who will say that the above mentioned people were most likely Republicans and voted for McCain. Perhaps. However, the experienced and respected (I’m sure by someone) polling organization Zogby International tells us in definitive terms that many Obama voters were themselves civic dimwits.¹⁵ In a post-election poll of Obama voters, Zogby revealed that of those who chose Obama, more than half of them could not name which Party controlled the houses of Congress. And while you’re thinking of stowing dollars away for your child’s college education, you will note that Zogby also tells us that more than half of those polled Obama voters were college graduates. Say what you want about George Bush and his college education, but I’m quite sure ol’ number 43 could tell you which party controlled the houses of Congress.

John Stossel and ABC were not the first to wonder if idiots are best locked out of the voting booth. Based on Pew Center polls from 1996 and 1997, and Times Mirror Center statistics from 1990, University of Cincinnati professor Stephen Earl Bennett, never at a loss for words concerning the head-spinning antics of the American voter, concludes that our youth avoid being exposed to mass media coverage of public affairs, which in turn reveals a youthful disregard for politics.¹⁶ Bennett adopts the consequential term for this avoidance and calls it ignorance, from which he ponders; ….the data presented here raise doubts about many young Americans’ capabilities as democratic citizens.¹⁷ Bennett would not have not have surprised to learn then that a Pew report in 2008 found that 66% of those voters under the age of thirty voted for Obama.¹⁸

Often times, people will say that they forgot there was an election - seriously, people do this. Then there are those who do remember that there is an election but from there it is all downhill. During the 1981 race for governor of New Jersey, the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University released a poll which found of the number of registered voters polled, only half of them could identify the two major candidates for that office.¹⁹ The poll’s director, Dr. Clifford Zukin, said that only one person in four expressed the ability to cast an intelligent, informed vote. Imagine these people sitting as a jury of your peers! After eight months of a campaign for the highest office in the state and only half of the voters could name who was running for the damn thing, and half of them were not exactly sure why they were going to vote the way that they were. It should come as no surprise then that it took twenty-seven days to figure out the winner of this race – it was the Republican.

In most elections for an office above that of dog catcher, and outside of New Jersey, voters know who the major candidates are, yet issue understanding – that political stuff - remains as blurry as chemistry. In discussing how stupid people vote, author Bruce Bower, a Master of psychology and journalism, wrote in a 2008 edition of Science News (How Stupid People Vote), that according to surveys, half of all registered voters display little understanding of how government works or of current political issues.²⁰ Political scientists William H. Flanigan and Nancy H. Zingale, never at a loss for material as they have updated their Political Behavior of the American Electorate book thirteen different times (which I’m sure they force their Minnesota university students to purchase), wrote that the average voter is aware of a candidate’s party affiliation and whether or not that candidate is the incumbent, but in matters of more importance most candidates…are unknown quantities for the average voter.²¹

Not only did the voters in the 2000 Bush/Gore race have trouble with the ballot, but they also had trouble identifying which candidate was the liberal candidate and which candidate was the conservative candidate, which throws a big ole wrench into any expert analysis of voting behavior based on the blue state and red state context . Flanigan and Zingale wrote that there were voters in 2000 who thought that Bush was an extreme liberal, while others thought that Gore was an extreme conservative.²² Similarly, 15% of those that voted could not say which of the candidates proposed cutting federal spending and government services to the irresponsible and which candidate proposed an increase in government spending and services.

In 1994, Republicans waged what has been called a Republican Revolution based on their issue manifesto called the Contract With America. Ostensibly, as a result of this detailed policy plan, which the Republicans promised would turn America around (which basically is the platform of every campaign), Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress, became the leaders in the number of Republicans holding state governorships while also taking control of the majority of state legislatures. Two months following the election the Chicago Tribune wrote that the phrase ‘Contract With America’ has been on everyone’s lips since the election.²³ Did this Republican issue plan really have the effect on the voters that the experts led us to believe? You decide.

According to every liberal’s favorite linguist and part-time political hack Noam Chomsky, a month following the election only 25% of the population had ever heard of the Contract With America, and, despite intensive post-election coverage, only 45% had heard of the phrase four months after the election.²⁴ A year later, the name Monica Lewinski was on everyone’s lips because her lips were…well, you know, and I would bet the farm that nearly twenty years later a vast majority of people over the age of thirty are still able to tell you who she is/was. Yet, the perfect-storm of a political plan, with a catchy name that supposedly ignited a political revolution, and less than six months after the political bloodbath a majority of the people couldn’t even remember what it was! Lincoln should have been so lucky.

The number one issue on the minds of the voters in 1994, at least the specter of the issue rather than its details, was welfare reform. Chomsky writes that 46% of voters said that welfare reform was the top priority in 1994, the welfare system was out of control they said.²⁵ Most (44%) said that we were spending too much on welfare, while 23% felt that we were not being liberal enough. However, as Chomsky relates to his loyal following, when the term assistance to the poor was substituted for the word welfare in the same question, only 13% of those polled said we were spending too much, while 64% said we need to redistribute much more of our income to the have-nots and the irresponsible. Welfare is bad; assistance to the poor is great. The Bush administration should have referred to the war with Iraq as a forceful negotiation with the enemy, perhaps the public opinion polls would have read differently. Words matter when the listener/reader is ill informed.

The web site WindyCitizen.com ran a project following the 2008 election entitled, Why I Voted.²⁶ Of the many video responses to the project’s main question, none reflected an intelligent answer based on an understanding of a major issue of the day. Instead, these voters paid enough attention to that political stuff to be able to repeat the major rhetorical issues of the day: change, duty, responsibility, and history. They voted for change while ignoring the fact that the candidate who was spouting pretty words of change had acted no differently behind the headlines than any other political tramp in his rise to power. They said they voted out of duty and responsibility while ignoring any notion that it ought to be their duty and responsibility to be informed. They voted to make history while ignoring future suffering. Half of all marriages end in the first five years due to the fact that the coupling was made based on superficial, Hallmark-induced reasoning rather than for true love.

Noam Chomsky is not alone in his thoughts about issue ignorance and voting behavior. In their unflattering expose on the American voter, Flanigan and Zingale write that in most elections many voters do not have a clue as to where the candidates stand on the issues.²⁷ According to Flanigan and Zingale, voters do two things; they either project their own issue stance as belonging to their favorite candidate, or, they adopt an issue position based on how they think their favorite candidate stands on the same issue. Then again, there are times when people care less about the issues or the politics of the candidate, but still support them.

Writing for the BlackPressUSA Network member The Weekly Challenger in 2009, Jeremy Levitt stated the many reasons he supported Obama for president, but he also added this caveat; I do not support Obama because of his politics.²⁸ According to some, it is quite alright to play grownup and vote with that mindset. In 2008, New York Times writer Linda Hirshman, while defending the ignorance of female voters like Whoopi, wrote; [m]ost voters aren’t policy wonks,²⁹ thus it is fine to use some other method in choosing whom to vote for. The word wonk infers a detailed understanding of a subject matter or issue. Many politicians are not even qualified to call themselves wonks on particular issues and we cannot then, as Jefferson and Hamilton would most likely have wanted to have it, expect the average voter to be informed as to the minutia of a particular issue. We do not need voters who are policy wonks. However, we do need them to be policy conscious.

Howard Stern does not generally come to mind when one is speaking intelligently on politics. However, in November 2008, Stern conducted a social science experiment - where everyone kept their clothes on - whereby he sent an interviewer to Harlem to ask the residents there who it was that they supported for president in the coming election.³⁰ Quite obviously, the overwhelming majority said that they would be voting for Obama. The real knee-slapper came when the interviewer asked if they supported Obama’s stance on a particular issue, however, the interview exchanged Obama’s stance on the issues for the positions which John McCain was taking, which of course were in opposition to those actually held by Obama and anybody who did not watch The View. Oh yes, they stated, they supported Obama’s position on every issue; from keeping troops in Iraq to choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate. Of course, this was all John McCain. It didn’t matter; they still said that they would vote for Obama. It is a terrible thing when one candidate receives so much support and the issues be dammed due merely to that candidate’s age (*wink*). A Howard Stern social experiment proves a hypothesis by political scientists Flanigan and Zingdale to be correct - scary?

Often times there are issues that voters cannot help be aware of – like a piano falling on their head - and that issue rules their every vote. For example, 88-year old Lugenia Gordon, a black woman from Selma, Alabama, will never forget which party’s candidates first stood up for the rights of the black man in America.³¹ Ms. Lugenia votes Republican all the time, no matter the candidate, because a Republican by the name of Abraham Lincoln fought for the abolition of slavery and giving blacks the right to vote. It does not matter that those two issues have not been a factor in presidential politics in over 200 years, Ms. Lugenia is sticking with the horse that got her here (or, if you will, the elephant – and why do Democrats use the jackass as their party symbol?).

In the context of politics, government, and most things civic, we are an ignorant bunch. Therefore, when we are lacking in cognitive function or when we are lacking in elementary knowledge of the world around us, we develop other, less intelligent criteria to judge who will receive our vote. There are many paths to choose from which leads us to that final voting decision; for instance, being offered cartons of cigarettes and a ride to the polls, as Democrats for Gore in Wisconsin were reported to have done in 2000.³² The experts (so called) would call this practical. Some would call it Democratic politics. Those involved in it would refer to it as community organizing.

Often we let race, ethnicity, gender, or religion guide our vote (either for or against), either of them weighed as if we are involved in some superficial match-making game. Regardless, when, as political scientist William Jacoby of Michigan State University discovered after studying surveys done before and after the 2000 and 2004 elections, 80% of the voting public reports only peripheral concerns with politics,³³ then it is obvious we are employing some sort of moronic process in determining our voting choices: He seemed pretty cool.

Emotion is arguably the greatest motivator that drives our vote choice. The candidate, through his words, actions, past deeds, or through purposeful political creationism, develops an emotional umbilical cord that feeds the emotions of the voter. Spiked with rhetoric, marketing, and misperception, this pathetic replacement for informational nourishment is cooked up by the shrewd politician, setting a place for the vulnerable voter like the funeral director who attempts to convince the survivors of the dearly departed that it would be a lasting tribute to bury the old bag of bones in a $50,000 coffin. When we are emotional, we do not make