Kerry voters are smarter than Bush voters

I vowed to let the past presidential election pass from my mind as much as possible, so I could devote my brain cells to immediate important matters—such as watching the Golden Globe Awards tonight. However, reading a quote from Bush’s interview with the Washington Post in today’s paper has gotten my indignation fired up again.

When asked about whether anyone would be held accountable for mistakes and misjudgments such as (1) not being welcomed as liberators in Iraq, (2) not finding weapons of mass destruction, and (3) problems in the post-war process, Bush said: “Well, we had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 election. And the American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me, for which I'm grateful.”

That answer is so irritating. It denigrates the honor of all the Americans and Iraqis who have died because of the Bush administration’s missteps, miscalculations, and mistakes. And now our President says that nobody needs to be held accountable for over a thousand American deaths and tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths.

Bush is grateful. Well, isn’t that wonderful? Since he was elected by a slim majority, there’s no need to study the reasons for what’s gone wrong in Iraq since the invasion, or to learn what caused the abject failure of pre-war intelligence that predicted WMD’s surely would be found.

Bush claims to be an education president. Actually, he’s the non-education president. He shows no interest in improving the knowledge of himself, his advisors, or his administration. All that he feels he needs is faith, I guess, faith in wrong-headed policies that are driving this country over economic, environmental, national security, and foreign policy cliffs.

Our president considers that he’s been given a mandate by the voters. What he doesn’t consider is that he was elected by uninformed voters, which makes this an unconvincing mandate. A poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) found that a majority of Bush supporters were clueless that WMDs hadn't been found in Iraq, or that there was no substantive connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, while a majority of Kerry supporters were correctly informed.

Yes, “Win or Lose, Kerry Voters are Smarter than Bush Voters.” This humorous yet depressingly accurate article by Ted Rall appeared in the January issue of Funny Times, a wonderful progressive publication that we keep in the bathroom for not-so-serious reading.

If you voted for Kerry, read the article and smile, knowing that you did the right thing. “If you voted for Bush,” says Rall, “we accept that we have to share the country with you. We’re adjusting to the possibility that there may be more of you than there are of us. But don’t demand our respect. You lost it on November 2.”

Comments

[Carol Ann]

Sorry you think we're uninformed.

[Brian]

Carol Ann, I meant nothing personal when I wrote about uninformed Bush voters. What I was referring to is this: it is unarguable that a higher percentage of Bush voters were uninformed about the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, and there is no evidence of ties between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.

So what put Bush over the top in the election were votes from people who didn’t understand the facts in Iraq (plus, I’m sure, many other facts about the deficit, the environment, and so on). I didn’t mean that everyone who voted for Bush was uninformed, just that polls prove that the overall group of Kerry voters was better informed than the overall group of Bush voters.

I took the title of my post from the author of the "Funny Times" piece. "Uninformed" isn't equivalent to "less smart" (you can be highly intelligent but ignorant of a fact). Rall used some poetic humor license here, which is what all good comics do. Myself, I take it to mean "Bush voters on the whole are less smart than Kerry voters about key Iraq facts."

[Carol Ann]

How do you know? Have you interviewed all Bush voters or taken a poll? Sorry dear Brother, but I don't agree with you.

[Brian]

I didn't have to take a poll to learn that Bush supporters were uninformed, because one was done by someone else: http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/html/new_10_21_04.html

The poll showed that a majority of Bush supporters had erroneous beliefs about WMD and an Al Qaeda/Iraq connection, while a majority of Kerry supporters had accurate beliefs.

The reason? Cognitive dissonance--an inability to meld new factual information with old conceptions.

Quoting from a summary of the results, "The roots of the Bush supporters' resistance to information," according to Steven Kull, "very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and equally in the near pitch-perfect leadership that President Bush showed in its immediate wake. This appears to have created a powerful bond between Bush and his supporters--and an idealized image of the President that makes it difficult for his supporters to imagine that he could have made incorrect judgments before the war, that world public opinion could be critical of his policies or that the President could hold foreign policy positions that are at odds with his supporters."

[Buy Republican]

The mistake in the analysis here is you take one issue that's of prime importance to you and focus on it. Many voters may have, and in fact did, vote for Bush for other reasons having nothing to do with any war or WMD. Second, generally, survey after survey after survey of the American voter shows that Republicans are better informed about news, current events, politics, and history than are their Democrat counterparts (not to mention on average higher income and better educated - see 2004 CNN exit polls online). Broaden the questions beyond the one topic you're obssessed with, and this becomes apparent. Take a browse through any of a number of books on the American voter available on Amazon.com to confirm this. Finally, we did away with poll taxes and tests a long time ago - so no one has to justify their vote to your liking.