So, last night I did something I rarely do, which is just drop in on Anderson Cooper’s show on CNN. I was wondering if there was any update on the California fires and I was still getting dinner out and while there was no fire coverage at the time I tuned in, there was a story on a small community in Kentucky and the focus of the story was what the effects on the local schools would be if Trump followed through on his promises regarding the Department of Education and federal funding for schools.
The state, of course, heavily voted for Trump (almost 65%) as did the county (I forget which one) in which the school district was located. The correspondent interviewed both a principal and a superintendent. Both talked about how desperately they needed federal funding and how catastrophic it would be if the money dried up.
They both said they voted for Trump and for “conservative values” but both explicitly stated that that when it came to losing federal funds for their schools they “didn’t vote for that.”
I will confess to shouting back at the television (at least twice): “Yes! You did vote for that!”
The principal specifically stated that she simply believed in her heart that Trump would take away the funds, but that she knew Trump would “make America first again” (or something to that effect).
Like a lot of people, these Kentuckians understand their needs and see federal spending on those needs as vital, even if all that other spending is just plain wasteful!
Along the same lines, I noted this Bloomberg headline this morning: A Trump-Voting Farmer’s Warning: Mass Deportations Would Be a Disaster.
He wants to stop illegal border crossings and likes the idea of deporting migrants convicted of serious crimes. But when it comes to Trump’s broader promises to expel all 11 million undocumented people living in the country, DiMare thinks it would be a disaster for American farmers.
“We have to secure our borders south and north, but you have to have a workforce in this country,” said DiMare, whose family has 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) of tomato farms in Florida and California. “There’s no doubt that is going to restrict and put pressure on farming and many other industries that rely on this workforce.”
The entire piece is a run-down pretty much of what anyone who has more than a surface understanding of the issue knows. That is, we are dealing here with a complicated, market-driven situation wherein if the actual promises are kept there will be significant downsides for agriculture.
It is truly amazing to me, but it is all too common, for someone like DiMare to prattle on about securing the border while at the same time wanting to tap into the labor supply created by a porous border.
Here’s my guess: he wants to make sure that all the drugs, terrorists, rapists, and murderers are blocked from entering while ensuring a supply of cheap labor. After all, all those folks picking tomatoes are just a bunch of hard-working individuals willing to work for lower wages. They aren’t a security risk.
Or something.
At a bare minimum, it is worth reminding everyone that if Trump actually does what he promises food prices will go up. (And yes, there is a very real conversation to be had that underscores that exploitation of undocumented labor makes food artificially cheaper than it should be).
Of course, this is all a political science reminder (along with some of the public opinion stuff noted in James Joyner’s post earlier today) that voters aren’t always especially sophisticated about policy and, moreover, they have baskets full of preferences (some of which are contradictory and certainly have different ranks) but only one vote.
Not only do voters have but one vote to cast per office, per election, but there are only two viable parties. That is a lot of ideas, beliefs, preferences, hopes, and the like to shove into one limited set of choices via a very imperfect vehicle for registering what one wants out of government.
And, again, this is how and why someone like Trump can get elected, even as many of his voters tell themselves they didn’t vote for that!
My point is simply something that has been well-known for a very long time: voters have many different, and often contradictory motivations for casting their votes. Further, they often have imperfect (to put it mildly) understandings about how public policy works.
In some ways, this is why democracy sucks, but just sucks less than all the other possible options.
This is why I think that representative democracy, flawed as it is, works best if a system has more parties (making it easier to find a fit between voter preference and their electoral choices) and stronger parties (making it clearer what specific labels mean and how they are likely to perform in office). None of that is a panacea.
It would also be nice if there was more clarity over policy outcome responsibility, but as it stands it is hard to know who is ultimately responsible (federal government, state government, the courts, the House, the Senate, etc.) and so people tend to make very simplistic assumptions about the president’s power.
