since supposedly democratic policies benefit 'white working-class voters,' and such voters often go republican, one concludes that they are voting against their own interests, which is supposedly irrational. so, they must be manipulated by right-wing monsters. now here are some assumptions packed into this: one's self-interest is exhausted by maximum cash. and people do, or ought to, vote in their own self-interest as they understand it. (never mind the incredibly impoverished conception of rationality.)
i am a white man. if i voted my own self-interest, i might well vote for the most extreme racist and sexist available. hard to blame me for that if you're attacking people as irrational for failing to vote their self-interest. even now, i actually do benefit from the structural racism and sexism of our culture; obviously, i should devote my vote to preserving these come what may. folks like me didn't find jim crow at all inconvenient; i don't even know what people were complaining about; we might try that shit again. say feminists are right and the republican war on women represents men's obsession with controlling women's bodies. well hard to argue that we don't benefit, among other things economically, from such control. it would be irrational for me not to support all such measures.
