After reading the paper, my take is that it's a great economic analysis of why the Democrat playbook is failing in many places, followed not by a call to change the playbook to respond, but only to find a new way to talk about the playbook.

IOW, it's nothing special. I'm surprised the words "not getting our message out" didn't appear anywhere in it, as that seems to be the same tired excuse; it's not that our message is being rejected (what really happened) but that the populace were too dumb/misguided/uninformed about our message (their take, and why they don't fix it).

After thinking about it, the problem with the "self interest" model is as you suggest; it's not the "important" issue(s) to the national party, but the national party's stance on the issues that matter to the locality.

Take two basic examples: Kansas and Louisiana. From the outside, looking purely at the economic data, one might assume both ought to be Democrat strongholds. Plenty of low-income people.

The difference is in the makeup of the areas. Everything in Louisiana operates either on the government dole or by graft. The mindset of the state (particularly cities like New Orleans but the rural areas as well) is that government is the solution. It's the nanny-state mentality, and within that mentality, Democrats rule supreme because they can still claim credit for Welfare and various other handouts.

Kansas, by contrast, is an outpost of the old "Puritan work ethic" mentality. Lots of farmers, lots of hard workers. People who identify with getting up, doing a day of manual labor, and relying to a certain extent on their own resources. While economics may be important here, more important are likely the other social/religious issues.

Result? Democrats lose in Kansas, because the precise issues which they need for their base (berkeley-types) lose in Kansas.

I think you gotta be really careful before you ascribe selfish motives to why your political opponents believe what they do and benign motives to why your side believes what it does.

I could go in to why I disagree with your assessment, but ultimately who the angels are and who the devils are is beside the point of my post.

The question at the heart of the post is whether people /should/ vote in their economic interest. Franks and Rose argue whether or not that's what people are doing... I'm more interested in whether that's what they should be doing.

Separately, I don't agree that Republicans are winning on their economic platform. I'm pretty sure the Republican Party agrees with me, as if they didn't they would be cutting spending and privatizing social security while trying to avoid talking about gay marriage and abortion. That has not been the case.

I think you misunderstood. Remember, I don't give either party the benefit of the doubt when it comes to motives. Republicans and Democrats are both largely motivated by one purpose, Power, and the rest is secondary.

That being said, I was trying to postulate the local cultural differences that explain why certain parts of a message resonate better in different areas.

I agree with you 100% that Republicans suck these days on the economic platform. That's where it falls apart though - because my postulate is that for voters in places like Kansas, economic voting is secondary to other issues.

As to whether people "should" vote in their own self-interest, I'm of the firm opinion that people should decide what issues are most important to them (economics, social issues, government programs, whatever else) and vote on those issues. And it's a pity that too many times, we wind up sacrificing "lesser" issues for greater ones due to the nature of the two-party system and the fact that referendums don't happen often enough.

We agree on the main thrust of voters concentrating on social issues. I was more responding to your first comment that seemed to state that the Democrats economic playbook was failing them.

You may be skeptical of both Republicans and Democrats politicians, but when it comes to the demographics of the people that stand on one side or the other and the respectability of their philosophies... that's a different story.

Your theory would have had more weight if it hadn't relied on the notion that people that agree with you (more often than the other guys) are hard-working and responsible and the people that disagree with you (more often than the other guys) are lazy and demand to be taken care of.

So far as sacrificing issues... that's going to happen under any system of government because no party is going to agree with you 100% of the time* unless your fellow citizens agree with you 100% of the time.

*- Even if one does follow your views position-for-position, a party that DISagrees with you 100% of the time will be in power roughly half of the time, so it's a mixed blessing.

I certainly don't vote for my immediate financial interest, primarily because my situation is secure enough that I don't need to worry about it all the time. Hierarchy of needs and all that.

While I'm still a little bit baffled that the more financially strapped don't tend more strongly towards the left out of self-interest, I wouldn't be surprised if it mostly comes down to PR. Bush-style republicans simply do a better job of relating to the less educated.

I don't think that I vote my financial interest at the moment, though that will change once Camille and I have kids and she's pulling down a doctor's pay.

I think "a better job of relating to" is an understatement, but I think that does tie in to the social issues at stake. The lifestyle that the Democratic Party seems to most loudly support is an urban, non-judgmental society of shifting moral standards of personal conduct. At its worst, it represents libertinism, hedonism, or even a sort of nihilism. The Republican Party seems to most loudly support a quiet small-town life unphased by the world that surrounds it (especially shifting moral codes). At its worst, it represents a sort of puritanistic condemnation of anything it does not immediately recognize and understand, including not only morals but ethnicity.

Pick your poison.

People whose greatest fear is the libertinistic hedonism of the left will naturally gravitate towards the right, even against their immediate financial self-interest. Hence the redneck Republicans. People whose greater fear is the judgmental xenophobia of the right will gravitate towards the left, even against their self-interest. Hence the Limousine Liberal. A lot of these, though certainly not all, cannot be swayed by good or bad PR.

Of course, my views of views are strange. I believe that very few people do an independent evaluation of each issue (or clump of issues) and choose the ideological alignment (not just parties, but subgroups within and outside of parties) that they side with most often or most passionately. I think that for one reason or another (such as our greatest fear, see above, or a multitude of other motivations) and then our views on issues unexplored will start to fall in line with whatever we've decided, excepting those issues that for whatever reason warrant greater scrutiny.