It must be true that the Democrats are the party of the downtrodden rather than the millionaires, for they tell us so repeatedly. What’s odd, though, is that the votes of the millionaires trend toward Democrats. That’s if we’re going to believe the CNBC Millionaire survey, and there’s no particular reason why we shouldn’t. This is telling us something rather interesting and even important about political policy.
This isn’t an aberration by the way, those millionaires polled breaking for Joe Biden rather than President Trump — they were heavily pro-Hillary too, for all the good that did her election prospects. But that again is an interesting thing to note. What it tells us is that Trump, whatever else we might think of him, is the radical here, not Biden or Clinton, the two representatives of the Democratic establishment.
Let us just assume to be true what we all believe anyway, people vote with their wallets. Why then would those doing well out of the current system, those millionaires, vote for those who insist they’re for the poor? Those who would upend society so that those currently oppressed by it can make good? And equally, why would those at the top end of society be so against someone who is said to be only in favor of benefiting the rich?
Well, if people do vote rationally in their own interest, then it’s our definition of those positions that is wrong, isn’t it? Middle-of-the-road Democrats aren’t going to change the system much. There will be no pulling away of the protections those with millions of dollars have. The opposition to Trump presumably comes from the opposite fear, that he will upset the cart. He may change society, or at least the economy, so that the poor will indeed benefit and leave out the professional and upper classes.
Even in the standard political dictionary, Trump is certainly the radical in this grouping. It meaning not change in a left-wing direction, just significant change in any such. That could be it of course, those doing well in any societal set up are likely to be conservative in the sense of not wanting to rock the boat too much. A proper shaking up of the system might not leave the same people on those significant incomes with the assets to match, after all. We could thus righteously assume that those doing well would prefer to vote for the status quo.
Such assumptions do work both ways. Watching who benefits from the status quo voting does tell us which politician is going to preserve it. That is, we can tell which special interest will be favored by looking at who votes for it. Someone insisting dentists’ incomes should double would garner a significant portion of dentists’ votes. Watching who dentists vote for tells us something about who favors dentists. Watching which section of society votes against someone tells us something about their fears for their position from that politician.
Being a foreigner, I’m not a Republican and I’m not particularly in favor of Trump either. This isn’t a paean of praise for his policies, therefore. But it is interesting to note that if millionaires’ voting habits break for the Democrats both last and this time, then that must mean that the policies on offer are pro-millionaire. Note that it breaks more Democrats than the general population, thus those policies must be more pro-millionaire than pro-general population. Which just isn’t what the public rhetoric would lead us to believe, is it?
Watching who supports something tells us a lot about who benefits from it. It really could be true that the Democratic Party just isn’t as pro-poor as it makes itself out to be.
Tim Worstall (@worstall) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute. You can read all his pieces at The Continental Telegraph.
