Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Challenge Ahead
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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blooper. Others labored mightily to lend some seriousness to the affair,
but theirs was no easy task. It is not too surprising that most people
who didn’t just stay home appeared to vote for the guy with the nicest
smile, who made them feel good, who happened to be running while the
economy was temporarily recovering from the depths to which his
advisers had reduced it.
Despite all this, it could be argued that the marginal differences
between the elite groups that backed the two candidates might yield a
major difference in consequences for victims of US state power at home
and abroad. Sometimes it is worthwhile to make even decisions of thirdorder
importance. On this matter, it is also arguable that the significance
of voting varies with the office; members of the House are likely to be
more responsive to their constituents than Senators, and the latter more
responsive to the electorate than the President. As we move up the
hierarchy and relations become more remote, the incumbent tends more
to cater to the needs of those who control the private economy, who are
also more concerned with domestic and international policy at that level.
As always in US politics, voting remained largely an elite affair in the
Reagan years. Barely 1/3 of the unemployed voted in 1980. Working
class turnouts in the US are roughly 30% lower than middle class
turnouts; blacks vote 20% less than whites. “If we concentrate on
people with less than five years of formal education, a sure sign of class,
we find that in Italy, 75% vote, in America, 8%,” Leuchtenberg
comments. In the 1980 elections, 49% of eligible voters with family
incomes of $5000-$10,000 voted, compared with 74% of those with
incomes over $25,000. 71% of white collar workers and 48% of blue
collar workers voted. An analysis of 30 democracies showed “a
significant correlation between high voter turnout and the presence of
political parties representing clearly defined strata of society—that is,
parties strongly tied to specific income classes, religious groups, or