Obama And Support From The Rich

Jeanne Cummings of  The Politco must be at a lack for things to write about as yesterday she resorted to repeating often debunked arguments of the presidential campaign in Obama bites rich hands that fed him. Of course seeing her resort to quoting Mark Penn was a dead giveaway that she didn’t have anything meaningful to say.

Cummings began with repeating numbers I’ve also noted many times:

One striking, if little-noted, trend of the past presidential election was that Obama won the affluent vote — those making more than $200,000 annually — with 52 percent. Moving down the income scale a bit, he and John McCain essentially tied among those making between $100,000 and $200,000.

In 2008, exit polls showed the percentage of voters earning more than $100,000 had jumped to a historic high of 26 percent, compared with just 9 percent in 1996. Obama’s strong showing among this bloc reversed a decades-old pattern in which the more money someone made, the more likely he or she was to vote Republican.

It is significant that the Republicans are rapidly losing the support of affluent voters. Then she has to go and quote Mark Penn:

“If Obama comes down more heavily on them, how will they react? Will their support fade? We don’t know the answers,” said Mark Penn, a Democratic strategist who conducted polling for the Clinton White House and advised Hillary Clinton in the presidential campaign.

It’s not as if Obama’s economic policies are coming as any surprise to affluent voters who backed him. During the campaign Obama said he would eliminate the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. We are hardly going to abandon him should he follow through with this.

I noted several times why affluent voters were backing Obama during the campaign in posts such as  Why We Latte Drinking Liberal Elitists Can Vote Democratic. Basically it comes down to two main points: I thought that economically I would be better off voting for Obama despite sightly higher marginal tax rates and even if  I would up paying more in taxes there were still strong reasons to support Obama over continued Republican rule.

Despite all the scare stories, it isn’t until incomes of over $600,000 that tax payers would wind up paying significantly more under Obama’s tax plans, which is why most of us who make over $200,000 and really looked at  the numbers didn’t buy the scare stories.

It is worth  paying a trivial amount in higher taxes for Democratic economic policies which are likely to lead to a stronger economy and allow us to make more money in the long run. Republican policies which primarily shift the wealth to the ultra-wealthy do not benefit those of us making $200,000 to $300,000. We make far more money when the majority of Americans making well under $100,000 have more money in their pockets than we  make from money trickling down from multi-millionaires.

John McCain would have taxed us slightly less each year, but we would have had a hidden tax under McCain. McCain’s promised tax cuts would expand the deficit even more than Obama’s promised spending increases. Such policies would likely be inflationary and represent a hidden tax on our retirement savings. Economically it makes little sense to vote Republican.

Sometimes it even makes sense to pay taxes, and we have to look at  how the tax money is being used. I’d rather pay taxes which will go towards improving our infrastructure, improving education, expanding access to health care, achieving energy independence, and cleaning the environment. Such taxes are far easier to pay than taxes raised under George Bush, even if slightly less, which went to pay for the Iraq War and to reward the pharmaceutical and insurance industries for their support.

Even if we had to pay higher taxes under Obama, many affluent voters would be willing to do so as opposed to voting Republican. At the time of the American revolution the mind set was “give me liberty or give me death.” If they were willing to pay with their lives to preserve our liberty, we can certainly afford to pay for liberty with slightly higher marginal tax rates. Regardless of any differences in the tax rates, the Republican policies to restrict civil liberties and promote the social agenda of the religious right became intolerable to many affluent voters.

In the end it also comes down to rationality. Many educated, affluent voters are simply not going to vote for a political party which denies reality when convenient. We cannot trust a party which lied us into war as George Bush did. A party which has many members which believe in creationism and which deny the scientific consensus on climate change simply cannot be taken seriously in the twenty-first century.

3 Comments

  1. 1
    Jackie Swinton says:

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  2. 2
    worldcash123 says:

    http://www.world-mall.org Obama And Support From The Rich – Liberal Values – Defending … http://tinyurl.com/c3tsnw

  3. 3
    Jackie Swinton says:

    http://www.world-mall.org Obama And Support From The Rich – Liberal Values – Defending … http://tinyurl.com/c3tsnw

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