I got into an interesting discussion in a comments thread last night with I got into an interesting discussion in a comments thread last night with Rock, who was surprised that Hillary Clinton won among New Hampshire voters earning less than $50,000. "I don't see Clinton's economic policies as being particularly more populist than Obama's, if [populist] at all," he wrote. "Perhaps Obama's 'centrist' rhetoric on social security and other issues has hurt him here." I think Rock makes the same false assumption as a number of progressive commentators surprised by Clinton's working class support: The assumption that people vote on policy issues. If people voted on policy, maybe voters who rank economic insecurity as their number one concern would support the more populist John Edwards. In New Hampshire, those voters chose Clinton. And if people voted on policy, perhaps New Hampshire union members wouldn't have supported Clinton, either. After all, don't they realize Mark Penn's consulting firm does union busting? Of course, I'm overstating the case -- we all realize (I hope) that unlike committed denizens of the political blogosphere, most Americans have no clue who Mark Penn is or what he does. But in all seriousness, talking to caucus-goers in Iowa, I saw up close just how uninformed the average voter is when it comes to policy. (And remember, an Iowa caucus-goer is part of an elite group of just 11 percent of eligible voters!) I heard that John Edwards seemed to really love his wife. That Hillary Clinton would bring Bill back to the White House, where he belonged. That Barack Obama was charismatic. I would press voters to tell me what policy proposals they were drawn to. This question was often met by a reassertion of just how honest, hard-working, or attractive Candidate X was. Other times, people told me they liked Candidate X's "health care" plan. What about it did they like? Well, it was a plan. And health care in America is messed up. In other words, correlation does not imply causation. Just because a voter making under $50,000 chose Hillary, it does not mean that he or she supports a particular Clinton economic agenda for working families. Voters are people, too. They have complicated, irrational, gut-level reasons for making the choices they do. --Dana Goldstein
