Brad over at Sadly! No:

One of American liberalism’s saddest myths is that the American people are inherently good, optimistic folks who have been duped into voting against their interests by crafty Republicans who play on their spites and resentments. If only the Democrats could nominate someone who embodies a new kind of politics where people are offered hope instead of anger, this reasoning goes, they will see the truth and sweep the Democrats into power.

In the real world, of course, this isn’t true. People love voting out of spite in this country, and the Republicans know it.

The link is to a Mark Ames piece from 2004 that’s really pretty good:

In this country, tens of millions of people choose to watch FoxNews not simply because Americans are credulous idiots or at the behest of some right-wing corporate cabal, but because average Americans respect viciousness.

Which, by the way, the exact argument made in the academic study about Ann Coulter linked a few days back.

At the other end of the economic spectrum, non-millionaires who vote Republican, the so-called “Reagan Democrats,” know that the country is not theirs. They are mere wage-slave fodder, so their only hope is to vote for someone who makes the very happiest people’s lives a little less happy. If I’m an obese 40-something white male living in Ohio or Nevada, locked into a permanent struggle with foreclosure, child support payments and outsourcing threats, then I’m going to vote for the guy who delivers a big greasy portion of misery to the Sarandon-Robbins dining room table, then brags about it on FoxNews. Even if it means hurting myself in the process. …

<snip>

It’s simple mathematics: Bring down the coastal elite and the single 40-something Ohio salesman might actually matter. And if they’re not brought down, but instead remain in a constant state of indigestion over policies that could ruin them at any time? Well, that’s still better than nothing.

Read the whole thing, as they say.