The Return of the Son of the Low-Information “Independent”

Via Andrew Sabl at The Reality-Based Community, we learn that PPP’s latest survey in Mississippi asked respondents for whom would they vote in a hypothetical matchup between Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis.

Among Democrats, Lincoln wins 76 – 10.  Among Republicans, Lincoln wins 45 – 36.  But among “independents” the match-up is tied at 44% each.

I’ve been banging on this same drum for years, but I am going to go ahead and repeat myself again:  there is no such thing as an “independent voter,” just “low information voters.”

I mean, seriously . . . who in their right mind would consider voting for the leader of the Confederacy against the United States of America, over the man on the penny, the five dollar bill and Mt. Rushmore, the man who is ½ of the presidents celebrated on Presidents’ Day, the man most or at least many people consider the greatest president who ever lived?

Not Conservative Republican Mississippi voters.  They go with Lincoln (albeit not by as large a majority as one would hope).  Nope, it’s “the independents.”  Now is that because they are so damned “independent” that they are willing to buck conventional wisdom and think outside the box?  Well, I suppose . . . maybe.  But I think it is much more likely that these know-nothing nimrods just don’t have the slightest clue who Lincoln and Davis were. 

And before anybody objects that there couldn’t possibly be people in the U.S. who don’t know who Abraham Lincoln was, let me remind you of exactly who lives amongst us.  These are the people who think Canada is the northernmost state.  These are the people who think Africa is a country.  These are the people who – despite a lifetime’s worth of WWII Hollywood movies – still cannot name 2 of the 3 countries the United States fought during World War Two.  These are the people who don’t know against which country we fought the Revolutionary War.

(I saw that poll result.  A few people suggested it was Japan.  I am not making that up.)

Only people so boundlessly clueless as to not have already picked a side in modern America’s polarized politics could possibly think that electing Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis would pretty much be a toss-up:  eh, six of one, half a dozen of the other.  And not because they are wise, thoughtful, prudent “independents,” but because they are ignorant, self-involved, know-nothing “morons.”

And it is upon these low-information morons that every four years the goddamned presidential election turns.

I mean . . . Jefferson Davis. 

Jesus wept.