the values voter

Just why DO the dumb rustics in Pennsylvania vote on local domestic issues instead of on "important" things, if they aren't dumb hicks who can't think for themselves?

Funny how nobody ever asks that question. As it turns out, I think it's pretty easy to answer.

Domestic threats to one's immediate sense of safety, economic well being (local), and/or quality of life are taken care of before abstract warnings about things that are/feel more distant.

To people who can't afford to pick the neighborhood with the best school, it isn't a theoretical question, and they don't care if the answer matches some ideal of philosophical purity. Instincts really do keep you alive. Values are what keep your neighborhood safe and clean.

In the real world, the freedom of speech or the right to act has to be balanced with a sense of responsibility. In practice, that means a sense that if you act badly you know your neighbors will condemn you. That is what keeps people in line. That isn't a conservative talking point. That's just the law of nature at work.

And yet the elite Democrats consistently condemn less affluent people for feeling that way.

Liberal elites do not take into account the idea that maybe in their arrogance they are overlooking the possibility that their grand theory has real-world consequences. Maybe their intellectual games are hurting people. And maybe if they want to win elections, they should find out just why people are so angry about their elitism, instead of just blaming the dumb hicks every time they lose (and lose and lose).

Democrats like to think of themselves as the party of compassion and sensitivity. Those would be good traits if they ever want to win the working class white vote back from the Republican party.