Happiness is Being ... A Republican

I am sure I am opening myself up to the ignorance is bliss comment, but I read this recently (February 14th post on http://happinesspolicy.com/):

The Pew poll mentioned below confirms a longstanding trend: Republicans say they are happier than Democrats. This year, 45% of Republicans said they were “very” happy as opposed to 29% of Democrats. That’s a big gap!

This stability is interesting in part because, I take it, that the demographic composition of Republican and Democratic voters has changed not insignificantly over the last 30 years. Is that right? Anyway, what accounts for Dem.-Rep. gap? Well, it’s not income. Republicans report themselves as happier at all points on the income distribution.

I was reminded immediately of the post-2000 election discussions, when the result hung in the balance, and the popular wisdom was that, psychologically, Gore would be more affected by the loss than Bush; indeed, that Bush wouldn't be all that affected, whereas Gore would be relatively devestated. No way to test the reaction of Bush, but Gore has seemed to jump off the deep end, most recently when he decried the assault on freedom in the U.S. on Saudi soil, where freedom is a joke.

Let me offer my two cents on the happiness thing: the defining moment for many idealistic liberals was the Civil Rights movement, when a few people could truly change, and did truly change, the course of the country. It was a clearcut issue from the perspective of who had the moral high ground, and victory went to those on the moral high ground (not that it was exactly a Dem vs. Rep issue). In any event, the thought that the small guy mattered in the course of a big and great nation's policies was evervating to Democrats, and it spilled into Vietnam as well. But post-Vietnam, there are no lay ups - in the form of the good guys against the bad guys where victory is eventually assured for the Dems. Abortion, the War on Terrorism, welfare, the Cold War - standing on the liberal side of these issues in the past 30 years has not exactly been a winning political strategy, nor one where the moral consensus has even swung in their direction.

But why does political loss for Dems lead to more comparative unhappiness? My guess is that it follows from a more utopian (and mistaken) view of the way things could be (creating a greater sense of grief when opportunities are perceived to be lost), coupled with a declining lack of religious faith. Politics is, for many of them, their religion, but there is no after-life reward for the battle fought well but without victory; in contrast, we Republicans can lose but rest happy in the belief that when Democrats "win" they have just secured their place in the eternal fires of hell. Either way - through direct political victories or the shadenfreude over the fates of our political enemies when they win - Republicans are happy. Or maybe we just drink more Chartruese. Either way, I'm happy.