Faith Groups Sustain the Working Poor State representative Ryan Smith and Susan Rogers at Michael's Ice Cream in Jackson, Ohio. The question always comes up with Democratic audiences. It came up constantly during the first 10 days of my annual road trip--in Virginia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania and at a house party that more than 30 people attended in Charleston, W.Va. "Why," asked a lawyer named Ted Kanner, "do so many middle-class and poor white people vote against their economic self-interest?" Lawyers and educators, the heart of the liberal upper middle class, tend to ask this question. It has been popular since Thomas Frank's entertaining but not very substantial screed What's the Matter with Kansas? became a liberal cult classic.