Clinging To A Stereotype
Apr 18th, 2008 at 11:17 am by Susie
I was impressed by Mr. Frank’s book when it came out. But my Princeton colleague Larry Bartels, who had an Op-Ed in The Times on Thursday, convinced me that Mr. Frank was mostly wrong.
In his Op-Ed, Mr. Bartels cited data showing that small-town, working-class Americans are actually less likely than affluent metropolitan residents to vote on the basis of religion and social values. Nor have working-class voters trended Republican over time; on the contrary, Democrats do better with these voters now than they did in the 1960s.
It’s true that Americans who attend church regularly are more likely to vote Republican. But contrary to the stereotype, this relationship is weak at low incomes but strong among high-income voters. That is, to the extent that religion helps the G.O.P., it’s not by convincing the working class to vote against its own interests, but by producing supermajorities among the evangelical affluent.
So why have Republicans won so many elections? In his book, “Unequal Democracy,” Mr. Bartels shows that “the shift of the Solid South from Democratic to Republican control in the wake of the civil rights movement” explains all — literally all — of the Republican success story.
Does it matter that Mr. Obama has embraced an incorrect theory about what motivates working-class voters? His campaign certainly hasn’t been based on Mr. Frank’s book, which calls for a renewed focus on economic issues as a way to win back the working class.
Indeed, the book concludes with a blistering attack on Democrats who cater to “affluent, white-collar professionals who are liberal on social issues” while “dropping the class language that once distinguished them sharply from Republicans.” Doesn’t this sound a bit like the Obama campaign?
Anyway, the important point is that working-class Americans do vote on economic issues — and can be swayed by a politician who offers real answers to their problems.
And one more thing: let’s hope that once Mr. Obama is no longer running against someone named Clinton, he’ll stop denigrating the very good economic record of the only Democratic administration most Americans remember.
Obama and Clinton have been running against each other from the start - Edwards, Richardson et el never gained any traction. Obama is ahead in the popular vote (which is grossly undercounted to Clinton’s favor btw – Obama has cleaned up in caucasses in which actual votes are routinely undercounted – he might realistically have a lead of as much as 2 million votes) and the delegate vote.
I really fail to understand all the keystrokes devoted to the claim Obama can’t win. Obama IS winning. It really is that simple. Politics is a winner-take-all game.
Of course, in a perverse way, that justifies the type of advice that people like Mark Penn have given: screw the working class, they’ll vote for you anyway, and let’s go after the middle class professional suburban vote. I don’t like it, I don’t think it’s right, I don’t think it wins, but we need to get past Franks’ myths if the Dems are going to reverse the Reagan revolution and win in two-on-two races.
Bartels’ paper is worth reading and really does make Franks look like Alvin Toffler–it sounds true, but it isn’t. To quote the summary of Bartels’ first analysis of the statistics on voting patterns, class and stated positions on social, economic and political issues that Franks did not bother to look at
• Has the white working class abandoned the Democratic Party? No. White voters in the bottom third of the income distribution have actually become more reliably Democratic in presidential elections over the past half-century, while middle- and upper-income white voters have trended Republican. Low-income whites have become less Democratic in their partisan identifications, but at a slower rate than more affluent whites – and that trend is entirely confined to the South, where Democratic identification was artificially inflated by the one-party system of the Jim Crow era.
• Has the white working class become more conservative? No. The average views of low-income whites have remained virtually unchanged over the past 30 years. (A pro-choice shift on abortion in the 1970s and ‘80s has been partially reversed since the early 1990s.) Their positions relative to more affluent white voters – generally less liberal on social issues and less conservative on economic issues – have also remained virtually unchanged.
• Do working class “moral values” trump economics? No. Social issues (including abortion) are less strongly related to party identification and presidential votes than economic issues are, and that is even more true for whites in the bottom third of the income distribution than for more affluent whites. Moreover, while social issue preferences have become more strongly related to presidential votes among middle- and high-income whites, there is no evidence of a corresponding trend among low-income whites.
• Are religious voters distracted from economic issues? No. The partisan attachments and presidential votes of frequent church-goers and people who say religion provides “a great deal” of guidance in their lives are much more strongly related to their views about economic issues than to their views about social issues. For church-goers as for non-church-goers, partisanship and voting behavior are primarily shaped by economic issues, not cultural issues.
What’s the Matter with What’s the Matter with Kansas?
http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/kansas.pdf
Franks’ response is at http://www.tcfrank.com/dismissd.pdf. I don’t think it strengthens his position, but you can judge for yourself.
Bartels’ final version is at http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/kansasqjps06.pdf (revised after Franks critiqued the critique)
I have enormous respect for Paul Krugman. But I feel he is becoming more and more a spinmeister for the Clinton campaign. I don’t find that Obama is tearing down Clinton or the Clinton administration to the extent that Hillary and Bill are attempting to tear down Obama by slingling out emotionally-laden charges and hoping something will stick. Fortunately it is not sticking with the Democratic stalwarts, including superdelegates, who can see beyond the spin and sleaze. Paul, stop being destroying your good reputation by providing the intellectual legitimacy for the sleazy campaign tactics of the Clintons.
Am I dense here or what? If working class folks have been voting in their economic interests (as opposed to on social issues), how did they end so screwed over these last 7 1/2 years? Hello??? Job losses, union busting, no healthcare, record home foreclosures, a war being fought mostly by working class kids (my two nephews are cases in point) . How are working class voters making the smart choice here based on their pocketbooks? Something else is causing them to pull the lever for politicians that simply don’t deliver the economic relief they need.
Heh - The best argument against Krugmen’s claims about how great everything was for this working stiff over the Clinton years is found in a column by … Paul Krugman! Be sure to check out the chart he included that shows no real improvement during the 90’s.
” Since the late 1970s the America I knew has unraveled. We’re no longer a middle-class society, in which the benefits of economic growth are widely shared: between 1979 and 2005 the real income of the median household rose only 13 percent, but the income of the richest 0.1% of Americans rose 296 percent.
Most people assume that this rise in inequality was the result of impersonal forces, like technological change and globalization. But the great reduction of inequality that created middle-class America between 1935 and 1945 was driven by political change; I believe that politics has also played an important role in rising inequality since the 1970s”
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/introducing-this-blog/
memyself…
which part of given the choice of the 2 candidates, he’s concluded that Hillary is the more ‘liberal’ don’t you understand?
I realize that makes him evil in your eyes…but at what point do Obama crazies stop demonizing those who support Hillary? If that’s what you want to read, there’s plenty over at dailykos.com
The chart of which you speak is about the divergence of the middle class income to the top 10% and the Internet boom created some insanely wealthy people who were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.
The middle class did reasonably well during the 90’s - especially considering the disaster of Reagan’s tax code changes in the 80’s, the Bush 41 slump that Bill inherited and obviously the last 7.33 years under GWB.
But if you feel it worthwhile to bash the only Democrat that actually was elected since 1976…if it makes you feel good…go for it. I mean, he was such a disaster that he actually won twice.