> Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 10:40:34 -0500
> From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
> Subject: Re: "Average Joe"
>
> At 9:08 AM -0500 2/19/03, David Jennings wrote:
> >In Fisk's article and later in Taibbi's, the anti-anti-war
> >protagonist (in the one case actual, in the other imaginary) is a
> >male, and I'm pretty sure Anglo and Christian. You know - "Joe".
> >That's the population among the working class that's not being
> >reached, correct?
>
> One question and one observation.
>
> Question:
> White male workers are a heterogeneous bunch. Subdivided by age,
> income, and religion, which series of white male workers are
> "anti-anti-war"? Evidence?
>
http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr030130.asp
[Gender] "The data show support levels [for invading Iraq] at 59% among men, and 51% among women."
[Race] "A majority of whites, 58%, favor of an invasion of Iraq -- much higher than the 37% of blacks who favor an invasion. A majority of blacks, 56%, oppose an invasion. Sixty percent of Hispanics favor an invasion, while 33% are opposed."
[Education] "But 6 in 10 Americans with a high school education or less support an invasion of Iraq. Despite these education-related differences, there are no differences by household income."
[Age] "The data show that 61% of those between the ages of 18 and 29 support an invasion. Support is somewhat lower among those between the ages of 30 and 49 (58%) and those aged 50 to 64 (54%). But only 44% of those aged 65 and older are in favor of a U.S. invasion of Iraq, while 46% are opposed."
The last part may be confusing. I'm no expert in reading this stuff, but I'd guess that if you took white males between 18-30 with a high school education or less, you'd find something like 80% favorable. Notably absent from this information is data on geographic and religious breakdowns. Also, these numbers measure pro-war sentiment, not anti-anti-war sentiment, which is not entirely the same thing.
> Observation:
> When you belong to an established electoral political party in a
> two-party system and try to win an election, you pay the closest
> attention to "swing voters"
<snip/>
> "Average Joe's" -- apolitical white male workers -- are less
> important in social movements on the left than in electoral politics.
Agreed. My original point was that even among said workers, support for war is thin and based more on fear than Taibbi's version of resentment. That's been my very off the cuff observation here in the hinterlands, anyway.
-dmj