I just read an excellent article in Le Monde Diplomatique entitled "What's the Matter with West Virginia" by Serge Halemi. It's available in English on the web (mondediplo.org). Halemi is now in West Virginia covering the campaign, and attempts to examine the reasons why so many miners and steel workers in that state, despite its intense history of class struggle, will vote for Bush. I won't attempt to summarize all of Halemi's conclusions, but, as the title suggests, his thinking is in line with that of Tom Frank's recent What's the Matter with Kansas. These writers tend to emphasize the Republicans' skill at nurturing a faux populism, based on questions of taste and lifestyle rather than economic interests.
I think, however, there is a point that these writers, if they don't miss it altogether, tend at least to under-emphasize. It is that faux populism is only possible in the absence of vrai populism. F.D.R. was not a good ol'e boy and never pretended to be. He was a proud patrician. But the fact that many a good ol'e boy voted for him in time after time just may have had something to do with his introduction of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Tennesee Valley Authority and unemployment compensation. Let the Democrats create a jobs program, with decent-paying jobs for the ex-miners and their children now forced into Walmart or the army, and see how long the beneficiaries will continue to go for Bush on the basis of his hunting prowess and down-home drawl. Many workers vote Republican not so much because they wrongheadedly value cultural identity above economic interests, but rather because neither party offers them the opportunity to vote on the basis of their economic interests. They are reduced to voting for the people who look and talk like them because neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to do anything for them. As a woman in eastern Ohio put it in the New York Times a few weks ago (I paraphrase): If the Democrats were going to do anything about jobs or health care, they would have done it under Clinton. But George Bush has middle class values. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20041019/3eb6b0fa/attachment.htm>