>could it be that even though it's wrong on average, the "Kansas
>thesis" is right on the margin? That is, _some_ workers are fooled by
>the culture wars bait-and-switch and vote against their class
>interest. In turn, only a small shift in the vote might change the
>overall balance of power?
Maybe, but I'm reading the latest version of Bartels' Kansas paper now in the other window. It responds to Frank's self-defense (which he got from Ruy Teixeira) by using education as the proxy for class rather than income. And, in general, it's the upscale white voters who have more conservative social attitudes, and it's also the upscale for whom the social issues are more weighty in their voting choices. In other words, there's no evidence for the bait-and-switch argument, and substantial evidence against it.
And there's this fascinating bit:
> While it seems fruitless to quibble about who is really in the
>working class, it is important to be clear about what we are talking
>about. The potential for confusion is illustrated in a 2005 New York
>Times column by David Brooks entitled "Meet the Poor Republicans."
>Brooks writes that "we've seen poorer folks move over in astonishing
>numbers to the G.O.P." In support of this assertion Brooks notes
>that "George W. Bush won the white working class by 23 percentage
>points in this past [2004] election." The 23-point margin refers to
>white voters without college degrees - precisely the definition of
>the white working class now proposed by Frank. But are these really
>"poorer folks"? Poorer than Brooks and Frank, yes. Poor by the
>standards of ordinary Americans, not really.
> Even in 2004, after decades of increasingly widespread college
>education, the economic circumstances of whites without college
>degrees were not much different from those of America as a whole.
>Among those who voted, 40% had family incomes in excess of $60,000;
>and when offered the choice, more than half actually called
>themselves "middle class" rather than "working class." Meanwhile,
>among working-class white voters who could even remotely be
>considered "poor" - those with incomes in the bottom third of the
>national income distribution - George W. Bush's margin of victory in
>2004 was not 23 percentage points but less than two percentage
>points.
> Over the entire half-century covered by my analysis the mismatch
>between Frank's definition and his concern for "the poor," "the
>weak," and "the victimized" (2004, 1) is even more striking: white
>voters without college degrees were actually more likely to have
>incomes in the top third of the income distribution than in the
>middle third, much less the bottom third. However, Frank himself now
>seems curiously uninterested in such material economic distinctions,
>or in the political behavior of the unlucky members of his working
>class who are not earning middle-class or upper-middle-class
>incomes. His only reaction to the finding that tens of millions of
>white voters in the bottom third of the income distribution have
>become significantly more Democratic over the past half-century is
>to dismiss as "well-known to poll-readers everywhere [the fact] that
>society's very poorest members tend to vote Democratic" (2005, 3).
>Apparently Frank has little interest in meeting the poor Democrats.