[lbo-talk] Bartels: Bitter = Frank Thesis = All Wrong

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Thu Apr 17 01:47:58 PDT 2008


[Or as he sums it up: social issues are the opiate of the elites.]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/opinion/17bartels.html

The New York Times

April 17, 2008

Op-Ed Contributor

Whos Bitter Now?

By LARRY M. BARTELS

Princeton, N.J.

DURING Wednesday night's Democratic presidential debate in

Philadelphia, Barack Obama once more tried to explain what he meant

when he suggested earlier this month that small-town people of modest

means "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like

them" out of frustration with their place in a changing American

economy. Mr. Obama acknowledged that his wording offended some voters,

but he also reiterated his impression that "wedge issues take

prominence" when voters are frustrated by "difficult times."

Last week in Terre Haute, Ind., Mr. Obama explained that the people he

had in mind "don't vote on economic issues, because they don't expect

anybody's going to help them." He added: "So people end up, you know,

voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to

bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge

in their faith and their community and their families and things they

can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington."

This is a remarkably detailed and vivid account of the political

sociology of the American electorate. What is even more remarkable is

that it is wrong on virtually every count.

Small-town people of modest means and limited education are not fixated

on cultural issues. Rather, it is affluent, college-educated people

living in cities and suburbs who are most exercised by guns and

religion. In contemporary American politics, social issues are the

opiate of the elites.

For the sake of concreteness, let's define the people Mr. Obama had in

mind as people whose family incomes are less than $60,000 (an amount

that divides the electorate roughly in half), who do not have college

degrees and who live in small towns or rural areas. For the sake of

convenience, let's call these people the small-town working class,

though that term is inevitably imprecise. In 2004, they were about 18

percent of the population and about 16 percent of voters.

For purposes of comparison, consider the people who are their

demographic opposites: people whose family incomes are $60,000 or more,

who are college graduates and who live in cities or suburbs. These

(again, conveniently labeled) cosmopolitan voters were about 11 percent

of the population in 2004 and about 13 percent of voters. While

admittedly crude, these definitions provide a systematic basis for

assessing the accuracy of Mr. Obama's view of contemporary class

politics.

Small-town, working-class people are more likely than their

cosmopolitan counterparts, not less, to say they trust the government

to do what's right. In the 2004 National Election Study conducted by

the University of Michigan, 54 percent of these people said that the

government in Washington can be trusted to do what is right most of the

time or just about always. Only 38 percent of cosmopolitan people

expressed a similar level of trust in the federal government.

Do small-town, working-class voters cast ballots on the basis of social

issues? Yes, but less than other voters do. Among these voters, those

who are anti-abortion were only 6 percentage points more likely than

those who favor abortion rights to vote for President Bush in 2004. The

corresponding difference for the rest of the electorate was 27 points,

and for cosmopolitan voters it was a remarkable 58 points. Similarly,

the votes cast by the cosmopolitan crowd in 2004 were much more likely

to reflect voters' positions on gun control and gay marriage.

Small-town, working-class voters were also less likely to connect

religion and politics. Support for President Bush was only 5 percentage

points higher among the 39 percent of small-town voters who said they

attended religious services every week or almost every week than among

those who seldom or never attended religious services. The

corresponding difference among cosmopolitan voters (34 percent of whom

said they attended religious services regularly) was 29 percentage

points.

It is true that American voters attach significantly more weight to

social issues than they did 20 years ago. It is also true that church

attendance has become a stronger predictor of voting behavior. But both

of those changes are concentrated primarily among people who are

affluent and well educated, not among the working class.

Mr. Obama's comments are supposed to be significant because of the

popular perception that rural, working-class voters have abandoned the

Democratic Party in recent decades and that the only way for Democrats

to win them back is to cater to their cultural concerns. The reality is

that John Kerry received a slender plurality of their votes in 2004,

while John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, in the close elections of

1960 and 1968, lost them narrowly.

Mr. Obama should do as well or better among these voters if he is the

Democratic candidate in November. If he doesn't, it won't be because he

has offended the tender sensitivities of small-town Americans. It will

be because he has embraced a misleading stereotype of who they are and

what they care about.

Larry M. Bartels, the director of the Center for the Study of

Democratic Politics at Princeton, is the author of Unequal Democracy:

The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age.



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