[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.