> The likelihood of voting Republican rises with income. A majority of
> whites start voting Republican at a household income of $25,000. So
> that means a lot of white workers vote Republican. Why do you think
> that is?
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I suspect the majority of these are outside of the major metropolitan
areas - in the rural suburbs and small cities and depressed mill towns -
concentrated in the South and Midwest red states. It's the white working
class and lower middle class constituency which sees the Democrats as the
party of frightening blacks, ball-busting feminists, mincing gays, selfish
trade unionists, tree huggers, rich Jewish eggheads and other "elitists",
illegal immigrants, athiests, gun control freaks, and flag-burners who hate
their country and make excuses for terrorists. You might have the stats to
confirm my impression of where these lower-income Republicans are
concentrated.
This wouldn't be surprising. As you know, fascism also had a mass working class base, and the highly atomized "apolitical" types looked to by Carrol and other leftists (notably the anarchists) as a potential mass base for the far left more often than not broke to the right rather than to the left in a social crisis. That's why Marxists and other socialists have historically and, IMO, quite properly looked to first reach out to and influence those already interested in politics and active in the parties supported by the unions and other organizations engaged in progressive political activity. These poeple necessarily to be found in the bigger cosmopolitan cities with the more developed economies, and presently constitute the Democratic party base.
Personally, I don't get too caught up in what Obama is saying and what other DP candidates have said on the campaign trail - one way or the other, although I pay close attention to see what this might portend for the direction of the state. But I'm equally interested in the dynamics at the base of the party. I identify with the trade unionists and social activists as my American "kin", and, while I also often cringe at what they can be made to believe, I'm conscious of how profoundly more politically advanced they are than their more parochial, gullible, and despairing counterparts who make up the Republican base and that, given the lack of anything else on offer, why their social values and material interests lead them to the Democrats rather to than the Republicans. I really do find the attitude of some US left-wing intellectuals to the base of the party quite patronizing and distasteful. It's either invisible to them - they fixate only on the leadership to to take easy shots at its electoral opportunism - or they treat the Democratic supporters with thinly-disguised contempt as a bunch of sheep who ought to know better - who ought to vote for Nader or whomever, even though these latter are hardly in a position to address their immediate needs.