[lbo-talk] the white vote

[SA]

Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Nov 5, 2008, at 12:44 PM, SA wrote:
>
>> Doug Henwood wrote:
>>
>>> McCain's margin among the under-$50,000 households was 4 points;
>>
>>
>> So McCain comfortably won the poorer half of whites - and in a year 
>> when the economy is melting down and the incumbent might as well have 
>> molested a child on live television. Surely there must be a lot of 
>> what's-the-matter-with-kansas-ing going on. No?
>
> Bartels says they agree with Rep econ policy. And there's also the 
> race angle, about which Tom Frank has almost nothing to say.

I thought Bartels' analysis on that was pretty perfunctory. So the 
bottom half wants to privatize Social Security, shrink Medicare, cut 
food stamps, make it harder to join a union? I wasn't convinced of any 
of that just by some GSS numbers on a generic "more government 
services"/"less government services" question.

You're right about the race angle. Actually, I think about 80% of 
everything under the heading "cultural issues" is actually about race if 
you look deep enough.

SA