>Your point is a solid one, but just for clarification, you're talking about party registration, and Kenworthy et al. are talking >about party self-identification (i.e., in response to someone asking whether you consider yourself a Democrat, Republican >or Independent). Which involves even bigger groups that are even squishier. But which FWIW do supposedly show these >large-scale consistent trends and inflection points which they want to explain.
Yeah, I noticed that. I'm not sure whether people's registration as Democrats would mean they would be more likely to identify as Democrats--I mean, I'm a registered Democrat (have to be to vote in local primaries) but my party self-identification is, uh, not on the list. I'd probably at least weigh my official registration when answering the question.
Slightly shifting the subject: Maybe someone can explain how it is that non-voters (it's claimed) have the same views as voters (that is, voters seem to be a fair sample of possible voters), yet the poorer you are the more likely you are to vote Democrat and the less likely you are to vote overall.
Michael Smith wrote:
>IIRC the Frank argument is that the Rs seduced plain ol' white folks (POWFs) away from their economic interests by >appealing to their cultural shibboleths. Kenworthy seems to be refining this by asserting that since the D's weren't attending >to the economic interests in question, then hey, why *not* indulge your cultural shibboleths -- if they're all that's in play?
Actually, Frank makes the second point, that the Democrats aren't attending to working class economic interests, rather strongly in his book. For example, in his conclusion: "There is a lesson for liberals in the Kansas story... an utter and final repudiation of their historical decision to remake themselves as the *other* pro-business party." (p. 245) But for obvious reasons, that part of his argument has gotten less attention.
Jenny Brown