On Oct 22, 2008, at 5:03 PM, Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> On Wed, 22 Oct 2008, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> I know this is the Internet, where it's sometimes hard to read a
>> whole paper, so I'll just quote some more from Bartels. Reading
>> these papers, and reading Jeffrey Stonecash's book, has forced me
>> to rethink a lot of things I used to believe. E.g., 1) the Dems
>> would do better by taking a more "populist" economic position
>
> How does reading Bartels persuade you that's not true? IIRC, he says:
>
> 1) the working class cares more about economic issues than social
> issues, and they are liberal on economics and conservative on social
> issues; and
>
> 2) the professional classes care more about social issues than
> economic issues, and they are liberal on social issues and
> conservative on economic issues.
>
> It seems to follow from that the Dems would be better going left on
> both -- each group would gripe about one (as they do now), but
> they'd both be getting what they want on the issue that is more
> determining for them.
Michael, this was in the excerpt I attached to the post to which you're responding:
> Frank's white working-class voters were neither liberal in absolute
> terms nor closer to the Democratic Party than to the Republican
> Party on economic issues. On the central issue of government
> spending and services, voters who saw themselves as closer to the
> Republican Party outnumbered those who saw themselves as closer to
> the Democratic Party by four percentage points. On the issues of
> government jobs and aid to blacks the pluralities seeing themselves
> as closer to the Republican Party were even larger – nine and 15
> percentage points, respectively. Moreover, 60% to 85% of the voters
> who perceived differences between their own position and the
> Democratic Party's position on each of these economic issues said
> the Democratic Party was too liberal, not too conservative. Thus, it
> is hard to see why taking even more liberal positions on these
> issues, or stressing them more heavily, would help the Democrats win
> back the white working class.
>
> On the other hand, the only two issues on which Frank's white
> working-class voters did see themselves as closer to the Democratic
> Party than to the Republican Party were the two social issues in the
> table, abortion and gender roles. In the case of abortion the
> advantage is quite modest and not statistically reliable;
> nevertheless, voters who saw themselves as closer to the Democratic
> Party outnumbered those who saw themselves as closer to the
> Republican Party by nine percentage points. For the item on women
> the Democratic advantage is more substantial, and Frank's white
> working-class voters actually saw themselves as more liberal than
> either party.
In other words, Bartels' research contradicts both your points.
Doug