On Wed, 22 Oct 2008, Doug Henwood wrote:
> 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.
My mind must be going. I remember this paper completely differently not only in its conclusions, but also in its construction.
So you're right, he does say this. I will only say in passing that this emtire analysis of the economic views of the working class seems to be hung on their reaction to 3 questions, each of which seems to me to be a piece of crap designed to produce the Republican answer:
Government aid to blacks:
Conservative/Republican position:
Government should not make any special effort to help blacks because they should help themselves
Liberal/Democratic position:
Government should make every effort to improve the social and economic position of blacks
Government spending/ services:
Repug position:
Government should provide many fewer services to reduce spending
Liberal position:
Government should provide many more services even if it means an increase in spending
Government jobs:
Convervative position:
Government should just let each person get ahead on their own
Liberal position:
Government should see to it that every person has a job and a good standard of living
***
I don't think it's to airy-fairy to suggest that if we used concrete policies as a litmus test instead of this vaguely loaded philosophizing -- for example, if we asked them if they supported single payer health care -- we'd find the working class was to the left of the Democratic Party's current position on that issue. And I'm pretty sure we'd find it on other concrete issues too. I could swear Bartels himself used concrete issues himself in an earlier draft of this, but I clearly have early onset Alzheimers.
Mind you, Bartels main point is that the Dems don't have to win the WC, which already supports them -- it has to win the middle classes, which have defected. [Note to James H: his class analysis is based on family income levels and divides the country into low/middle/high aka working/middle/affluent] The point of economic issues would not be to woo the working class. It would be to hold them (since they care more about economic issues) while wooing the middle class (which care more about social issues and are more liberal on them).
Michael