On Fri, 19 Mar 2010, SA wrote:
>>> the current period is unusual for how weak even subjective opposition
>>> is. There's an unusual level of active identification with the system.
<snip>
> I was recently reading a dissertation about an Ohio governor you may
> remember, James Rhodes. (Yes, I do this voluntarily.) He rose through
> the Ohio Republican Party in the 30's-50's and there were lengthy quotes
> from a national GOP governors' seminar around the late 50's on "how do
> you win the union vote?" And a predominant sentiment in the room seemed
> to be: "It's hopeless. The workers look to the union leaders for
> guidance, and they hate us and think we're in bed with evil bosses
> against the working man. We can never win their vote."
FWIW, IIRC correctly, Republican party activists still believe and voice exactly the same sentiments about union workers today.
There were several good long articles written about the 2004 battle of voter registration drives (which the Republicans seem to have won). And IIRC, one of the techniques professional Republican canvassers invariably used was to work in a question early as to whether the head of household belonged to a union -- and if so, to close up the conversation politely and not register that household.
Union friends also love to brandish stats about how this is grounded in fact -- that union membership is better indicator of Democratic voting propensity than any comparably scaled social marker except being black.
Of course you would be the first to argue that knee-jerk voting for the Dems is not the same as feeling subjectively opposed to the system.
But to be fair, that's all your 50s Republican party activist sentiment was attesting to. They had a theory of why it was that suggesed it went deeper. But they are hardly unbiased, and their descendents think exactly the same. (For arguably exactly the same reason: activists always puff up the power of their enemies. See Chris Maisano's post on how he is now the destoryer of worlds.)
It would not be hard to argue that there were lots of ways that (overwhelmingly white, male, married with housewife) union members in the very socially conformist 50s were even more deeply subjectively indentified in the status quo than (very differently composed) union members are today.
Michael