I haven't read Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas, but that won't stop me commenting on the comments ...
Matthew Yglesias writes:
It's always worth pointing out that the conservatism of the working class is often exaggerated. If you look at the 2000 exit polls or any general election poll today you'll see that people with low incomes support the Democrats more than do people with middling incomes who, in turn, are more supportive than people with high incomes. What the "working class conservatives" analysis misses out is that outside of Kansas a really large proportion of poor people are black or Hispanic, and those people certainly feel that the Democrats stand for working class interests and they, in turn, support the Democrats. Another large class of poor people consists of single working white women who, again, support the Democrats.The upshot is that Democrats don't have a "working class problem" it's a white working class problem and, to a large extent, a problem with white, working class men.
That ought to make us at least prima facie suspicious that the problem is really that the Democrats don't support an economic program that's in the interests of the working class. Non-white working class people think they do, and many working class white women think they do, and it would be odd if the Democrats had somehow come up with economic policies that work for working class blacks and working class Latinos and single working class white women, but not for working class white men or married working class white women. It's hard to imagine what policies like that would be.
And I think Matthew's identified something in his detailed breakdown of just which poor people do and don't vote for the Democrats.
(1) people are probably pretty sensitive to perceptions of their relative status amongst their own socio-economic group, and
(2) Let's not go back to pretending that class, race and gender can be separated when we pursue voters.
Real wages haven't moved up much for people in the bottom quintiles in the last 20-30 years, but they have moved up somewhat for women and for blacks. Not much, but they have. The real stagnation has been amongst white men in the bottom quintiles of the income distribution.
Now, that's unquestionably a good thing, but if you're a working class white man in a culturally conservative place, of course that erodes your sense of power within your family and in your community.
It's easy to look at BLS statistics and say that white working class men should feel more outraged at the growing inequalities at the top end of the income distribution, and the increasing share of the national income that goes to profits and not to labor, but it's also not the way many people understand their world.
It's harder to feel outrage against wealthy people you don't see everyday. Compared to the Gilded Age or the 20s, wealth is less conspicuous since the wealthy now tend to reside in the suburbs or out in the country, not in a mansion down the street.
It's easier to feel an inchoate sense of diminishing power as other people's incomes catch up to yours.
And the Republicans have been pretty skilful at exploiting these resentments.
Absent somewhere for poorer blacks and women to go, the Democrats could tack right and acknowledge the subconscious anger at how working class white men are no longer much better off than blacks and women. But to do would also be to go against believing that decreasing sexual and racial earnings differences is a good thing, and something modern-day Democrats don't stand for.
Democrats are just going to have to suck up the fact that white working class men who are genuinely angry at their eroding prestige in society won't vote for them. But there are probably a sizeable core of uneasy white, male working class voters whose unease does stem from their declining prestige and earnings, but who are open not to silly populism, but to real, effective policies that improve the lot of people in the bottom half of the income distribution (the EITC, for example); and policies which increase the chances of social mobility (college scholarships and the like).
Buying off peoples concerns about the decline of specific industries like farming and textiles -- if this is what 'populist economics' means -- is bad on the merits, and just makes the inevitable adjustments to a changing industrial structure harder when they eventually come.
Posted by robe0419 at July 21, 2004 2:00 PM