Michael Lind Secedes From Reality: Mixing Up Race, Class, And Party ID In The South

by: Paul Rosenberg

Sat Aug 15, 2009 at 12:30

Before turning to the issue of how Lind mis-represents liberals in my next diary (a task I already introduced in my earlier diary, "Going After Michael Lind With Occam's Razor"), I want to clearly show how Lind mis-represents those he claims to champion, and how confused he is more generally about issues of race, class and regional identity.  As I've noted in the past, the South really is different, and I'm down with Tom Schaller on his "Whistling Part Dixie"  thesis--not that the South can go to hell, but that Dems should stop trying win back the South on terms set by White Southerners.

Here is how Lind's article concluded:

o be expected that people, black and white, who have been deprived of adequate education will be more likely than educated people to believe in nonsense like Birther conspiracy theories and AIDS conspiracy theories. And it is only to be expected that people, black and white, who have been frozen out of politics by oligarchic elites will turn to flamboyant populist tribunes as their leaders, including theatrical preachers like Pat Robertson and Jeremiah Wright, Al Sharpton and Jerry Falwell.

The traditional liberal solution to such alienation is economic reform, education and political empowerment. But reform is difficult and expensive. And it is much less fun than caricaturing entire ethnic or regional groups, particularly those whose members tend to have less money, less education and less power than those who lampoon them.

Lind's attempt to equate Sharpton and Wright with Robertson and Falwell is an insult I'll return to in a later diary, along with his attempt to equate the Birther conspiracy theory with AIDs conspiracy theories.  What I want to focus on here is Lind's wholly unfounded assumption that it is poor, uneducated White Southerners who are the core demographic who buy into this nonsense.  Of course, Lind isn't the only one who makes this mistake. But he is, after all, the one who pretends to be both holier-than-thou and more knowledgeable-than-thou.  And so it must be forcefully recalled that (a) the Birther belief is concentrated among White Southern Republicans, and (b) White Southern Republicans skew wealthy, not poor.  On the first point,
PPP's North Carolina poll (pdf) had Republicans saying Obama wasn't born in America by almost 2-1 (47-24, with 29% unsure) while Democrats saying he was born in America by over 6-1 (75-12 with 13% unsure).  On the second point, the following table, based on ANES data, is particularly clear:

(It should be noted that the sub-sample for the top income group is particularly small, especially for this decade, and thus the data is noisier and less reliable.)

Ever since the 1950s, the wealthiest Southern Whites have been more Republican than the poorest Southern Whites--indeed, the entire top third was more Republican than the bottom third.  The last two decades, the relationship has been perfectly monotonic--every income group is more Republican than the group just below it--and the 2000s were more markedly so than the 1990s.  Whatever may have been true in the past, the picture that Lind has in his head is 100% the opposite of what the NES data tells us.

On the flip, more tables to put the trend among White Southerners into context.

Indeed, the poorest 1/6 of Southern Whites was the least Democratic demographic in the 1950s, and it's the most Democratic demographic today.  They were 19.5% more Republican than the White South as a whole, now they're 29.35 more Democratic.

Say what you will about their poverty and lack of education, but their grasp on reality is much stronger than their so-called "betters."

Thus, Lind's entire sub-premise--that mocking Birthers means dissing poor White Southerners--is simply mistaken.  Lind loves to lambaste liberals for their supposed stereotypes of White Southerners, and how mistaken they are. But what does this say about Lind's stereotypes?

Comparative Trends: Whites Outside The South

Having just looked at how partisan ID has shifted by income in the White South sine 1950, it's instructive to compare this with shifts in the White non-South:

Note that the poorest Whites outside the South were not the most Democratic until the 1980s. From then on, the margin in party ID has been completely monotonic--every income level is more Republican than the one before in every decade.  (The sharp drop in GOP edge among the wealthiest Whites this decade is almost certainly at least partially a result of a small sample size amplifying outlier data, but given the similar, but smaller drop in the next-wealthiest group, the drop itself is almost certainly real, just a bit exaggerated.)  Despite the large drop in GOP margin amongst the wealthiest group, non-South Whites still tilt more toward the working class this decade than they did in the 50s and 60s.  And their overall margin--5.7%--is virtually the same as in the 1980s--5.9%.

If we take the difference between the figures for non-Southern and Southern Whites, we get the following table:

Southern Whites were almost 50% more Democratic than Northern Whites in the 1950s, and remarkably they were still more than 7% more Democratic in the 1990s.  But this decade, non-Southern Whites have become 15% more Democratic. Looking at the class breakdown, there was almost no class skew in the 1970s--Southern Whites were about 15% more Democratic than non-Southern Whites across the board, except for those in the 96th income percentile or higher.  There, Southern Whites were about 35% more Democratic.  This decade, they are about 35% more Republican, while the next two income groups are about 22% more Republican in the South, and the bottom two income groups are a mere 2% or so more Republican in the South.

Comparative Trends: White America As A Whole

Looking at White America as a whole, we see that it has gone from a 30% Democratic margin in the 1950s to a 10% margin in the 1980s, to almost dead even in the 1990s and 2000s.  Having lost just 3.1% outside the South since the 1950s, and a mere 0.2% since the 1980s, it's clear that White Southern losses have dominated.  

But it's equally clear that losses have been smallest among the lower incomes (aside from the anomaly of the top income group this decade--but not last.) From the 1950s to 2000s, Democrats have lost 6.6% in the lowest income group and 11.5% in the second-lowest, compared to 24% in the middle third, and 28.7% in the upper third below the top level.  

Comparative Trends: America As A Whole

Looking at America as a whole, Democratic losses since the 1950s are far less severe:

Indeed, there's been almost no change at all in the lowest two income groups, while the Democratic margin in the middle third has been cut in half, and Democratic margin in the 68-95th percentile groups has vanished entirely.  In short, the Democratic Party has become a demonstrably more working-class party in the 2000s than it was during the 1950s, just as it has become demonstrably more non-Southern.

Finally, the last chart, All Americans minus White Americansm, shows the growth in Democratic margins among minorities, from about 2% in the 1950s to 12% in the 1990s and 2000s:

Equally striking is the fact that the Democratic margin is virtually flat for the bottom three income levels in both the 1990s and 2000s.  Indeed, the minority margin for Democrats above that level is actually less than the White margin for all Democrats as recently as the 1980s.

All the above goes to show that the Democratic Party today is very much a working class party, both for Whites and minorities, both North and South. Lind's assumption that Birthers = working class Southern Whites that the Democrats cannot afford to alienate is simply one more example of how deeply distorted, and frequently mistaken America's views of race, class and national identity are.

One More Thing...

As a sort of cross-check on all the above, here's some data from the General Social Survey, which breaks down ideology and party ID in the White South, the rest of country, and the country as a whole.  There's no economic breakdown here, but there is a big-picture take-away that strongly reinforces the message of Southern White Conservatives as politically anomalous, rather than representative of America as a whole:

In the White South, the percentage of conservative Republicans doubles from the first period to the third, from 11.8% to 23.6%, and the growth is continuous.  They go from just slightly more than the number of liberal Democrats to 2 1/2 times the number of them.

Outside the White South, things look very different, particularly moving from the second to the third time period:

Conservative Republicans actually decreased in numbers, as did liberal and moderate Republicans, too.  By contrast, moderate Democrats increased roughly the same small amount that liberal Democrats decreased during this same period of time.

In short, virtually all of the continuing conservative shift seen nationwide from the second period to the third:

was a product of the White South alone.

They are a poltical anomaly in American politics.  A sizable one, no doubt.  But they are in no wise typical of all Americans.  Only in their own minds.  And Lind, unfortunately, appears to share their narcissistic myopia.