What's The Matter With Versailles?

by: Paul Rosenberg

Sat Sep 19, 2009 at 10:30

From Boehlert I see that the Washington Post featured the Teabagger March on the front page today and devoted a lot of space to explaining that these are just regular folks from all around America expressing their thoughts. I've been getting the sense in the media for the past few days that they are about to take a U-turn on this story, even as they continue to highlight Joe Wilson and his outburst.

The "just plain folks" narrative is quite at odds with some other ones--such as the Ayn Rand superman one, about which more later this weekend--but consistency has never been a big deal with Versailles.  And speaking of lack of consistency, there's the annoying fact that while Democrats have not fared that well among less-educated whites (though not as badly as Versailles supposes), this is not primarily because of  lower-income whites, as Larry Bartels explained some time ago in "What's the Matter with What's the Matter with Kansas?":

Bartell's speaks on the flip:

Through the 1950s and 1960s there was virtually no difference in Democratic support on the basis of income; the average Democratic vote shares among the lower-, middle-, and upper-income segments of Frank's white working class were 48%, 52%, and 48%. (Since almost 90% of white voters in this era counted as "working class" by Frank's definition, the figures are virtually identical for the entire white electorate.) However, since the 1970s there has been a large and fairly consistent gap in partisan preferences between richer and poorer white voters regardless of whether or not they happen to have college degrees. Since 1976, Democratic presidential candidates have received 50% of the votes from the lower-income segment of Frank's white working class, 43% from the middle-income segment, and 35% from the upper-income segment. (The corresponding Democratic vote shares from the lower, middle, and upper thirds of the white electorate as a whole are 51%, 44%, and 37%.)

The pattern of income polarization in Figure 3 is consistent with Stonecash's (2000, 118) finding that "less-affluent whites have not moved away from the Democratic Party and that class divisions have not declined in American politics," and with McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal's (forthcoming, chapter 3) finding that income has become an increasingly strong predictor of Republican partisanship and presidential voting since the 1950s. In the white working class, as in the electorate as a whole, net Republican gains since the 1950s have come entirely among middle- and upper-income voters, producing a substantial gap in partisanship and voting between predominantly Democratic lower income groups and predominantly Republican upper income groups.

Of course, the deeper irony here is that those higher-income less-educated Whites have generally benefited more from the Democrats than their more low-income bretheren. Better-paying jobs for non-college Whites are largely a result of unionization--either directly, or as a spillover effect--which in turn has been intimately related to Democratic politics since the 1930s.  Whites working part-time and/or primarily in jobs that haven't benefited from unions over the past 70 years, look more to the Democrats because of current policies--however attenuated they may be.

But those who have benefited from Democrats in the past are more inclined to want to forget that anyone else played a role in how far they've come.  This is where the Randian strain comes in.  Rather than see those being helped today as following in the same footsteps (be it theirs or their parents) that lead to where they are today, they have rewritten their past so that today's struggling masses are totally other to them.

Kenyan, in fact.

Digby goes on to quote from a 2007 diary of hers, in which she wrote:

This fetishization of that other mythical "Real American" seems to stem from a public  epiphany that the previous "Dean" of the DC press corps, Joseph Kraft, had almost 40 years ago when confronted with the disconcerting sight of violence in the streets perpetrated by nice white boys and girls:

"Are we merely neutral observers, seekers after truth in the public interest? Or do we, as the supporters of Mayor Daley and his Chicago police have charged, have a prejudice of our own?

"The answer, I think is that Mayor Daley and his supporters have a point. Most of us in what is called the communications field are not rooted in the great mass of ordinary Americans--in Middle America. And the results show up not merely in occasional episodes such as the Chicago violence but more importantly in the systematic bias toward young people, minority groups, and the of presidential candidates who appeal to them.

"To get a feel of this bias it is first necessary to understand the antagonism that divides the middle class of this country. On the one hand there are highly educated upper-income whites sure of and brimming with ideas for doing things differently. On the other hand, there is Middle America, the large majority of low-income whites, traditional in their values and on the defensive against innovation.

"The most important organs of and television are, beyond much doubt, dominated by the outlook of the upper-income whites.

"In these circumstances, it seems to me that those of us in the media need to make a special effort to understand Middle America. Equally it seems wise to exercise a certain caution, a prudent restraint, in pressing a claim for a plenary indulgence to be in all places at all times the agent of the sovereign public."

Joseph Kraft defined "Middle America" as a blue collar or rural white male, "traditional in his values and defensive against innovation."  Ever since then, the denizens of the beltway have deluded themselves into thinking they speak for that "silent majority."  (And what a serendipitous coincidence it was that this happened at the moment of a right wing political ascension that also made a fetish out of the same blue collar white male.) The converse of this, of course, is that they also assume that the "fringe"  liberals from the coasts are way out of the mainstream....

Of course, the data Bartels assembled makes mincemeat of Kraft's crude dichotomy, and Digby had a lot more to say as well.  But it's also worth noting one thing more:  Most of those college kids demonstrating in Chicago were not facing the draft. They had deferments. And they had connections. (The kinds that, in the extreme, could get you a cushy spot flying fighters on the weekend.)

OTOH, the draftees whose lives those college students were trying to save were disproportionately the sons of Dailey's hard core supporters.  And Dailey knew it.  He knew the cost, and he knew that his constituents weren't happy about it.  Rediecting anger was the game--not reflecting it.

Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.