Sunday, October 07, 2007

The "White Men" Gap

This "white male voting pattern" thing has been discussed before, but I don't recall an analysis which is quite as pointed and plausible as David Kuhn's. Here's the groundwork:

The “gender gap” has been a fixture in discussions about American politics since the early Reagan years. But it is usually cast as a matter of women being turned off by Republicans. By far the greater part of this gap, however, comes from the high number of white men — who make up about 36 percent of the electorate — who refuse to even consider voting Democratic.

In 2000, exit polling showed white women backed George W. Bush over Al Gore by 3 percentage points, but white men backed him by 27 percentage points. Four years later, with John F. Kerry carrying the Democratic banner, the margin was 26 points.

Yup. No news there.

But the analysis is very interesting:

...it was one of Johnson’s own confidants, Harry McPherson, who later concluded that the problem with white male voters was far more complex — not confined to the South or racial politics. “Democratic primaries and conventions often rocked with the language of rebuke,” McPherson wrote in a 1972 memoir. “Very like, it has occurred to me, the language many wives use in speaking to their husbands...

“Liberals didn’t realize they had a whole constituency of disenfranchised people without rights who were called standard masculine men,” Harvard University social psychologist William Pollack explains. “I’m not saying that all liberal Democrats saw these men as the enemy, but they didn’t see them as the victim — but these men felt more and more victimized.”

In other words, laying a guilt-trip on white males has cost the Democrat Party dearly. That happens to fit neatly into the difference in thought (and actions) on Defense expenditures between the (R) and (D) camps--not to mention the social-liberal v. social-conservative difference.

One could add that the (D) platforms tend to be counter-cultural, or affirm such; but white men still innately understand the concept of 'husband/father responsibility and duty', which is directly or indirectly tossed under the bus by the (D) philosophy.

The "anger" (such as it is--) rises from this: the (D) platforms and positions project a stereotype image that 'white males' are malevolent, selfish, jerks--racists and misogynist to the core--and must be forced to comply with the 'better order' which the (D) folks have in mind.

So we have the success of Limbaugh, Sykes, Ingraham, et.al.

HT: Betsy

2 comments:

Billiam said...

I agree with most of that. Although, I don't think of myself as a victim. Yet, another thing that most of my conservative friends dislike about the (D) side of the equation is this. Slowly, since the Liberal wing of the party started taking over, it just seems like American Culture is less celebrated and multi-culturalism is put on a pedastal. many see America as a good and honorable Country. I guess many of us are tired of America, and it's past, being condemned wholsale because of what was considered somewhat acceptable. Be slavery or Segregation, seems today, our past is being judged by TODAY'S standards, rather than the standards of the time. This just strikes me as wrong.

Dad29 said...

Yah, that "victim card" doesn't really describe all 'white males.' In fact, it may only be a very few.

And yah, the browbeating is wayyyyy overdone. It's a bit like demanding a perfect cop-shop or justice system. Ain't gonna happen. Nice in theory, though.