it’s socioeconomic class, stupid (that’s a no brainer, but uh well, the troika has never really been anything but a duo, duh)
By shag carpet bomb • May 27th, 2008 • Category: Class, Clinton, Election 2008, ObamaObama’s currently doing no worse among whites – a 12-point deficit to John McCain in the Newsweek data – than Al Gore did; he lost them by an identical 12 points in 2004, yet won the popular vote. John Kerry lost whites, moreover, by 17 points; Mike Dukakis, by 19 points.
Each of these three Democrats lost their elections, and Bill Clinton, who won his, did better among whites, losing them by 3 points in 1996 and a scant point in 1992. Obama surely wants to do better among whites; after all they account for three-quarters of voters in presidential elections. But the fact that he’s currently even with Gore and outpacing Kerry and Dukakis among whites would seem to militate against racism as the prime agent.
My vote’s for the socioeconomic effect I’ve covered in previous blogs. Working-class whites are not a good group for Obama; he does much better among better-educated whites. That would seem to cut more to the politics of the man, not the color of his skin.
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i do think there’s a gender thing going on as well. i don’t know if i trust the polling results as an accurate representation of the various groups supporting Obama. i do think many voters vote for candidates as a protest against “the other” candidate. i don’t know.
i can tell you, living in ohio and hanging in west virginia quite a bit (over the last six months) that they for sure are not going to vote for obama because he is black. of course, are those folks going to vote? i don’t know. but they don’t like clinton either. if i have to listen to another white person explain to me, “cause yer not from around here,” about how black folks (”those people”) think and why “they” behave the way they do, i may have to kill whitie.
many folks simply do not want to address gender and race, so class becomes the preferred common association. in this primary race, folks are downright confused. poll one way and vote another.
anyway, i do think people are more willing to vote for a man (around here) than they are willing to listen to a woman who wants to lead. and the middle class is pissed and looking to shift the economic burden they bare and so are in a grotesque manner attempting to relate to the laboring class and the poor. but not in a substantive manner, of course. more in a “what do they have to complain about” manner.
know what i mean?
can i take a line here: i hate ohio. i hate cincinnati. i am in serious danger of losing my soul here. please help. get me away from here. i am dying.
melodrama: violins quietly playing tremolando sul ponticello (way over the top) as i haunt the bigots in their suburban bushes outside their draped windows.
Mmm, cos Clinton’s and McCain’s politics are more attuned to working class aspirations ? But then, how so ?
I don’t think it’s real but I think there’s a perception that Clinton addresses working class concerns. She talks meat and potatoes. She tends to outline how she is going to do something. She makes specific proposals. These are all lies, obviously. But this appeals to people more than talking about amorphous “change.”
This was a good article though shag, since it reveals in a weird way how racist the campaign is on a level no one’s paying attention to. I’m not sure if racist is the right word and I’m not sure if I’m getting this right. What I mean is this: we are looking at the disagreements through the lens of race and seeing something “special” about the insistance on the part of some that they will not vote or vote Macain before they vote Obama. But it turns out that the percentage who say the same in previous run offs, where the two candidates were white men, is about the same. Maybe racist isn’t the right word, but it is interesting that the media is so obsessed with putting this spin on it.