Upper Echelons, And The Next Election

I don't want to get too caught up in the hand wringing over last night's results, because I think it was wildly optimistic to think that there would be an out come other than Obama succeeding in Wisconsin, and I said as much going into it.  And the real tests come in the next few weeks, when we will see if the certainty on the right is matched by certainty on the left.

But what I'd like to point out really just crystallized for me this morning, as I thought about exit polling results: if I'm disheartened about last night's outcome, it's because I think the exit polling reflects something on both sides that's more than a little distressing - the triumph of the elite over the working class.

Throughout this election cycle, one of the most striking elements of the results has been Barack Obama's lack of appeal to the working class.  High school graduates, people making under $50,000 a year... these people have gone, significantly and consistently for someone else, usually Hillary Clinton.  Even last night, people with high school diplomas, or who never finished high school, went for Clinton 53-44. People earning less than $50,000 were 51-49 Obama, an essential tie.

It's easy to, as folks over at Cogitamus do, dismiss winning these folks as unnecessary.  And by the looks of it, it may well be; Obama is the first candidate whose appeal to the elite of the left may be enough to win him the nomination and ultimately the Presidency (hat tip to Nick Beaudrot over at Cogitamus, for a fascinating list of similar candidates with similar appeal... all of whom lost).

The question is... is that what we really wanted?

By rights, Obama's appeal to working folks should be far more obvious: he insists that his is a message of hope and change, aimed at addressing the concerns of those who need it.  So why do the people who, by his estimation, need it, seem so resistant to it?  Why do women, who keep getting told repeatedly how good Obama is on women's issues, seem so resistant to that notion? Well, the second answer is kind of obvious.  But I'd say, so is the first.

One of the least discussed aspects of the social and economic changes that have occurred lately in this country - the bifurcation of the wealthy from the less well off, the increasing polarizations in our culture - is what they have done to our politics.  This year, for the first time, Democrats will out-raise and outspend Republicans on almost every level.  It's clear that more, and wealthier donors than ever are donating to Democratic candidates and causes.  But what this also means is that some very old tropes - that Democrats are the party of the workers, and Republicans the party of the owners and investors, have indeed become almost completely inaccurate.  Almost everyone who's discussed the disintegration of the "conservative coalition" that came together around Ronald Reagan and held, really, until the 2006 midterms, has noted that the uneasy alliance between traditional "Country Club" Republicans and the more working class, less elitist Evangelical right. But there's a similar, opposite move on the left - the technology revolutions and dotcom wealth created, especially in the nineties, has enriched a class of the left that probably wasn't there before, an intellectual elite (the coastal areas and "purple state" sections of Middle America, often along the Mississippi River) that has remained close to its liberal roots, often from parents, and urban exposure to modern social problems.

But the point is, in both parties, there's an inherent tension between the well off and the less so. You can see it most obviously in the right, as working class, socially conservative voters have grown restive both at the failure of their social agenda (abortion, prayer, etc) and the sense of government waste in the face of real economic problems.  On the left, though, it has everything to do with the way actual notions of how to address working class isues of poverty, homelessness, and healthcare have been overrun by largely rote reiteration of old, almost sixties era "Kennedyesque" (which is really Johnson-esque), rhetoric.

What this election has demonstrated, right and left, is that the concerns of working class voters are not being addressed in the way they'd like by the two candidates who now seem most likely to lead the ticket.  More than anything, the continued success of Mike Huckabee (who took 37% in Wisconsin, and a swath of counties around Eau Claire) is reflected, much like Hillary Clinton's similar success (at about 40% in Wisconsin and carrying a smattering of counties around the state), in exit polling that shows that lower income, less educated voters go for them much more than the educated, wealthy elite.

When I saw that Clinton won women over 60, Catholics, and working class voters with high school educations, I instantly thought of Cathy, the surrogate mom I adopted (or who adopted me) in my first management job.  Salt of the earth, she was a semi-retired lady who worked part time, and whose concerns (I drove her to and from work, because we lived near one another) were practical, day-to-day ones that brought my (even more pronounced at the time) airy-fairy notions of social justice back to earth.   This is where social and economic and political justice isn't just theoretical, it's a real way to address real concerns.

(UPDATE: J in Baltimore asks me - again - about Edwards as the example of working class appeal.  I'd point out that Edwards and Obama seemed, at the time, to be splitting the same audience, and that the blog contingent for Edwards - a prime example of a homogenous elite - has shifted, smoothly, to Obama. While he was a candidate, Red pointed out that his poverty plan was weaker than either Cointon's or Obama's.  And again, I think if he'd swiped working class voters from Clinton, she'd be out... and he'd be in.... and losing to Obama.)

If I think about how me and my friends are bewildered supporters of Clinton who resist the Obama juggernaut when it should, by rights, appeal to us too, I think the common thread is that we tend not to vote for ourselves... but for those who face the issues we don't.  How to get a meal on the table.  How to get the health care they need. How to fix their home after a disaster like Katrina. I don't need Barack Obama to tell me how he believes in hope and change... I've believed that since I was 10, at least. What I need to know is what we're going to do for people in need. And what I think Obama offers - as Red suggests in a slightly different way - is the comforting sense, for people who do fairly well, that by wanting to help the less fortunate, we are doing good. But of course, wanting to help isn't helping... it's doing nothing at all.

If there's a reason for a third (or fourth) party in this country, I think, it's because our two parties have become faintly meaningless distinctions when it comes to socioeconomics - we now have well off educated people on both "sides" who want similar things, and are arguing over details; but both are running roughshod over the actual, expressed concerns of people who make less, and are less educated. If it's cruel, as elite conservatives do, to suggest that failure to achieve is a personal failure that government has no responsibility to address, it's patronizing to, as liberal elites do, assume that we know best how to help the less fortunate. This election will, if things stay on track, go to Barack Obama because we are less cruel than the conservative approach, and that sense of obligation to others has gotten too loud to ignore.  But it strikes me as odd and alarming that so many of the people who we all want to help... want someone else. And just as alarmingly, that the elite, upperclass won't hear, or care.

Comments

[Redstar]

Another amazing post. You hit the nail right on the head with this one. I'm posting over at The Hillary 1000. And thank you, as always, for the kind words. Listening to other privileged folk voting with their pocketbooks (or paychecks, I should say, given their emphasis on taxes), I always get the message that I'm apparently voting against my own self-interest.

[jinbaltimore]

um, but didn't you dismiss John Edwards a year or so ago?

He may not have had the oratory skills of Obama, but he was trying, at least, to address this disparity, one you said fairly recently just didn't speak to people this cycle.

But, he didn't fit with the "see, racism and sexism are over" narrative, so I guess he had to go.

[Dennis - SGMM]

Neither party has represented the working man for decades. Bill Clinton drove the final nail into it for the Democrats when he championed, and then signed into law, NAFTA. I worked with my hands and my back for more than half of my life. The last candidate who even sounded like he ever did a lick of work was Edwards and he couldn't get a word in edgewise.

[Joe]

I've seen it put forward elsewhere that this voting pattern is more down to the "insurgent" nature of Obama's campaign. The establishment candidate is Hillary and she has had the lower income voters locked up initially. The insurgent campaign, i.e. Obama's, make their breakthrough first with the higher income, wonkish, and higher information voters, and then as the campaign progresses he makes inroads into Hillary's base.

Not sure that I fully agree with that, but it makes some sense to me.

[weboy]

The problem with the theory, Joe, is that:

a) It's not happening - although Obama's made some progress in working class voters, it's not very much; and

b) it's never happened in similar, previous candidacies (go to Nick's link at Cogitamus); and

c) if you think about it, it's really rather patronizing... something to the effect of "they don't know what's best for themselves" or "they follow like sheep" or something equally meant to suggest that working class people, and high school grads, are dumb and don't understand what's best for their interests. And what I - and others as well - am saying is, consider the possibility that they do know what they want, and he isn't it; that perhaps the point here is that working class people are actually not attracted to Obama's candidacy or his message; and to the extent that they will, ultimately, wind up voting for him is more because they have nowhere else to go than because they actually like him, or his proposals.

It's just a different way of thinking about this, one that might give working class people more credit for actually knowing their own interests.

[Redstar]

Folks should watch the video of the Pres of the Machinists Union introduce Clinton in Youngstown for an illustration of what Weboy is discussing.

As a member of a union family who also has made it to a grad school of equivalent status to the Harvard that Pres. Buffenbarger disparages, I had mixed emotions of pride and displeasure watching this. But the ire is real.

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/02/20/machinists-union-tells-it-like-it-is/