Here’s another reason that the national polls don’t matter, even if the polls are taken of just white people.
A new survey of 2,501 adults, “Beyond Guns and God: Understanding the Complexities of the White Working Class in America,” published on Sept. 20 by the Public Religion Research Institute, reveals clearly that the white working class (broadly defined) cannot, at present, be described as a secure Republican constituency.
The P.R.R.I. study focuses on a group it defines as non-Hispanic whites without a four-year college degrees who are paid by the hour or by the job. That’s roughly one-third (36%) of all Americans. The study shows that Romney’s nationwide 48-35 advantage among these voters masks crucial regional differences.
The reason Romney has a strong, 13-point edge among all white working class voters, according to the P.R.R.I. findings, is that in the South his margin is huge. In the rest of the country, the white working class is much more closely divided.
Among southern working class whites, Romney leads by 40 points, 62-22, an extraordinary gap.
Romney leads with this group by 5 in the West and 4 in the Northeast, but trails by 8 in the Midwest. Auto bailout, anyone?
As for why the white working class of Pennsylvania has no time for Mitt Romney, this guy has an answer after my own heart (emphasis mine):
Steve Murphy, a media consultant working on congressional campaigns in Pennsylvania, characterized Romney’s problem somewhat differently: “I don’t think so much the argument is that he is anti-worker. It’s just that they just don’t like him. He seems like he is completely disconnected from people who have to work for a living.”
Why would he be disconnected from people who work for a living? He’s been living off interest and dividends for over a decade. If you exclude the South, Obama is running about even with white working class folks. And I don’t think the Southerners like Romney, either. It’s just that they seem to have decided that there is a white party and a black party. It used to be that the Democratic Party was the white party. Now it’s the Republican Party. I wonder if that will ever change. It’s certainly changing in Virginia and North Carolina, but Gore, Kerry, and Obama couldn’t crack 20% with white voters in the Deep South. I think they’re used to one-party dominance and they like it that way. It’s not too good for accountability though. Once you elect a dolt like Jeff Sessions or David Vitter, you can never get rid of them.
Romney definitely needs to do a better job of explaining how Detroit should have gone through chapter 11…just like the airlines did…same result…no taxpayer funds required…why doesn’t he do it?
And, why the hell am I on a beach in South Carolina looking at a Progressive blog? What the hell is wrong with me? I’m going to kill myself!
Because you’re on a beach in South Carolina or because you are holding forth on a progressive blog, or is it both together?
Whatever you do, don’t do anything rash. You’ll be able to go through the stages of grief in December.
The water is still warm here! It envelops you, just like God/Goddess!
South Carolina, definitely. Keep reading the blog.
And may I make a further suggestion? No, not that one.
Try marking your ballot in November for all the Democratic candidates, including Obama. It’s OK. It’s a secret ballot. No one will know but you. Then see if the sky falls the next day. Try it. You’ll like it. Really. You don’t have to admit it to your friends or family.
There seems to be a strain of thinking on the left that the South always has been, and always will be, a one-party, one-issue (race) region. And of course it’s true that race has been the dominant political factor in the South and in the country since our founding.
But too often we forget, I think, that the South was an absolutely key part of the strangest and yet most effective of all progressive coalitions: the New Deal. Hugo Black, James F. Byrne, Richard Russell (at least in the first part of the New Deal) were essential allies of FDR. And most of the Southern New Deal pols like them rose to power on a tide of economic populism. Granted, minorities were more or less excluded by design from many New Deal programs like Social Security. But all that shows is that once you eliminate the race factor from a political question in the South (in that case, unconscionably), then white Southerners actually will vote according to their own economic interests.
I think the one-party nature of the South will eventually fade away, hopefully over the next few decades. Partially through demographics and cohort replacement, as we see in Texas, but also simply because we are becoming a less racist society over time. And the South is part of that, at least a lagging one.
As the blinders of racism in the South finally start to come down, folks down there will wake up and stop voting in the plutocrats like McConnell, Sessions, and Vitter. Race has deranged white Southern voters since time immemorial, but it doesn’t have to be like that forever.
What happened to the South in the period from 1919 to 1930 is that the race issue prevented national unions from working to organize Southern workers in a way that was effective. The big exception were the IWW (Wobblies) and some of the more hardnosed unions that later formed the CIO. In Bogalusa LA in 1919, black and white Wobblies faced down security guards at the Great Southern Lumber Company, the largest sawmill in the world at that time. In the 1930s, black and white textile workers organized and were suppressed through company security personnel violence–8 dead in Honea Path, SC. Textile workers had a Democratic advocate in Washington only when Olin D. Johnston entered the Senate from South Carolina in 1944 (BTW he was born near Honea Path, SC).
Democratic strength in the South came from conservative “New South” businessmen and populist small farmers, both of whom were (at least publicly) committed to the preservation of segregation forever. Nonetheless, the categorically refused ever to vote for the party of Abraham Lincoln, an attitude that persisted until they refused to vote for the party of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. That knee-jerk refusal to vote Republican is what bound them to FDR in 1932. But in 1936, 1940, and 1944, they voted for him because of his record. Southern Democrats in Congress often played the same role against FDR that Blue Dogs have played since the first Bush administration.
As for James F. Byrnes, he might have rode to power on economic populism but he was very much in tow of the South Carolina business establishment. The difference in tone from today is that that business establishment was more forward-looking in seeing their interests and thought that government underwriting of their vision might be useful to their incomes. And thus they supported the New Deal. And they were right; it did help their incomes. And laid the foundation for the major transfer of manufacturing into the South that accelerated after World War II.
There are no “blinders” of racism in the South. What goes on is very deliberately promoted by those who have the most to gain by racial division. And it is held in power through social opprobrium (and increasingly surface public denial)–and thankfully only in a handful of places by acts of terror.
That knee-jerk refusal to vote Republican is what bound them to FDR in 1932. But in 1936, 1940, and 1944, they voted for him because of his record. Southern Democrats in Congress often played the same role against FDR that Blue Dogs have played since the first Bush administration.
All true. But I’m not sure how it squares any differently from what I wrote. What I was trying to get it is the fact that there have been brief windows in history in which economic progressivism in the South was not entirely impeded by the race question. This occurred during the New Deal when blacks were shut out from receiving any direct benefits and white farmers and businessman were able to see the value of having the federal government invest in their communities.
But white working-class Southern voters didn’t support the New Deal just because Southern economic elites told them too. Rather, grassroots enthusiasm for federal investment in the South was driven, politically, by pols singing the message of economic populism. Huey Long’s “Share Our Wealth” campaign is perhaps the epitome of this sort of politics. And interestingly, the “enemies” of the SOW campaign were both the plutocrat ruling class of Louisiana and the carpetbagging economic elites of the North. E.g.:
Now, as you hint at lot of the pols like Byrne returned to conservative form after WWII. And outside of some wise leadership in place like North Carolina they and their Southern constituents seem to have abandoned economic populism entirely. I suspect this was due to the civil rights movement achieving critical mass starting in the late 1940’s and the resulting “all hands on deck,” Massive Resistance mentality adopted by the majority of Southern whites. That was a tragedy for the economic fortunes of the South, among other things.
As for “blinders,” the only reason that tactics of racial division remain successful in the South is because Southern voters are willing to respond to them. I believe that will change over the next few decades not just because of demographics but also, mainly, because individual voters are less accepting of racist messages. Because they themselves are less racist. And there are a lot of forces driving that change.
I guess my overall point is that progressives shouldn’t just write off the South as a lost cause (haha) forever. And I think we can point to brief periods like the New Deal, however problematic they were, to show that progressivism isn’t impossible in the South. It just requires a nuanced framework that’s different in certain ways from Northern progressivism, big city progressivism, Western progressivism, etc. And from reading many of your superb commments at this website I know that’s a notion you support in some form.
Grassroots support in the South for the New Deal did not come from politicians. People saw demonstrable improvements in their lives or the lives of those in their personal networks. They worked CCC jobs building the Blue Ridge Parkway and state parks or WPA jobs building post offices and airports. Or for the TVA construction projects. They saw agriculture prices stabilize for the first time since World War I and could think of breaking even again.
I agree with your last two paragraphs. The major point that I was making is that it is not a spontaneous expression of local culture but involves lots of political and cultural resources financed by special local and national interests of various kinds.
NewsFlash!!
HuffPo’s electoral map now shows Obama with 271 electoral votes IN STRONG OBAMA CATEGORY. Further, this category does NOT include NC, IA, NH, VA, FL or CO.
As far as I can tell, Strong Obama means that the difference in the poll averages is > 4.9% AND the confidence level is > 94.9%. But I could be wrong.
Anyway, this is the first time for this. Don’t worry, it’ll change back to something less soon (probably about 15 minutes).
It truly doesn’t take much to make me happy.
As you said, Boo, Romney claimed in his surreptitiously filmed speech back in May that the game plan was to go for the middle 7% swing voters (who voted Obama in 2008) and yet, in practice, his campaigned has been hitting themes more effective at roiling up the base.
The reason is the GOP coalition of Libertarians, rich business types, small business types, white working class, seniors, social conservatives, the religious right and xenophobic paranoid conspiracy theorist security freaks is breaking up and he is desperately trying to shore it up.
The problem is that Romney is so obviously from the rich business elite wing, and he hasn’t the skills to bring the others along. His Mormonism, lack of military/foreign policy experience, and track record of destroying small businesses also doesn’t help. About the only thing that still unites them is a (mostly racist) hatred of Obama and fear that power is transferring to a new coalition of liberals, independent women and minorities which doesn’t include them.
Old businesses are afraid the newer ones will displace or engulf them. Old money hates the new money stealing their thunder. The transition is as much economic as political, as less educated workers are left behind. So if Romney can even win the white working class vote outside the south he really is toast. Big time.
But the bigger issue is that Obama and the Dems shouldn’t content themselves with winning the 7% undecideds in the center which Romney claimed he was going to contest. Obama should be going right into the Republican heartland and break up the GOP coalition in the way Nixon broke the Dem stranglehold on the south. There are some he will just never win over – the paranoid zenophobes, racists, religious fanatics, libertarians and the truly wealthy (mostly from traditional industries). But there are an awful lot of other habitually GOP voters who are now ripe for the picking – seniors, small business owners, white working class and even some religious who Romney can’t reach.
If Obama wants to be a transformational President, he can’t be happy with just winning the middle 7%. He’s got to go behind enemy lines and sow anger and confusion in the ranks of the GOP by lovebombing the seniors and small businesses that a more level playing field to survive in an economy dominated by big business and big finance. The white working class will be the main beneficiary and the basis of a lasting and winning coalition of working and middle class voters of all races and a wide range of belief systems.
Coming up in Winter of 2013!!!!
Obama LOVEBOMBS GEORGIA, NORTH CAROLINA and TEXAS in anticipation of demographic changes prior to the 2014 mid-term elections.
You heard it here FIRST.
Why wait. All three could be in play in this election cycle if the Romney implosion continues – you heard it here first!
Maybe because Romney’s lead in Georgia is somewhere in the range of +11 to +21?
I mean, just saying …
As you said, Boo, Romney claimed in his surreptitiously filmed speech back in May that the game plan was to go for the middle 7% swing voters (who voted Obama in 2008) and yet, in practice, his campaign has been hitting themes more effective at roiling up the base.
The reason is the GOP coalition of Libertarians, rich business types, small business types, white working class, seniors, social conservatives, the religious right and xenophobic paranoid conspiracy theorist security freaks is breaking up and he is desperately trying to shore it up.
The problem is that Romney is so obviously from the rich business elite wing, and he hasn’t the skills to bring the others along. His Mormonism, lack of military/foreign policy experience, and track record of destroying small businesses also doesn’t help. About the only thing that still unites them is a (mostly racist) hatred of Obama and fear that power is transferring to a new coalition of liberals, independent women and minorities which doesn’t include them.
Old businesses are afraid the newer ones will displace or engulf them. Old money hates the new money stealing their thunder. The transition is as much economic as political, as less educated workers are left behind. So if Romney can’t even win the white working class vote outside the south he really is toast. Big time.
But the bigger issue is that Obama and the Dems shouldn’t content themselves with winning the 7% undecideds in the center which Romney claimed he was going to contest. Obama should be going right into the Republican heartland and break up the GOP coalition in the way Nixon broke the Dem stranglehold on the south. There are some he will just never win over – the paranoid xenophobes, racists, religious fanatics, libertarians and the truly wealthy (mostly from traditional industries). But there are an awful lot of other habitually GOP voters who are now ripe for the picking – seniors, small business owners, white working class and even some religious who Romney can’t reach.
If Obama wants to be a transformational President, he can’t be happy with just winning the middle 7%. He’s got to go behind enemy lines and sow anger and confusion in the ranks of the GOP by lovebombing the seniors and small businesses who need a more level playing field to survive in an economy dominated by big business and big finance. The white working class will be the main beneficiary and the basis of a lasting and winning coalition of working and middle class voters of all races and a wide range of belief systems. It is a realignment by class, rather than race, if you want, but that is a little two simplistic. most of the newer big tech industries are natural Obama territory too.
I wonder if Obama will campaign in North Carolina. I think the most important thing we can do if we want him to go south is work the phones and canvass to put Colorado Nevada Ohio Florida Wisconsin Iowa NH Virginia firmly in his column.
According to this he’s already most of the way there…
“I wonder if that will ever change.”
Keep the faith. It will change. I grew up in a large town that was 100% white, and never even met a person of color until the summer before I went to college.
Today that same town is a rainbow of humanity. Kids today have a far greater experience of diversity, and it’s the norm for them. Appeals to racial prejudice and hate just won’t work with them, thank God.
It’s getting better every day. The kids are alright.
… from the jaws of “victory”
When Obama wins – as he almost certainly will – is there anything we can do now to reduce the chances of him screwing us over again as he did in 2009? The margins are littered with links like this one, implying that Obama intends to use the lame duck session to return to his “grand bargain” rationalization for gutting social security and medicare.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/24/obama-and-social-security_n_1910498.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpop
ular
Sounds like AARP wants to know also.
http://federaldaily.com/articles/2012/09/21/advocacy-group-says-presidential-debate-should-address-r
etirement-security.aspx?s=FDretire_240912
Is he cracking? can he really be this clueless? what is the explanation?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/24/1135891/-Another-day-another-Romney-fail-Airplane-windows-e
dition
Clueless and stupid. His brains are in his wallet.
IndianaDem, I would love to hear from you on this. Is Indiana in play?
There are whisperings, but Nate still has Rmoney at over 90% probability to win. The senate race is looking better at 50/50 and I think we in the 9th congressional district have a very good shot at unseating the GOP whatsizname, but I’m pessimistic about the governor. Jeez, after 8 years of Daniels, I can’t bear to think of Pence peering into our bedroom windows for another 8. I hated Mitch, but at least he wasn’t a voyeur.
Senate ana one or two house pickups will suit me, especially the Senate seat. We need them badly.
For Indiana that’ll be doing quite well and cause for celebration here in our little enclave of blue amongst the misguided and the downright neanderthal (no insult intended toward actual Neanderthals).
None taken!
The Republicans have tried very hard to racialize the Obama phenomenon. In other words, to make it an issue of whites vs “the element”.
I get annoyed when I see Obama supporters falling into the same pattern. That is, people who don’t support Obama are “whites”. Well, yes, they are, but in most parts of the country, an awful lot of whites, often the majority, do support Obama. Especially in those parts where he’s gonna get the electoral votes. You see, Virginia, there are a lot of white people in the United States, and they don’t always agree about everything.
OK, it’s interesting that only in the south is the working-class whites heavily against Obama. There are a lot of other things that could be said about working-class whites in the south, and they have all been said many times lo these past 150 years.
ountry
No matter how loudly racism-enablers whining “don’t blame southerners” scream, we all know that the problem is southern white folks. The problem has always been southern white folks. And as long as we allow it (by pretending otherwise), the problem will always BE southern white folks.)