It sure as hell wasn’t “educated white men.”

JFK lost big among the college educated: 39% to 61%
He did, however, win among men: 52% to 48% (inflated by all those “uneducated” men).

Professional and business class: 42% to 58%

White collar: 48% to 52% (lots of “pink collars” in that segment)

Manual labor workers: 60% to 40%

Labor unions: 65% to 35% (that’s when private sector unions still existed)

Women: 49% to 51%

The college educated (ie “smart” folks) stuck with Nixon in ’68 and ’72.  Although not quite as many as in 1960 when they had the option to vote their racism.  Not so “smart” in ’72.

’76 and ’80?  The same.  The “educated” stuck with the GOP.   As they did in ’84 and ’88.  WJC received a plurality of that vote, but it was a mere 1% more than Dukakis received.

After that

Gore 46%
Kerry 48%
Obama 55%
Obama 53%

Dare we ask why college educated people suddenly got “smart” between 2004 and 2008?  A ludicrous conclusion.

(Democrats have dominated the Black vote since 1936 but they were mostly disenfranchised throughout the south for another couple of decades.  Enough time for the white racist vote in those regions to shift to the GOP.)

Were “uneducated” white people back in 1932 stupid?  That’s what the Democratic Party liberals today are selling.  Or that the Republican Party has made “uneducated” white people stupid.  More truth in that, but dumbing down people has always been a feature of the powerful and wealthy.  And they’ll use the easiest means possible which in this country has generally meant immigrant and African-American bashing and the siren song of low taxes/tax cuts.  Or communism and now Putin brought to us by the Democratic Party.

Matthew B. Crawford (2006)

…
So perhaps the time is ripe for reconsideration of an ideal that has fallen out of favor: manual competence, and the stance it entails toward the built, material world. Neither as workers nor as consumers are we much called upon to exercise such competence, most of us anyway, and merely to recommend its cultivation is to risk the scorn of those who take themselves to be the most hard-headed: the hard-headed economist will point out the opportunity costs of making what can be bought, and the hard-headed educator will say that it is irresponsible to educate the young for the trades, which are somehow identified as the jobs of the past. But we might pause to consider just how hard-headed these presumptions are, and whether they don’t, on the contrary, issue from a peculiar sort of idealism, one that insistently steers young people toward the most ghostly kinds of work.
…

Making and fixing things requires thought.  Mental dexterity as well as physical.  Being able to put the pieces together into a whole that works.  Without the excuse that “it was a computer error.”  (At or near the top of my all time favorite books is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)

Without Educated White Women, Republicans Are Doomed (Bloomberg)

…
It’s possible that the end result of this may be a decidedly Clinton-esque pro-establishment Democratic Party anchored by African-American and Hispanic voters, well-educated suburban whites, and 21st-century business interests. Working-class white males, intellectual conservatives and anti-establishment liberals would find themselves shut out of the political process.

(Billmon’s response to the above: “Imagine a sensible shoe, Winston, stamping on an unwoke human face, forever.”  Some people can quote and “get” a novel.)

Having never considered myself “anti-establishment,” I do bristle at that assertion.  What I don’t endorse is an establishment that divides the various demographic factions by using lies and propaganda that disproportionately favors one or more factions over others.  With the end goal of always favoring the “haves” over the “have nots.”  That favors “guns over butter.”  One point of the privilege of education is the duty to maximize fairness and equality for all.  Because it’s the “all” that made that education possible except for those born into the upper classes which only includes a tiny segment of the “educated” class today.

Why Cornel West Loves Jane Austen.  Perhaps one needs to have read Jane Austen and loved her works to appreciate Cornel West.  That was in extremely short supply in the lefty blogosphere during the Democratic primary election cycle.  42% of college graduates never read another book after college.  Not quality fiction and non-fiction books, but any book at all.  Hardly the mark of “educated” men and women.