Truthiness
This is curious. I was reading The Corner this morning and saw a Ramesh Ponnuru post simply stating "Michael Barone is right: This column by E. J. Dionne Jr. is interesting." The column is interesting. It's about an interesting paper by four academics called "Rich State, Poor State, Red State, Blue State" which I've mentioned on this blog before. The paper demonstrates that, contrary to the implication of a lot of post-2004 punditry, it's still the case that rich people vote Republican and poor people do not.
Now, the interesting thing about the latest wave of interest in this is that I think no pundit is more closely associated with the inaccurate view that Democrats are the party of the rich than . . . Michael Barone himself. Nowhere in Barone's new post on the subject does he acknowledge the basic point that his previous writing has been -- if not flat-out wrong -- then at least misleading. Instead, he thinks Dionne must have written his column because he's "defensive about Democrats' rich elites." Is it so unimaginable that, instead, E.J. wrote the column because he wanted to correct some widespread misconceptions and make his readers better-informed? Certainly that's why I've linked to the paper in the past.
For what it is worth, Ponnaru also distinguished himself with honest discussion on the latest Real Time with Bill Maher. Perhaps the National Review is trying to claim the authentic role of an intellectually honest journal of opinion and thought from the right,its brand of course if not the reality of the rhetoric.
March 20, 2006 9:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dionne quoting from the study:``In poor states,'' Gelman and his colleagues write, ``rich people are much more likely than poor people to vote for the Republican presidential candidate, but in rich states (such as Connecticut), income has almost no correlation with vote preference. ... In poor states, rich people are very different from poor people in their political preferences. But in rich states, they are not.''
Barone paraphrasing the study: He might have added, if he had more than 700 or so words to make his point, that areas with high concentrations of trust-funders—people who live mostly on inherited wealth—are even more heavily Democratic. I wrote a column last year on what I called the trust-funder left, which inspired a lot of angry E-mail from liberals who were enraged. They evidently like to think of the Democrats as the party of the virtuous working class, not of the idle rich.
I don't think these guys read the same study.
March 20, 2006 10:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
How is a finding that rich voters in blue states tend to vote much more democratic than rich voters in red states overturn Barone's trust fund liberal argument? The study finds that the "richest segment of voters in Connecticutt is only barely more likely to vote Republican than the poorest Mississippians." How in the world does this demonstrate that "rich voters vote Republican and poor people do not." The study disrupts the opposite conclusion: that Republicans are now the nationwide party of lower income voters, but it doesn't do much more than that, since the whole point is the effect of income on the vote varies by state income.
March 20, 2006 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Barone lets loose this generalization in the link cited: But it is interesting that liberals very much dislike hearing that at least certain classes of rich people vote Democratic.
I'm not sure how he comes up with this. I'm implicitly quantifying "liberals" as "all liberals" or "most liberals" since if he's just claiming that some liberals might dislike hearing some liberals are rich, then I suppose that could be true, but it's pretty vacuous.
I proudly call myself a liberal, and I consider it a validation that many succesful entrepreneurial people vote Democratic, particularly right here in the SF Bay Area. It's the rightwing that always claims that Democrats are just people looking for a free lunch. If I thought that was true, I would not consider it something to be proud of. Actually, Democrats are just as interested in success on average as any other group, but unlike Republican's we're willing to bear our share of the public burden using the predictable means of taxation and allocation through the public sector rather than making up fantasyland stories about the charitable tendencies of the American people.
In short, I'm a liberal Democrat. I don't begrudge anyone else their financial success, and I don't pretend that whatever modest success I might have attained could have happened without being blessed with good fortune along the way.
March 20, 2006 3:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
The peope who live in Greenwich may be setting up trust funds for their kids but they themselves are mainly Wall Streeters. Very rich absolutely but they do work.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
March 20, 2006 7:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
The study shows that the rich overall vote Republican. However, the likelinhood of the rich voting Republican is dependent on what sort of state they are from, Blue or Red.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
March 20, 2006 7:39 PM | Reply | Permalink