Flour Power? : Dems and the White Vote
Dems maybe securing – however slightly – the marshmallow center. What does that mean for the rest of us?
The GOP’s hi-profile black candidates – Michael Steele (MD), Lynn Swann (PA), Kenneth Blackwell (OH) -- all lost. Handily.
Why?
a.) They ran lackluster campaigns
b.) They were tainted by local and national scandals
c.) They were linked to President Bush and Karl Rove
d.) Some combination of all of the Above
If you guessed, “D”, you got it!
Chris Matthews asked a black guest whether minority voters would vote out of ethnic loyalty or to make racial history. I say, no. Duh. Most minority voters voted for change, just like white voters. Race didn’t matter. It was time to crack some eggs, no matter the candidate’s or the voter’s skin color.
That said, though all men are created equal, some demographic groups are more equal than others.
White voters with no college education comprise roughly half the national electorate. Among the most discussed “lessons” of the 2004 elections: Bush’s commanding victory in the exurbs. America’s emerging suburbs and exurbs are disproportionately white (~83 percent) with higher rates of “nuclear families” and homeownership.
In their rout yesterday, Democrats did not sizably narrow the popularity gap that Bush and the GOP typically enjoy among white voters, even those in the exurbs. (In 2004, Bush won 58 % of voting whites to Kerry’s 41%).
Look at three crucial 2006 Senate races (which have among the highest percentage of exurban populations nationwide):
Missouri White Vote
Talent (R) 55%
McCaskill (D) 42%
(Whites = 83% of the vote)
Tennessee White Vote
Corker (R ) 59%
Ford (D) 40%
(Whites = 85% of the vote)
Virginia White Vote
Allen (R) 58%
Webb (D) 42%
Whites = 78% of the vote)
Source: CNN exit poll data.
“I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks,” declared Howard Dean during his 2004 presidential bid.
Does the election vindicate the Democrats’ long-term obsession to “win back” the white vote by fielding centrist candidates? Or does it illustrate a fleeting backlash among all Americans – including whites – fed up with Iraq and the culture of corruption?
White voters in the emerging suburbs and exurbs in a handful of states exerted great power over the campaign and today’s outcome. And their brethren nationwide, strategists believe, hold the keys to the 2008 presidential election.
In rushing headlong to woo this growing constituency, the Party shouldn’t abandon some of its long-standing principals: smart growth, fair elections, urban renewal, racial integration, and good/equitable public education nationwide.
Thankfully, future-Speaker Pelosi’s 100-hr plan provides other steps in the right direction.
I don't know, I think it is more a symptom of the fact that this is still a racist country. The GOP is definitely a racist party, but alot of democrat voters are racist as well. I think Dean's remark was more toward capturing the "ignorant" vote than the racist vote. But if ignorant people knew what was good for them, there would be no republican party at all, so I think Dean's desire is fruitless, although you may be right on target.
I did not hear any democrats campaigning on restoring our civil rights, or restoring the value of our currency, or reigning in the power of the Oil companies.... Democrat or republican, I think this country is headed for some very hard times, and an increase in racism is hardly to be counted out. I just hope more and more blacks vote.
November 8, 2006 2:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that the dems seem to be trying to regain the white vote they have lost over the years. I don't think the dems are saying that the votes of people of color matter any less. Just looking at the potential Committee Chairs for the upcoming Congress I see Conyers, Hastings and other members of the CBC chairing some of the most powerful committees in Congress...and rightly so.
But in the big picture I do definitely agree the dems should never alienate their core groups just for the sake of electoral success...it goes against everything I think the dems should stand for.
November 8, 2006 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good point. As times get hard, people often become more self-centered. I am struck by the consistency of the data from one election to another.
On Larry King's show, Ford said that he had set up a campaign headquarters in a shop that displayed Confederate items. That appears to suggest some nuances that most of us are not aware of, but the statistics cited above do not seem to support the conclusion that his efforts to reach out were well rewarded.
Once I stopped for gas in a shop that displayed caps with Confederate flags on them. Some of the caps had both the Confederate and the United States flag on them. Some of the caps had logos for athletic teams or businesses. Some were for law enforcement or military units. There was one pink cap with the motto, "#1 Mom."
The general impression that I got is that they all expressed a kind of kick-ass group solidarity, a defensive xenophobia, or aggressive dependency on reinforcement from others like themselves.
It is scary to think about it, but hard times may tend to reinforce such attitudes.
November 8, 2006 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here is one thing that bothers me. The confederacy was NOT about slavery. But unfortunately the same country that cannot recognise facsism has absulutely no knowledge of what it WAS about, and the confederate flag has become synonymous with racism. It is just like saying Pearl Harbor was an unprovoked attack, after we had cut off Japan's oil supply. Or just like saying..... WMD? It is our responsibility as citizens to educate ourselves, and WE HAVE FAILED black and white. This country seems to think it is all about economic gain, but the founders were more noble men than can be found today. Yes, some had slaves. BUT IN THE FUTURE those of us with cars will be considered criminals. Black and white. Context changes.
November 8, 2006 6:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
"The confederacy was NOT about slavery."
Of course it wasn't and I'm glad you pointed it out. Like they say, "History is written by the victor". It was about all those gay marriages up north. There hadn't been any yet but hell - even a fool could see it was gonna happen fer Christ sake!
November 8, 2006 7:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, it's true. Us Yankees only threatened to use our greater numbers and more industrialized economy to exercise power over the southern economic system that was... based on slavery.
November 8, 2006 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
And as Rich said, the Dems are not alienating their core groups as judged by the economic priorities of the leadership which is one reason African Americans and other minorities continue to vote for them.
November 8, 2006 7:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Will the Democrat victory mean real gains for progressives and have-nots?
I am cautious because, as you stated, Democrats tend to play to the marshmallow center of white suburban/exurban moderates to win elections. However, white racism has caused both major parties to deny race at different points in history.
Lincoln dragged his feet on the abolition of slavery, FDR waffled on anti-lynching legislation, and JFK was pressured into hearing the agenda of civil rights coalitions despite his distrust of MLK. Reagan struck a chord with whites who already felt blacks had too much, and welfare queen imagery ran parallel to empty slogans like Nancy Reagan’s “say no to drugs”, which reduced race, class, and the feminization of poverty to bootstrap delusions. Mental disorders/substance abuse became the domain of police instead of social services. The Religious Right served and drank the kool aid.
Today’s “moderate” Democrats sound like Reagan Democrats, which Clinton went after in 1992.
Moderates can be neo-liberal or neo-conservative, but what they have in common is an aversion to identity politics, especially race, which defined the Old Left and gave rise to the New Left. Denial of white privilege and racial strife was part of Clinton’s centrist method of appealing to moderates and the campaign strategy worked. Clinton courted black voters on bread-and-butter issues and won many more white moderates who wanted a colorblind daydream.
While the country does reflect an appreciation for progressive views on minimum wage and abortion, I’m wondering if progressives will get pushed aside in the move from campaigning to administration and compromise.
November 8, 2006 10:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Libertine..these thoughts appear to be non-sequiturs, how are you connecting one to the other? Wooing voters of any ethnicity seems to be wholly separate from tenure on Congressional committees, when your party is the majority, resulting in chairmanships.
November 9, 2006 5:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Fair call WRB. I was trying to make the point, very sloppily, that what the dems stand for is not open to compromise. No concessions on the party's diversity will be made to attract voters based on race, religion or sex. And it is far from unheard of in the Congress for people to be passed over when chosing committee chairs...
November 9, 2006 9:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think minorities should worry too much about the Dems leaving them.
If we consider only political power, pursuing the white vote with racial politics is sure fire way to end up out of power for the rest of American history. It won't be too long before there is no majority demographic (besides female?) in the United States. At that point, basing your votes and campaigns on winking and nudging white voters with code words will be about as effective as a klan rally today. This is the essential dilemma facing the GOP. Because the democratic party is inherently based on the ideals of equality, integration, and *gasp* multi-culturalism, the dems are the future. If the GOP attempts to convert from racist/xenophobic-conservative to simply conservative it'll be ugly(for them), but if they don't the party is dead.
Dean put it poorly, but I think he's several steps ahead of the GOP. He's trying to articulate liberal(and Liberal) values that appeal to rural and poor white americans. For last couple of decades, the democratic party's only platform that it stuck to has been in opposition to the GOP's: We're not racists. It made for bad politics and a lack of decent policy elsewhere. Soon comes the day when running on a platform of racial and ethnic inclusion is like running against the Klan. Dean is staking claim to a real progressive platform of social and economic justice. If he we fail at this then we can look forward to years more of purely minority based politics. American conservative culture is on its death bed. By the time they took power, there was no going back as their authoritarian waspy ideal is already too divorced from reality. If we strive to help all people, rather than just not hurt them, then we can euthanize the dying GOP. Wishful thinking perhaps.
A couple months ago RU Sirius had a somewhat related radio show episode: http://www.rusiriusradio.com/2006/07/11/show-52-has-immigration-already-killed-american-culture/
I don't agree with much of it, but still worth listening to.
November 9, 2006 7:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it has to be assumed that both sides of a conflict try to make themselves look better than they actually were. I am by no means an expert on these matters, but in my experience, if you want to see a point of view that does not choose sides between Northern whites and Southern whites, it is helpful to read black historians.
Some years ago, for example, I read an article in Ebony magazine about Lincoln's racial attitudes. It is clear that Lincoln does not measure up very well by modern standards, but this does not in any way exonerate Southerners for the worst things that happened on their watch. You can point to the holocaust that took place on the Yankee slave ships, but do not forget the high death rates on the Southern rice plantations.
On one side of the argument we might make this point: I do not know what Lincoln really believed deep in his heart, but for public consumption he spoke of transporting free blacks to Africa or South America. If this had been implemented on a large scale, it probably would have been fatal for many blacks. It is significant that Lincoln did not suggest transporting the free blacks to Kansas, or Illinois, or Massachusetts. His reading of the attitudes of the general public was that the solution to the race problem was to eliminate black people from the United States. Perhaps he really thought that solution would have been best for the blacks themselves. Today, however, we call this ethnic cleansing.
On the other side, however, I think it is inaccurate to say that slavery was not the central issue for Southerners. It is possible that there was enough dissatisfaction on other matters that some Southern states would have seceded without slavery, but slavery was clearly the major point of contention. If you go to the web site of the Georgia Sons of Confederate Veterans, you can look up the Georgia Articles of Secession. They also include a codicil that explains the reasons for secession in detail. Slavery was by far the most important issue.
Speaking as a pacifist Social Democrat, it seems to me that the most important objective should have been to expedite emancipation without violence. The Underground Railroad -- which according to modern historians was predominantly accomplished by black people themselves -- was the most effective institution for expediting the emancipation of the slaves without violence.
Much more needed to be done. Conceivably that could have been accomplished by giving compensation to the slave owners, combined with -- as a matter of fairness -- reparations for the black people. This would have been very expensive, but it might not have been any more expensive than the Civil War. I do not know enough history to be able to explain why that did not happen, but it is clear that nobody back then had ever imagined a government program on that scale.
November 10, 2006 6:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
There were deeper arguments over process, such as the Nullification debate, but they all devolved from slavery. There would have been no arguments over sovereignty absent that dispute. All talk of tyranny was code for "we want to keep our slaves."
It is of course true that the North was pretty far from selflessly championing human dignity; it was less that than the embarrassment of sanctioning an overtly inhumane practice. The zealots were outnumbered by the simply decent.
November 10, 2006 6:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
White voters in the emerging suburbs and exurbs in a handful of states exerted great power over the campaign and today’s outcome. Rich Benjamin
Hmm; I'm with Billmon on this one:
"Which means the Democrats once again owe a great big thank you to the African-American and Hispanic voters of this country. Without them, the Rovians would still hold supreme power -- and would have a fair prospect of preserving their 51% majority in perpetuity."
November 10, 2006 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am a big admirer of the Quakers, whom I suppose you could count among the zealots, and not only because I am for most practical purposes a pacifist. When the Quakers decided that slavery was evil, they freed their slaves without compensation.
Among the simply decent, do not forget to count Mary Chesnut, the author of a famous memoir in the form of a diary. Although she was a member of a slave-owning family, she said that everything that Charles Sumner said about slavery was true. Her in-laws were divided over secession, because they had family in Pennsylvania, but all of them had to go along with it when secession became a fait accompli. A lot of people in border states got dragged into the fighting who were not major instigators of the war. It is very sad that Americans are so quick to choose war over problem-solving.
I have no idea to what extent the slave-owners would have been receptive to compensation. By the time of the Civil War, their natural tendency toward megalomania and paranoia had been inflamed to such an extent that the issue might have been off the table. The Georgia papers that I referred to above make some reference to the financial issue, but it is not clear that the Georgia secessionists would actually have responded favorably to compensation. The government institutions that we take for granted today did not exist then, and that limited the range of alternative solutions that anyone could conceive were possible
By the time of the Civil War, I can well believe that your observations about nullification are true. Mary Chesnut's father had been a nullifier over tariffs, but that was an earlier time.
Just as some people today fear economic competition from undocumented immigrants, my understanding is that reputable scholarship holds that some of the opposition to slavery was similarly motivated. There was complexity and nuance on both sides, which tends to get lost in the war fever that developed.
In war-time, people dehumanize their enemies, by reducing them to stereotypes. Slavery was a kind of war against the black people, and the racism that we saw in the most recent election is also a kind of war.
November 10, 2006 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
When the Quakers decided that slavery was evil, they freed their slaves without compensation.
And they were very active in the Underground Railroad. Yeah, Quakers have an impressive history on social issues.
November 10, 2006 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Quakers seemed to have figured a lot of things out before other people did.
When I was in college, for a brief time I did some volunteer work with the Quakers in a mental hospital. They made me feel as if I had known them all my life.
Other countries were able to emancipate their slaves without resort to violence, but I do not know enough history to say what was different about the circumstances in those countries. It is possible that the decision was made in a more top-down manner than would have been possible in this country.
November 10, 2006 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Which means the Democrats once again owe a great big thank you to the African-American and Hispanic voters of this country. Without them, the Rovians would still hold supreme power -- and would have a fair prospect of preserving their 51% majority in perpetuity."
Yes.
I think the quote by G. Steinem says it best:
"Well, if just 5 percent more women had voted, Bush would not have been reelected and wewould not be in Iraq. There's a big gender gap. Ninety-five percent of black women voted against Bush. Ninety-five percent! My life's ambition is to live to see the day that white women are as smart as black women"
November 11, 2006 8:43 AM | Reply | Permalink