shinra-bansho
Member
Tidbits of Thomas B. Edsall's new column.
http://nyti.ms/2f3hPKf
http://nyti.ms/2f3hPKf
Despite their declining share of the electorate, these voters continue to exercise an outsize influence: as the Silent Majority of 1968 and 1972; the Reagan Democrats of 1980; the Angry White Men of 1994; the Tea Party insurgents of 2010; and now the triumphant Trump Republicans of 2016.
Lets take a look at the history of this trend.
In 1968, these white voters often low or moderate income, disproportionately male and clustered in exurban and rural areas, then as now were crucial to the birth of the modern conservative coalition.
That year, famously, southern whites angered by enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act abandoned the Democratic Party in droves, and they were soon joined by many northern whites opposed to court-ordered busing.
The Democratic Partys commitment to civil rights prompted millions of white voters to cast ballots either for Richard Nixon, running as the Republican nominee, or for George Wallace
In the two elections before 1968, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, both Democrats, averaged 55 percent of the white working class vote. According to Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the pro-Democratic Center for American Progress, Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern, both Democrats, averaged 35 percent of that vote, in 1968 and 1972. Since that time, many Republican candidates have tapped into anti-black bias without running as overt segregationists.
The march of working and middle class whites toward the Republican Party took another giant step forward in the Tea Party election of 2010, when they voted against Democratic congressional candidates by 30 points (65-35), providing crucial ballast for the Republicans as they gained 63 seats in the House.
I do wonder what a new study commissioned today would show. How much has changed? (Would they even talk to a liberal elite sociologist anyway?)In 1985, Democrats conducted two major studies of white working class discontent, one by Greenberg, which looked at white U.A.W. workers and retirees in Macomb County Michigan, the other of 33 focus groups nationwide conducted by CRG, a marketing and polling firm.
Greenberg found that for these voters, Blacks constitute the explanation of their vulnerability and for almost everything that has gone wrong in their lives.
This
"special status of blacks is perceived by almost all of these individuals as a serious obstacle to their personal advancement. Indeed, discrimination against whites has become a well-assimilated and ready explanation for their status, vulnerability and failures."
The CRG study was equally brutal. These voters
"have a whole set of middle-class economic problems today, and their party is not helping them. Instead it is helping blacks, Hispanics and the poor. They feel betrayed."
CRG found that in the view of the white working class, the Democrats are the giveaway party and giveaway means too much middle class money going to blacks and the poor.