Why blue collar white males will vote for bush

[Ernesto]

UC Berkeley sociologist answers the question of why 50% of bluecollar males are planning to vote for bush in 2004, even when he is picking their pockets & stealing the futures of their children? ... Also, why they hate minorities, emigrants and especially Hillary. ......... Today's lead story @ BUZZFLASH.com ....Sorry, I have no link!

[jjmalonejr]

1. Link

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/12/int03326.html

[barbaraann]

2. Testosterone, endorphins, etc.

n/t

[Octafish]

3. Very important article ... remember: "Patriarchal."

EXCERPT...

BuzzFlash: Well, what is it? You identify a sort of an emotional trade-off, basically, that the blue collar support of Bush isn't based on facts; indeed, many of these blue-collar males are aware of the facts. But Bush is offering something else. He's offering them, as you say, confidence in reestablishing their role in the center of the patriarchal world.

Hochschild: Right. And this is a delicate point to try to get across. I think we all have feelings and they all can get appealed to. It doesn't mean a person is stupid if their feelings are getting appealed to. But I do think that this is going on, and that there's a kind of a dilemma here that the blue-collar guy, since the ‘70s on, has been suffering a giant economic downward slide. His paycheck is worth less. His job has become less secure. His benefits have been carved down. And all of this is bad, bad news for him. His wife's had to go to work, and now, 30 years later, the two of them earn what he alone would have earlier earned.

With this economic hit has come a cultural hit. Now I think it's a worldwide story, a kind of economic undermining of patriarchal customs and expectations. And so, with this economic decline may come marital instability -- a lot of hard things have hit this guy. And so how he feels psychologically becomes a really important question. And I think the story is that he believes -- whether it's true or not -- that a lot of people have come up from behind him. Women have come from behind. Minorities have come from behind and gotten ahead; immigrants, new arrivals, have come from behind and have gotten ahead. Even the spottedowl -- a lot of them are not environmentalists because they think somebody's now putting animal rights over their human rights. As he's sliding down, he imagines all these groups moving up.

And a very understandable thing to do is to look at them and want them to go back where they came from. The feeling is one of frustration, fear, anger. What he's not doing is looking at Bush, the guy at the top, who's rigging the whole economic game, and who's not doing a thing to support him, and who's actually deflecting blame away from the top. So it comes down to this: those feelings that come with a kind of loss of position, income and status among blue collar males is being exploited instead of addressed.

CONTINUED...

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/12/int03326.html

[ThomC]

Do Democrats really want them?

I seems the party platform and certainly the take here does not cater to NASCAR stereotypes, disrespect for the Spotted Owl, off-road vehicles and hunting on public lands, big trucks and SUVs, guns for sporting and self-defense purposes and so on. Does the party stand with open arms for these people?

[Bridget Burke]

12. Yes.

Perhaps their pastimes do not include deconstructing Wittgenstein or humming along to the latest works of Philip Glass. But it's shortsighted to regard them as useless.

Most of them work hard but can't seem to get ahead. Efforts to make them blame the minorities, uppity women, foreigners, etc., have been quite successful. Tell them about corporate welfare & who really benefits from the recent tax cuts. (The Jim Crow laws were enacted only at the end of the 19th century, mostly to counter the Progressive movement in which workers of different races were beginning to unite against the bosses. Racism already existed, but codifying it was a good way to divide the "lower classes".) Of course, this strategy might be too radical--who really wants to anger corporate interests? It's better to speak out for the spotted owl & ignore the bigger problems. (Personally, I have nothing against spotted owls--not to mention the prairie chickens & whooping cranes.)

They also fight most of our wars. Who starts the wars--with what spurious reasons? Who's enriched by them? What about veterans' benefits?

I know plenty of well-educated yuppies who drive SUV's. And what part of the Democratic platform had a thing to say about limiting arms for hunting? Stereotypes are dangerous.

[BiggJawn]

4. Because they're stupid, they're patriarchal, AND...

Rush TELLS them too!
"The 'Push-Behind Guy'...", the "Cheerleader", Halliburton? Eh, nothing to see there...Hillary's college? "The ARMPIT of the Universe!" And people say Pfleghmball is NOTHING?

I don't usually like see the word "Partriarch" used outside the Orthodox Church, but from a Jungian POV, I think it works in this instance.

Funny...the same structure that Geo Bush is the Front man for is the same opne that made these blue collar guys powerless in the FIRST place.

Some master of bait and switch, that Chimpy...

[Sir_Shrek]

5. Well....

...that attitude will surely win them over to our side.

I'm convinced that the institutional Dems are sorely out of touch with the blue collar worker, and that blue collars workers are well aware of this. That's why they vote Republican.

[QC]

7. You're right--that attitude says all that needs to be said.

When we discuss working people at DU, we generally approach them like some bizarre and distant culture, like the cargo cults in the South Pacific.

That in itself, not to mention the usual denunciations of "trailer trash" stupidity, answers the question.

[Sir_Shrek]

11. Exactly.....

Does anyone here find themselves suddenly smitten with the Republican party when we hear that they think Democrats are "bleeding-heart-crybaby unpatriotic-anti-American traitors who should move to Cuba/France/Canada/wherever"? I think we know the answer to that question. I see comparable statements about the blue collar worker here at DU often.

[QC]

6. Nice try, but no cigar.

There are some interesting points here, but the article suffers from the same flaw as most others on its topic: excessive distance from its subject.

In other words, it does not actually ask any blue-collar white voters why they vote like they do. Consequently, the author has no choice but to do long-distance psychoanalysis, a la Krauthammer.

There was a great article about this kind of thing in the New Statesman, a British magazine. It dealt with a well-intentioned rich lady who went to live in a housing project for a while so that she could write about what it is to be poor. Link.

Some excerpts:

We know that the gap between "rich and poor" has grown in recent years: yet this gap is rarely framed in terms of class, which would be to acknowledge the cultural and psychological differences that help perpetuate it. Polly Toynbee can try out being poor, but she can't try out being working class; her middle-classness is built into the very fact that she feels her activities and what she has to say matter....

The cultural and psychological differences in class experience are almost never discussed in our society, precisely because middle-class people are unaware of them, and working-class people have little public voice....

There are lots of blue-collar people in this country--in fact, there used to be lots of blue-collar people in the Democratic Party.

Why not ask some of them why they no longer vote with us? It would probably be a lot more useful and interesting than chattering about the patriarchy.

[candy331]

8. Some of us work with blue collar workers

everday and we don't need to ask we already know why they vote for repugs, just listen to their jokes.

[ThomC]

10. I'll offer a small data point from my brother in Michigan

He tells me that at their last club meeting (ATV and snowmobile club) where there were about 750 members present they discussed the recent closures of many miles of their trails and how the local and distant environmental groups were working closely with Democratic lawmakers to help close these trails. Bear in mind most of these members are BC union workers with long family histories of electing Democrats and now nearly all have concluded that there is not enough difference between D and R to continue voting D when all they feel they are getting is run out of the woods. Take it for what it's worth.

[Triana]

9. Dupe I already posted this..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=936081