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Democrats adrift?

Public Interest - September 22, 2004

Continued from page 5.

As Washington Post political reporter Thomas Edsall has pointed out, the union movement itself has undergone fundamental changes during this period. After surging from 13 percent to 37 percent of the private-sector workforce between 1930 and 1960, the union share of that workforce has collapsed to just 8 percent today, the lowest level in a century. At the same time, the balance of power within the union movement has shifted toward the public sector: Organized government workers have risen from only 17 percent of the union movement in 1976 to nearly half today. And men have declined from 83 percent of union members to under 60 percent today. The result of this transformation is that working-class men in the private sector--the heart and soul of the electorate that narrowly made John F. Kennedy president--are now far more likely to be outside the influence of organized labor, and are likely to be exposed to a wider range of political and cultural forces that shape their outlook and their votes.

Developments in foreign and defense policy also played a role in pushing white men away from the Democratic party. Democrats became the epicenter of opposition to the Vietnam war, a stance that eventually metastasized into a broader critique of the Cold War defense establishment, assertive internationalism, and even America itself. These developments offended many white men who were traditional patriots and favored a strong national defense. Gun control, which many white men saw as the translation of defense dovishness into domestic policy, helped cement Democrats' image as the party of weakness.

At the same time, the role of government shifted. As survey researcher Anna Greenberg and others have pointed out, white males were the principal beneficiaries of New Deal policies. By contrast, Great Society programs largely aided women and minorities. And for two decades, roughly from 1973 to 1993, the federal government failed to address the problem of wage stagnation, which hit less-educated white men especially hard. Even the more successful economic strategy of the Clinton years--which tended to focus on the working poor, minorities, and upper-income professionals--did relatively little for men in the heart of the middle class. By the 2000 presidential election, the majority of upscale white men came to believe that they needed nothing from government except to be left alone, while many downscale white men concluded that government either did not understand how to help them or did not care enough to do so. Because differing attitudes toward the role of government continue to define political ideology in American politics, the rise of antigovernment sentiment among white men produced a shift toward conservatism. And because the major political parties have become more ideologically polarized, this shift in white male sentiment led inexorably to a move away from the Democrats.

The white male voting block

A closer look at sentiments recorded in exit polls and post-election surveys gives us a better understanding of white male flight from the Democratic party in 2000. As a group, white men were substantially more conservative than the electorate as a whole. Only 16 percent identified themselves as liberal, versus 20 percent for the general electorate; by contrast, 35 percent regarded themselves as conservative (versus 29 percent overall). Not surprisingly, only 19 percent of white men saw Gore as sharing their view of government (versus 30 percent for the electorate as a whole), while 43 percent saw Bush as sharing their view of government (34 percent for the electorate). Fifty-seven percent of white men saw Gore as too liberal on the issues; only 34 percent thought he was "about right." Conversely, 58 percent thought Bush was "about right" on the issues, while only 36 percent thought he was too conservative.

White men in 2000 displayed a distinctive outlook in three key areas: economics and the role of government, defense and foreign policy, and social and cultural issues. Only 32 percent of white men believed that government should do more, versus 45 percent of the electorate as a whole. White men gave a higher priority than did other voters to cutting federal income taxes and reducing the national debt, and a lower priority to Social Security and other domestic programs. A plurality of white men felt that the new president should cut taxes before doing anything else and were more supportive of across-the-board (rather than targeted) tax cuts than was the electorate as a whole. While a majority of the electorate was willing to consider investing a portion of payroll taxes in private Social Security accounts, white men supported this proposal by an overwhelming 66 to 34 margin.

A distinctively white male outlook also shows up on defense issues. White men were somewhat more likely than other voters to cite world affairs as the single issue that matters most. They were also much more likely to believe that the U.S. military became weaker during the Clinton presidency. While the electorate as a whole had more confidence in Gore's ability to handle an international crisis than in Bush's, white men felt just the reverse.

In some respects, the outlook of white men on social and cultural issues tracks that of the electorate as a whole. White men were no more likely than others to believe that the country is on the wrong track, morally speaking; that the president should be a moral leader as opposed to a government manager; or that abortion should be illegal in most or all circumstances. But on the issue of gun control, there was a huge gap between white men and other Americans. While 62 percent of the electorate supports stricter gun laws, that figure falls to 45 percent for white men. This gap played a significant role in the 2000 presidential election, when the share of voters from gun-owning households surged to 48 percent, versus 37 percent in 1996. A post-election survey by Stan Greenberg also found that other cultural issues--especially Gore's down-the-line support for abortion and perceived support for gay civil unions--helped drive white males toward Bush.

In the aggregate, white men may be said to have a distinctive cultural outlook. Even more than most Americans, they prize independence, individual choice, personal integrity, and strength. Men gravitate toward candidates they see as having the courage to stand up against the odds, even against the majority--witness the strong white male support for Ross Perot and John McCain. White men care less about verbal facility and eloquence than they do about the reliability of words spoken. Gore's poor showing among the former supporters of Ross Perot and the disappointed supporters of John McCain substantially weakened his candidacy. And by defying conventional wisdom about the irrelevance of defense issues in the post-Cold War era, Bush parlayed his advocacy of a rebuilt military into a perception of firmness and strength that fortified his standing among white men. Bush's firmness in the face of difficulties in Iraq has helped shore up his support among white men, even as that support is eroding in other parts of the electorate.

These cultural issues combined to shape the white male vote in 2000. Indeed, according to Greenberg, non-college-educated white men under 50 regarded the rights of gun owners and the need to restore the military as the strongest reasons to vote for Bush. They voted against Gore because of concerns about his personal trustworthiness and his anti-gun position.

The shifting class structure

The shrinkage of the middle class and the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor are some of the most frequently discussed features of contemporary American life. Some see these developments as the basis for restoring a class-based politics. Lower-income groups, it is argued, might be mobilized to support a return to a more interventionist central government that buffers Americans against economic insecurity.

The tacit assumption behind this line of argument is that the income gap is growing because of downward mobility--that is, because a substantial portion of the population is being forced out of the middle class into working-class poverty. No doubt this is the case for some individuals. But, in the aggregate, this assumption is false. At the end of the 1990s boom, the percentage of low-income families was lower than it was in 1972. The middle class is shrinking, not because poverty is on the march, but because millions of Americans are surging into the ranks of the upper-middle class and wealthy.

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