{"id":516,"date":"2003-12-30T03:27:00","date_gmt":"2003-12-30T11:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/12\/30\/white-men-love-george-bush\/"},"modified":"2003-12-30T03:27:00","modified_gmt":"2003-12-30T11:27:00","slug":"white-men-love-george-bush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=516","title":{"rendered":"White men love George Bush"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve sometimes joked that if I could make just one change to US laws, I’d bar white men from the vote. Which brings us to this LA Times <\/i>article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Recent polls underscore the challenge for Democrats with white men. In an ABC\/Washington Post survey released last week, white men preferred Bush over an unnamed Democrat in 2004 by 62 percent to 29 percent, a head-turning 33-point margin; by contrast, white women gave Bush just a 10-point lead.<\/p>\n

Bush’s strength among white men derives as much from his personal style as his policy choices, most analysts agree. Sparse yet blunt in his words, comfortable on his ranch, dismissive of ceremony, impatient with diplomacy, Bush fits “an old-fashioned male ideal, deeply embedded in our cultural mythology,” said Bill Galston, a former Clinton adviser now a professor of public affairs at the University of Maryland.<\/p>\n

The ideal “is that a real man is a man of few words and determined, resolute action: like in [the movie] `High Noon.’ And Bush captures this almost perfectly and effortlessly.”<\/p><\/div>\n

Good God, are men really that simplistic? If John Wayne could be dug up and stuck on political posters, would he take the vote?<\/p>\n

I don’t think so – at least, he wouldn’t if Wayne was a democrat. It’s a fun story for a reporter to tell – “men like Bush because he’s the strong, silent type!” – but then why did the not-so-macho George Bush, Senior also benefit from a huge point spread among white men? And for that matter, why is it white<\/i> men who favor Bush – are black and Latino men really much less concerned about manliness than us white guys?<\/p>\n

I think the real story is much simpler: White men aren’t voting macho, they’re voting self-interest. Policies that help people of color and women – insofar as they’re effective at all – reduce the unfair advantage that comes with being white and male. From a self-interest point of view, it makes sense for white men to vote for candidates who want to turn the clock backwards on minority progress and feminist progress; candidates like Ross Perot and George W. Bush.<\/p>\n

What’s warped about this, of course, is that once you add in the element of class, most white men would gain far more from having liberals in power. White men suffer from stagnant wages; white men suffer from unemployment (albeit not as much as blacks or American Indians do); white men benefit from unionization; white men’s children need decent classrooms; white men are better off with clean air to breath; white men, in short, are people just like everybody else.<\/p>\n

But many white men don’t see it that way.<\/p>\n

This is, of course, Nixon’s “southern strategy”; <\/a>Republicans win by appealing to white male’s sense of frustrated entitlement. Too many white men beleive that they have a birthright of success. And if it doesn’t come true, some white men look to cast blame: who stole my god-given success?<\/i> And ever since Nixon, the Republicans have won (some) white men’s hearts by saying “it’s the blacks! It\u2019s the women! They stole your entitlement!”<\/p>\n

Essentially, the Republican Party runs against civil rights – and wins.<\/p>\n

Nixon saw <\/a>his opportunity in the decline of the great civil rights movement and the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. He judged that the South, a solid Democratic bloc that had never forgiven Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans for the Emancipation Proclamation, was furious about 10 years of civil rights progress and was ready to turn on the Democrats, who had received faithful Southern support since before the Civil War. In the end, Nixon defeated the Democrats not because of their worst disaster, Vietnam, but because of their greatest accomplishment, civil rights.<\/div>\n

So how can Democrats beat the Republicans, without Ross Perot helpfully stealing some of that White Male vote from the Republicans? Darned if I know. A poster at Economists for Dean <\/a>thinks that bringing out the female vote is the key, and so suggests that so-called “women’s issues” need to become more central to Dean’s campaign.<\/p>\n

Women are a majority of the population and the electorate. Women outnumber men in voter registration, and vote in higher numbers. In the 2000 election, nearly 8 million more women than men actually voted.<\/p>\n

Women also overwhelmingly identify with the Democratic Party. In fact, the 2000 election demonstrated one of the largest gender gaps in history: 54% of women overall voted for Al Gore versus 43% for Bush. And, most compelling of all for the Dean campaign, 58% of working women voted for Al Gore compared to just 39% for Bush. […]<\/p>\n

It’s imperative to give women a reason to get out and vote to capitalize on the electoral edge they provide for the Democratic Party. How is this done? The message to women must be steady and consistent to get them engaged with the campaign early and to keep them energized and motivated to vote on election day. […] Centering policy debates on values such as care of family, quality education and healthcare, protecting the environment and responsibly planning for the future can be a powerful organizing principle for the campaign.<\/p><\/div>\n

Maybe. I’d certainly like to see a greater emphasis on “women’s issues.”<\/p>\n

But I’m not sure if that’s enough. It seems to me that Democrats have to peel off at least some of those white men from Bush\u2019s column; which means convincing them to vote their class self-interest, instead of their race and gender self-interest.<\/p>\n

The real question is, can white men – too many of whom have stuck their heads firmly up their butts – learn to see self-interest outside of the Republican party?<\/p>\n

(Several links via And Then….<\/a>).<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve sometimes joked that if I could make just one change to US laws, I’d bar white men from the vote. Which brings us to this LA Times article. Recent polls underscore the challenge for Democrats with white men. In … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}