XP: Working class voters article

Re: XP: Working class voters article

• carolina00

  October 2008

  I flew throught that as you weren't kidding that it's long, but that was v. informative.  Thanks. 

  It makes me a little depressed about my home state, though.  I don't frankly know how some of those voters could be reached, and some of those problems (single parent families like the first person featured) have no gov't solution to begin with. 

  

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• MarquisDoll

  October 2008

  Still reading, but I have to comment on this:

  Thomas Frank?s 2004 book ?What?s the Matter with Kansas?? directed its indignation at the baffling phenomenon of millions of Americans voting year after year against their economic self-interest. He concluded that the Republican Party had tricked working people with a relentless propaganda campaign based on religion and morality, while Democrats had abandoned these voters to their economic masters by moving to the soft center of the political spectrum. Frank?s book remains the leading polemic about the white reaction?the title alone has, for many liberals, become shorthand for the conventional wisdom?but it is hobbled by the condescending argument that tens of millions of Americans have become victims of a ?carefully cultivated derangement,? or are simply stupid.

  This is a mistake that I see liberals making over and over (moreso the people than the politicians, but it in turn hurts the politicians).  This is what smalltown conservatives I know are talking about when they mention the liberal elite.  They're very defensive.  They don't anything is wrong with Kansas and are kind of annoyed at people studying them like lab rats.  It's dehumanizing. 

  Not to stir up the elitism argument again, but that's something for you guys to think about in your approach to issues.

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• MarquisDoll

  October 2008

  majorwife:

  MarquisDoll:

  Still reading, but I have to comment on this:

  Thomas Frank?s 2004 book ?What?s the Matter with Kansas?? directed its indignation at the baffling phenomenon of millions of Americans voting year after year against their economic self-interest. He concluded that the Republican Party had tricked working people with a relentless propaganda campaign based on religion and morality, while Democrats had abandoned these voters to their economic masters by moving to the soft center of the political spectrum. Frank?s book remains the leading polemic about the white reaction?the title alone has, for many liberals, become shorthand for the conventional wisdom?but it is hobbled by the condescending argument that tens of millions of Americans have become victims of a ?carefully cultivated derangement,? or are simply stupid.

  This is a mistake that I see liberals making over and over (moreso the people than the politicians, but it in turn hurts the politicians).  This is what smalltown conservatives I know are talking about when they mention the liberal elite.  They're very defensive.  They don't anything is wrong with Kansas and are kind of annoyed at people studying them like lab rats.  It's dehumanizing. 

  Not to stir up the elitism argument again, but that's something for you guys to think about in your approach to issues.

  I can understand the bitterness but don't think for one second that people like Rove arent' studying them just as much, if not more, than the other side is and that we aren't studied as well.  It might not be published but it is there.

  True, but the publishing does make a difference as well.

  And for the record, my favorite professor wrote a book, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Now?, about multicultural conservatives, and she, too, is a liberal (as well as AA).  BUT she frames it differently.  By saying 'What's the matter with Kansas?' you're starting out looking for a negative.  In my professor's book, she's seeking to understand. 

  And I have to say she really gets it.  So much so that one of my classmates in one of her classes was complaining about her conservative views (1. boo hoo you have one frickin class at NYU where a conservative viewpoint is presented and you can't handle it when all the others are slanted far to the left.  2. This is a class on conservatism, did you think she was just going to bash them all day?  3.  Those aren't her views; she's teaching, you morAn.)

  I doubt Rove is as well-intentioned as my professor, but we don't hear a clammoring from conservatives about 'ooo, now what are those people doing there in Kasas.  Curious creatures, that's for sure.'  Elite republicans keep their comments to themselves.  Elite liberals shout it in mobs protesting whatever the cause of the week is.

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