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NY Times: Democrats Try Wooing Ones Who Got Away: White Men
Submitted by fathers4fairness on Tue, 2014-03-04 18:06
Article here. Excerpt:
'It is a challenge that runs throughout the nation’s industrial heartland, in farm states and across the South, after a half-century of economic, demographic and cultural shifts that have reshaped the electorate. Even in places like Michigan, where it has been decades since union membership lists readily predicted Democratic votes, many in the party pay so little attention to white working-class men that it suggests they have effectively given up on converting them.
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No Democratic presidential candidate has won a majority of white men since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all prevailed with support of the so-called rising electorate of women, especially single women, and minorities. But fewer of those voters typically participate in midterm elections, making the votes of white men more potent and the struggle of Democrats for 2014 clear.
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Democrats generally win the votes of fewer than four in 10 white men. But they win eight of 10 minority voters and a majority of women, who have been a majority of the national electorate since 1984, while white men have shrunk to a third, and are still shrinking.
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Some white men have proved to be within reach: single men, college students and graduates with advanced degrees, the nonreligious, and gay men. But working-class married men remain hardest to win over and, unless they are in unions, get the least attention — to the dismay of some partisans.
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Democrats’ gloom about white men was eased temporarily by Mr. Obama’s 2008 election when he won 41 percent of white male voters — the first time a Democrat exceeded 40 percent since Mr. Carter in 1976. But their support for his re-election fell to 35 percent, roughly what Democrats have gotten since they lost to Richard Nixon.'
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Comments
And they were expecting?
Both parties have thrown men under the bus, most aggressively the Dems, however, and not just white ones.
The GOP stuck it to men by being fully on-board the exporting of manufacturing jobs to overseas facilities, undercutting the US's industrial labor base, all to raise more money from commercial interests. Sell out the electorate, get the money. Easy enough, it's been happening for centuries now. But the only reason they felt safe to go ahead and do this was the Dem party, whose historic base until the 70s was working class men, decided to make a strategically brilliant move; they saw their opportunity and took it. The math was easy: start focusing on appealing to female voters and you now have about half the electorate. Next appeal to non-white voters, in both cases, vilifying either men or whites or any convenient combination thereof to appeal to whatever grouping of females/non-whites you were talking to. It was too damned easy! In any given election, you had most of the female voters sewn up and a big majority of the non-white voters. Between that, you could pull in over 50% handily.
Going from being the populist party (the New Deal, etc.) to the party of women and non-whites' interests (or perceived ones, anyway -- at least as far as rhetoric goes) has delivered an electoral bonanza for the Dems. They have been on a roll ever since. Whoever saw the opportunity and struck when the iron was hot was going to win, and you have to hand it to them: they did it!
The GOP for its part totally missed the opportunity they had. Suddenly millions of working class men were now without political patronage by a major party and in one fell swoop, they could have picked those voters up. But instead, in cahoots with a willing Dem party, they sold out to would-be financial backers in industry and let millions of jobs get spirited off without the least resistance or disincentive for doing so (in fact, just the opposite). They reaped a short-term financial windfall for their election coffers but in the interim, have had to struggle every 2-4 years to keep their seats in Congress, and every 4 years, they have to fight to try to get into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It's a lot harder for them to get there than it is for the Dems, and all that trouble and expense cannot feel good. They had this great chance and missed it.
So now, male voters feel they have no one in the major parties representing their interests. And indeed, they do not. So now what, the Dems see they are in possible trouble heading into November and are trying to make nice? This is like the schoolyard bully who after a 2-week campaign of harassment and "pantsing" you in front of the whole gym class is now trying to be nice to you so you'll help him with his homework.
Nice try, not falling for it. These are the same fools who want to hand the White House over to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Barf. The only politicians in DC who may be just as bad at appealing to the typical male voters' interests are the Republicans.
It's sexism, donchaknow?
If Hilary manages to lose the nomination or the election, it will all be blamed on sexism.
But the bottom line is that there are more female voters than male voters. If Hilary loses, it will be because not enough women voted for her. If all the female voters vote for her, she'll win in a landslide. But they won't--and her loss will still be blamed on alleged male sexism.