Was Thomas Frank Wrong? Is Obama Empirically Wrong?

Let's go back to first principles: what if Thomas Frank, the author of "What's The Matter With Kansas," the bedrock on which Obama chiseled his "bitter/cling" remarks last week, had it wrong? That's the thesis of political scientist Larry Bartels of Princeton, writing in Quarterly Journal of Political Science.

Aggregating data, he finds that:

(a) White working class voters identify more with Democrats on cultural issues and more with Republicans on economic issues?

(b) the salience of social issues has increased over the past two decades but more so among whites with college degrees

(c) Frank's trend finds statistical support only in the South, where it has an obvious explanantion: Democratic "strength" was "artifically inflated" by segregation and Jim Crow, according to Bartels.

The fundamental question that Frank and Obama both try to answer is why John Q. Pennsylvanian seems to vote against his economic interest? The embedded assumption is that it clearly is in his interest to support Democratic policies on fiscal policies (income redistribution) labor (a shift in the union/corporate balance), regulation (more, not less) but for some reason, he refuses to. Maybe he is bamboozled into supporting Republicans who convince him that they share his values more on cultural issues (which by their nature come from the gut) and convince him that cultural issues are more important.

The data to support this trend is at the very least, mixed. The trend over the past 50 years is clear: those voters with incomes in the lower third of the distribution have been trending Democratic. Among working class voters overall, the trend from 1952 to now is positive for Democrats.

In the white working class, as in the electorate as a whole, net Republican gains since the 1950s have come entirely among middle- and upper-income voters, producing a substantial gap in partisanship and voting between predominantly Democratic lower income groups and predominantly Republican upper income groups.

Frank is correct on one score: voters who make decisions based on their economic conditions are choosing Republicans more and more. But most of those voters are not poor. Indeed, the trend is mitigated somewhat by the better performance of Democrats among poorer voters.

Comments

A lot of poor people think they'll be rich one day. And then when they're rich they won't want to be taxed too heavily.

No, seriously.

Posted by Craig | April 14, 2008 1:14 PM

"The fundamental question that Frank and Obama both try to answer is why John Q. Pennsylvanian seems to vote against his economic interest?"

If wine-track Democrats want to understand why people vote against their economic interests, they need only look in the mirror. Plenty of Democrats with high paying jobs and healthcare plans that pay for their weekly stress-reducing massage are in favor of income redistribution and a national health care service, both of which act against their economic interests. Why? Values. Why is it so hard to understand that the John Q's are voting their own values?

Posted by CG | April 14, 2008 1:20 PM

For what it's worth, Frank doesn't get what all the fuss is about:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/14/thomas-frank-on-obama-not_n_96528.html

Oh, and Obama increased his lead in Gallup and Rasmussen today.

And Hillary got jeered for bringing it up today.

Posted by Vermonter | April 14, 2008 1:23 PM

Marc, you might be overthinking this.

Posted by alex | April 14, 2008 1:23 PM

Check out the exit polls for the 2004 election. IIRC, The extreme poor and the extreme rich went for Kerry. The high school drop outs and the PHDs went for kerry. Republican's own the middle of the bell curve with regard to education and income while Democrats take the extremities.

Posted by ninjapirate | April 14, 2008 1:24 PM

Frank rebutted Bartels and made good arguments doing so I thought. I don't fully subscribe to either.

Whether one agrees with Frank or not or Obama's feeling that some voters reactions to 25 years of government failing them might be explained this way, freedom of speech suggests that one should be able to have an honest dialogue about these theories without being branded an "elitist". Mainstream media does it all the time with their discussion of exit polls.

Is Ed Rendell widely branded a racist by the mainstream media for suggesting the White Pennsylvania voters won't vote for a black guy? Whether Obama is right or wrong, how is it so different to suggest small town USA feels so frustrated, bitter and angry by 25 years of empty economic promises made by politicians that some will turn to gun or faith or other issues in an election? At the very least, the premise that people will alter their habits after being let down so many times provides a reasonable, factual foundation for theorizing some sort of alternative behavior is coming or has been happening. The only way to explain that theory would be by expressing it in terms that group voters in some way. In this case, it was a partially different stratification of the voters compared with exit polls. To me, that's not being elitist. It's much closer to trying to discuss the realities of what is going on just like the mainstream media does on election night (aside from poorly chosen words in San Francisco that were previously more clearly stated with Charlie Rose in 2004).

Posted by Cleduc | April 14, 2008 1:33 PM

The Bartel paper is not without flaws.

It uses almost entirely self report methodologies.

It is a given in behavioral sciences today that people
a) don't always match attitudes to behavior and
b) people don't know/can't articulate why they act in certain ways

Frank's thesis may or may not be correct but the Bartel response certainly does not invalidate it.

Posted by John B. | April 14, 2008 1:38 PM

Frank wrote a 20-page rebuttal to Bartels primarily challenging the professor’s methodology, specifically his definition of “working class.” ( http://www.tcfrank.com/dismissd.pdf)
Frank contends that much of Bartels’ group is composed of nonworking-class people, including recent college graduates, the disabled and, most significantly, retirees, who Frank argues comprise “over a third of Bartels’s “working class” demographic. According to Frank, “Only a third of his [Bartels’s] chosen cohort are [sic] actually employed, and only half of these are over the age of thirty.” In Frank’s words: “This is not a profile of ‘the working class’ as anyone uses the term. This is ‘the poor,’ ‘the young,’ and ‘the retired.’”
Frank also rebukes Bartels’s dismissal of other indicia of group identity, such as educational level and self-identification, although Bartels, as Frank notes, selectively uses self-identification data to support his analysis of the voting patterns of the religious versus the less- or non-religious. In sum, Frank presents a convincing but ultimately irrelevant rebuttal. As Frank, himself, argues, the growth of conservatism among the wealthy is not new: “We have had upper-class conservatives since the dawn of the Republic; by themselves they can’t win elections to any office other than treasurer of the country club. It is only when some people from less exalted precincts cast their lot with these upper-class conservatives that the political scene gets interesting.”

Thus, the Cons need not sway most or, depending on the election and level of support from other voting blocs, even a majority of working class voters; they need only capture the ballots of enough voters to tip a particular election. And perhaps this is the essential point. Whether one believes that the country is essentially conservative or centrist, there can be little serious doubt that, from the fiscal cons to the neo-cons to the theo-cons, the conservative movement has had a profound impact on the nation’s domestic and foreign policies, and the results of many of those policies, including stagnant wages and a controversial war, have adversely affected a great many Americans.

Posted by Doria | April 14, 2008 1:42 PM

Marc-
I think Bartels is missing the point, although that is partially Frank's and Obama's fault for suggesting that the issue here is a CHANGE in the voting behavior of low-income whites.

The point, really, is that low-income whites haven't changed (as Bartels points out) their voting behavior much at all in the last 25 years, desipite the fact that the GOP has become a much more anti-tax, anti-regulation, pro-corporate, pro-trade party in that time (remember, Ike was a New Dealer too, and even Nixon was pretty fiscally progressive).

If white working class voters were responding strictly to the economic policies of each party, there ought to have been a significant jump to the Dems since the 80s, and that just hasn't happened, which can be explained largely by the sort of "clinging" to familiar social causes in communities hit with economic hardship. In fact, I don't really see how ELSE it could possibly be explained.

Posted by Jesse | April 14, 2008 1:45 PM

This is a question Dems have been asking themselves ever since Reagan. Kevin Phillips, the former conservative pundit addressed it in one of his books I believe. Bill Clinton gave a much better answer to the question than Obama did because he tied it directly to Republicans: they persuade lower class voters to support Republicans, who dont give a darn about their economic health, by pushing and focusing on hot button emotional issues such as abortion, gun rights, gays, immigrants, etc. That seems to me an eminently defensible thesis when stated in that fashion. When not tied to Republicans, it sounds like you are complaining about what motivates lower class voters, which is not smart. That was Obama's blunder.

Posted by Jammer | April 14, 2008 3:29 PM

The reason Repugs are so gleeful (translation: worried) is because Obama just pulled back the covers on their (usually) winning strategy. That USED to work, but, as Obama would say, "Not this time." The Repugs have jacked up stuff so badly, winning the White House this year isn't really possible. Yeah, I know folks will say, "McCain is OK. He's different." But he's still a conservative who supports GWB's War and wants to "bomb bomb bomb Iran." The voters - Dems and Repugs - are sick of this. It's expensive and depressing; kids are dying. Relax. This will blow over, and, frankly, it reinforces some basic Dem tenets - many of which we've had to let go in these recent, scary Repug years. For HRC to demean Obama proves how intimidated she is by Repugs (or how stupid she thinks the rest of us are). Obama is not afraid. We'll win. Period.

Posted by DBo | April 14, 2008 3:52 PM

I actually don't think Obama was going for the Thomas Frank route at all. I think he was just giving an impressionistic portrait of Pat Buchanan voters, many of whom live in PA. He didn't necessarily say these voters vote against their economic interests, which is why he mentioned trade in the equation. An offhand comment has been turned into a sociological dissertation to be dissected.

Obama has said before, in a better setting (Charlie Rose interview in 2004) that many working class voters turn to faith, family, community and tradition, especially when they face economic strife. The reason for this is not that voters are rubes and bigots but they are real people with real identities outside of Frankian economic class. The point wasn't to belittle these voters as Clinton suggests but to recognize that voters often turn away from Washington in economic tough times.

So the question is: why do they turn away from Washington? Is it because of DLC policies? Or is it because working class whites really are economic conservatives in the end? I have no idea.

Posted by Elrod | April 14, 2008 3:52 PM

Doria, the Bartels paper that Marc linked to is a much revised version that takes into account Frank's critique of his original paper. Most importantly, he revises his definition of working class to be in line with what Frank said he meant (though didn't really say) in the actual book.

To be honest, I didn't find Frank's critique very convincing - mostly bluster and an ideological hostility to actually using opinion data. But Bartels, to his credit, took it seriously, revised his analysis, and came up with broadly the same conclusions.

Posted by Paul | April 14, 2008 5:40 PM

"The embedded assumption is that it clearly is in his interest to support Democratic policies on fiscal policies (income redistribution) labor (a shift in the union/corporate balance), regulation (more, not less) but for some reason, he refuses to"

Probably because we're smarter than democrats think and we understand democratic policies are NOT in our best interest? Why the heck would I vote for more regulations and taxes that may lead my job to be outsourced to Indonesia? I haven't completed a college degree, but I'm not a fool.

Posted by AlanaFromGary,IN | April 14, 2008 7:12 PM

I’ll play devils’ advocate and defend Obama on this point:

What Obama is saying basically describes American politics from 1964 to today: White, middle-class resentment. This is where the whole term MAR (Middle American Radicals) springs from. And it’s a resentment born of then sense that people who live in small towns, mid-sized factory towns (like the one I grew up in, Beloit, Wisconsin) and urban ethnic neighborhoods have no control over their lives and are at the mercy of trends both economic, cultural and political.

I hate to break the news to everyone, but politics in the U.S. in this day and age is about stoking fears and resentments. Both sides do it. Anyone who believes (as many neocons apparently do) that politics is this grand clash of ideas is foolish and stupid because as we have seen both parties believe in a grand consensus of free trade, foreign interventionism and big governments. Anyone who questions this consensus (like Ron Paul and Mike Gravel for example) is regarded as a loony not to be taken seriously. So politics is not about ideas, it’s about using fear and resentment to motivate different blocs of voters to vote for the candidates that only winds up hurting their interests in the end. Dr. Thomas Fleming said as much in his Chronicles column a few months back. Fear and resentment are very powerful motivators. Obama basically said what political consultants already know. We just don’t like to hear it.

Could he have worded it better? Perhaps. But I’m sure we know of or are folk who “cling” to their Bibles as hard as they can because we have faith and when Charlton Heston (RIP) says “you can take my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers” you can bet he’s clinging to it pretty hard. To “cling” means to hold on tight and I’m sure we either are or know people who hold fast to their guns and Bibles.

And why do they? Because in many cases, it’s all they’ve got. And such persons have every right to be bitter. Bitter about seeing their jobs go to Mexico. Bitter about seeing their kids bused from their neighborhood schools to ones across town. Bitter about seeing their values mocked in the wider culture. Bitter about being lied to about the benefits of NAFTA or the Iraq war and the supposed $1.00 a gallon gas we told we would be paying. Bitter about seeing THEIR kids go to war and die while the elites stay in the club box cheering them on. Bitter about seeing their towns socially engineered with the influx of immigrants without any kind of discussion as to whether this a good idea or not. Bitter about being let down by both the Democrats and Republicans, who supposedly talk good games on the issues they care about but in the end do nothing to help despite such empty promises.

Why else would Hilary Clinton repudiate the one concrete accomplishment of her husband’s Administration, the passage of NAFTA through Congress, unless she knew that bitterness existed? Shouldn’t she be celebrtating NAFTA’s benefits? She knows full damn well if she did that in Pennsylvania and Ohio they’d run her out of town on a rail. So she’ll down a boilermaker and pretend she’s one of the guys, this gal born of the upscale Chicago suburbs, a former Goldwater Girl and Wellsley and Yale Law School graduate. Yes, she truly is the salt of the earth. And of course there’s man-of-the people John McCain, the son and grandson of Admirals who was born on a tropical estate in the Canal Zone and who once told a South Carolina textile worker concerned about keeping his job and I quote “I didn’t know you’re biggest ambition in life is to work in the mill.” How is this any less condescending that what Obama said?

I said the same thing on my post about MARs: MARs fear. And they have good reason to fear, because they don’t know what blow is coming next. What they want more than anything is some sort of stability, so they don’t have to worry if they’re going to be out of work, or if their gun will be confiscated or they can’t pray even in their own churches. Maybe such fears seem irrational, but given the amount of cultural, economic and political changes over the past 45 years that has buffeted such communities, such fears can’t be discounted. The political consultants and politicians and exploit those fears every election cycle, because they know they exists and they know they can exploit them.

So Obama clumsly said what everyone knows to be true but doesn’t want to admit because that would spoil some sort of twisted image of Heartland America being a happy place of pure American values and virtues instead of pockets of seething bitterness. Yes the former can be true but the latter as just as true and if it wasn’t then the populist movement, the KKK, the religious right, the Prohibition movement, the veterans movement after World War II, Harlan County, Kentucky, labor strife, Gordon Kahl and the Posse Comitatus, Tim McVeigh, Oklahoma City and militia movement, the George Wallace, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan and David Duke camapaigns, none of these things would have happened.

It’s good in a way that the primaries in Pennsylvania and Ohio and focused on the problems of America’s industrial heartland but those persons covering it have done so in their usual ham-handed and clumsly way, like they were commenting on the antics of an animal exhibit at the zoo. It’s hard for elites in the MSM to truly understand American’s small towns and rural areas because they don’t live there. They don’t know people there. Perhaps a few of them grew up in such places but they decided that working in the mill or on the farm or at the convience store or the auto garage wasn’t for them so they moved out and upwards to Ivy League educations and posh East Side apartments or Georgetown town homes. Maybe its true that Obama, like Daniel Larison said in his blog Eunomia, sees himself as sort of amabassador for MARs to the elites to try an explain why they vote the way they do. But I’ll at least give Obama credit for being more perceptive about American politics than a thousand brain dead political reporters have been.

Posted by Sean Scallon | April 14, 2008 7:57 PM

Ninjapirate wrote:

Check out the exit polls for the 2004 election. IIRC, The extreme poor and the extreme rich went for Kerry. [..] Republican's own the middle of the bell curve with regard to education and income while Democrats take the extremities.

This is dead wrong. Do check out those exit polls. They show a linear pattern: the wealthier voters were, the more they voted Bush. The poorer they were, the more they voted Kerry.

Kerry's support dropped from 63% among those earning less than $15,000; to 57% in the $15-30,000 group; to 50% in the $30-50,000 group; to 42-45% in the income groups between $50,000 and $200,000; to 35% among those earning over $200,000.

It's the mirror image, of course, for Bush, who did best (63%) among the wealthiest and worst (36%) among the poorest.

Posted by nimh | April 14, 2008 9:34 PM

All economic theories aside, I would tend to agree with Mr. Scallon's psychological assessment of the situation. Commence the sappy autobiographical example:

I grew up in a small town (less than 20,000) in rural Colorado. My father worked a variety of jobs, mostly in factories, and was an ardent gun-rights advocate, quite the right-winger on the "cling" issues. Sure, his economic interests would have been served by nifty liberal ideas like job re-training and government subsidies, but at the cost of his gun rights, no way.

Particularly since 9/11-- but certainly long before-- fear and liberty have been the prevailing influences in small town America. People feel largely isolated from their government at all levels, and want little else than to be allowed to do things the way they want without having to fear either 1)outside violence or 2)government intervention (which are the same thing for many). The basic premise is "protect me from the Arabs but leave me the hell alone."

Everything Obama said was accurate, though he would have done well to have a cheering Pennsylvania crowd behind him instead of a bunch of Californians (another favorite target of folks in small-town Colorado, and likely Pennsylvania as well).

Interestingly, my father's political views shifted rather dramatically late in his life, when, after topping out the 2-million dollar ceiling of his factory insurance, he was able to receive full Veteran's Administration coverage of his medical costs for cancer. Once Dad recognized that the government wasn't always out to get him-- but occasionally actually helped (economically or otherwise)-- I think he took on a much more moderate view of things like gun rights and social programs.

I wish he were around to hear Obama, because I think he would have had the intelligence to dismiss the spin-cycle and identify with Obama's "bitter" comments.

(He'd probably still vote for McCain though...)

Posted by Micah Clark | April 15, 2008 9:29 AM

My bad nimh. I was thinking of this.

Millionaires for Bush, Billionaires for Kerry

While the haves will surely give Bush a majority of their votes this fall, the have-mores might not. In September, the research firm Prince & Associates surveyed 400 people worth more than $1 million for Elite Traveler magazine. (Note to self: Try to get gig writing for this magazine.) The rich folk favored Bush by a 58-42 margin. Not too surprising. But when you break out the numbers, they tell a different story. The petit bourgeoisie millionaires were passionately for Bush: Those worth between $1 million and $10 million favored Bush by a 63-37 margin. But the haute millionaires, those worth more than $10 million, favored Kerry 59-41.

Posted by ninjapirate | April 15, 2008 9:29 AM

The last sentence of the original post sounds like those who are winning from certain economic policies are voting for more of same, while those who are losing are voting for a different set of policies. The problem is, you might make some things better for the currently losing group, but at the expense of other groups who are winning, and perhaps growing in number. There is still movement among income groups, whatever the exact numbers. Just a guess.

And, anyway, how can you convince people to vote for you if you think there is something inherently wrong with them for not voting for you? That wrong being that they somehow don't agree with your point of view on X, Y, or Z (put standard left of center policy in for X, Y or Z)? Listening is not a strong suit for some, apparently. It's the politicians job to convince, but, somehow, the inability to convince becomes, 'hey, the other guy scared you into voting for him/her'. Last time I checked, scaring people into voting (things will get worse if you don't vote for my policies) is widely used by both parties. It's called, 'my ideas are better for the country.'

Back to the drawing board.....

Posted by Anon1 | April 15, 2008 7:36 PM

Also, did it ever occur to some of you that maybe not everyone is so bitter? Assumptions are tricky things, be they on the right or left....

Posted by Anon1 | April 15, 2008 7:45 PM