A Pilgrim’s Digression

David Frum, a blogger at the National Review Online, had an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine this weekend, titled The Vanishing Republican Voter.  There is also an addendum to the article over at NRO.

Distilled into a sentence, Frum’s thesis is that cities and suburbs where there is a mixture of poor and wealthy–where income is unevenly distributed with a small middle class–tend to vote Democrat, whereas areas in which income is more equal than not tend to vote Republican.  That sounds like common sense, except that when you get down to the details, what he is saying is that Republicans may “own” middle income voters, but they are losing voters on the high and bottom ends of the economic ladder.

Frum defines “high end” as being those with incomes above $100,000.00.  To me, that is upper middle class, and that comprises a whole lot of voters.

A couple things fascinate me about this story.  For one, Frum is a Republican, but he is making a Democrat-sounding argument that growing economic inequality in the country threatens Republican dominance of the political machine in this country.  Middle income families have not seen their incomes rise during the Bush years, and in fact the rising cost of health care may have actually injured their income growth.  These people, stupidly (in my opinion, not Frum’s), are Republicans.

Frum’s argument for why these voters are Republican could be interpreted as condescending, since he implies that their lack of education results in them voting based on issues such as gay marriage, gun control, and other issues that have no bearing on their standard of living (these are the “bitter” Americans Obama has been so much derided for mentioning).

My interest was further piqued when Frum points out that despite the perception that the wealthy tend to be Republicans, in fact those with incomes above $100,000.00 a year tend to vote Democrat.

Republicans still claim the support of the upper-middle, but by dwindling margins. Democrats increased their share of the vote among those earning more than $100,000 by 9 percentage points between 1994 and 1998. Between 1998 and 2006, Democrats increased their share of this upper-middle-class vote by 3 more points.

Frum’s explanation for this is that Democrat centrist economic policy allows wealthier voters to vote according to their more liberal social values, rather than their pocket book.

This is fascinating stuff, really, especially when one considers the politics of class warfare in the present campaign.  One of the most fiery portions of Bill O’Reilly’s interview with Obama, the second segment of which aired last night, concerned O’Reilly’s charge that Obama is using class warfare against McCain.  Obama vehemently denied it.

However, he may well have countered that it is Republicans who used class warfare most successfully against Democrats.  For two decades or more, Republicans have successfully defined Democrat politicians and voters as elitist and condescending, not to mention anti-Christian and unpatriotic.  “Hollywood liberals” as the conservative talkers sneeringly call them are defined as much by their wealth as their intellectual vacuity, in the minds of Republican voters.

Frum is no friend to Democrats.  He is writing to a Republican audience, warning them that they are marginalizing themselves.  Frum calls it a “slow-motion withering” of the GOP, and attributes it to economic stagnation on the lower and middle ends of the ladder, and a vast inequality between the lower, middle, and upper-middle class.

Conservatives need to stop denying reality. The stagnation of the incomes of middle-class Americans is a fact. And only by acknowledging facts can we respond effectively to the genuine difficulties of voters in the middle.

The implication for the current Presidential race is that when it comes down to November 2nd, a shift in  demographics may count more than anything in a Republican defeat.  Better yet, Republicans seem to be whistling past the graveyard with the nomination of Palin and the appeal to social values conservatives, rather than pocket book Independents.

Listening to the speeches during the GOP convention, particularly those of Thompson, Guiliani, and Palin, I was struck by how they could have been speaking before the 1992 and 1996 conventions.  The rhetoric was old and stale–the vitriolic attacks on opponents, the appeal to middle class Americans with the whole moose-hunting, hockey mom schtick…I would not have been surprised if Pat Robertson or Pat Buchanan had rose to speak.

Where was the acknowledgement that we live in uncertain economic times?  Where was the acknowledgement that many people are out of workor struggling?  And those who are working, as Frum points out, aren’t seeing their income rise.

The tide is in Democrats favor.  However, I can’t help but feel this portent of disaster.  Maybe that’s natural, after eight years of disappointments.  It often seems like Obama is simply submitting himself to the fates, floating with the tide, rather than building a boat and becoming master of the tide.  What has always given me hope is that this campaign has been different so far.  The intent to compete in states like Virginia, which have always been bastions of conservatism, implies that Obama understands the shift away from conservatism in our polity.

Obama is not just trying to win all of Kerry’s blue states plus one.  Just as in the primaries, he is competing across the nation, in states Democrats never considered in play before.  Whether it is a strategy that will pay off, it’s hard to say.  It’s new.  There is no tried and true template for success here.

I’m nervous, but not yet pessimistic.  McCain’s seven or nine point advantage in Ohio is troubling, but if Obama can win Virginia and some other unexpected states, maybe Ohio won’t matter.  Or maybe in the end, it will all come down to Sarah Palin’s moose-gutting skills or how she looks in a bikini.  I won’t be surprised, whatever happens.

Elitist jerk that I am, I’m just hoping some intrepid investigator turns up a video of Palin speaking in tongues.  Demographics aside, there is still nothing so effective as a nice October surprise.