Chasing the Wind

Slate.com questions whether Bush supporters are insane. They point out that the wealth of the working class is shrinking. While the Democrats run on platforms that say they will help, the working class votes Republican anyway.

The working class’s refusal to synchronize its politics with its economic interests is one of the enduring puzzles of the present age. Between 1989 and 1997, middle-income families (defined in this instance as the middle 20 percent) saw their share of the nation’s wealth fall from 4.8 percent to 4.4 percent. Yet Al Gore lost the white working class by a margin of 17 percentage points, and John Kerry lost it by a margin of 23 percentage points. As the GOP drifts further to the right, and becomes more starkly the party of the wealthy, it is gaining support among the working class.

I have never seen a wholly satisfactory explanation for this trend, which now spans two generations. It’s the decline of unions, says Thomas Frank. It’s values, says Tom Edsall. It’s testosterone, says Arlie Russell Hochschild. Each of these explanations seems plausible up to a point, but even when taken together, their magnitude doesn’t seem big enough. Republicans, of course, will argue that it’s simply the working man’s understanding that the GOP has the better argument, i.e., that the best way to help the working class is to shower the rich with tax breaks. But the Bush administration has been showering the rich with tax breaks for more than four years, and the working class has nothing to show for it.

Let’s consider another possibility, then: The working class, or at least a large segment of same, suffers from a psychological disorder.

OpinionJournal has a hypothesis: that the mere fact the Democrats are calling them the “working class,” they’ve insulted them. Calling a janitor a member of the working class is the euivalent of putting them in their place; you’re a worker, stay there and work.

While there is some truth to that, I have a different hypothesis. Democrats run on a platform of “Don’t worry, let us take care of that for you.” But working class people wait every year for that annual raise, and as soon as they get it, the first question they ask is, “why did the government get half of my raise?” Every year, more and more “working class” realize that if they are going to get ahead, if they’re going to be able to save a little nest egg for themselves, then they must vote for the party that promises to reduce taxes. The Republicans don’t promise to help; they promise to get out of your way so you can do it yourself. That appeals to the working class.

Republicans no longer look like the party of the wealthy, anyway; those flaky Hollywood elites with more money than sense are almost all Democrats.