Source: Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia
We live in the wake of two revolutions, one social, the other economic. Thirty years ago, who would have imagined homosexuals could marry, or that a Black man would be President of the United States or that all of Britain would cheer a Somali born runner as their own? Thirty years ago who would have imagined that unions would be so bereft of power, that corporations in glamorous industries could require entry level employees to work for no money, or that the median American male worker’s real wages would be lower than they were in 1973.
The left won the social revolution, the right won the economic revolution, but working class heterosexual White males lost both, and there we have the only explanation why Mitt Romney has any chance of winning the upcoming American presidential election. If only white men had the vote, Mitt Romney would be a shoo-in. And in that demographic, President Obama does considerably worse among those who have never been to college. Romney’s lead with college educated white males is 13%, but with those who have never attended university it is a whopping 29%. This is not a one-off, but part of a long-range pattern. Bill Clinton managed to capture the white working class in 1996, but since then their votes have gone ever more solidly Republican.
The white working class, of course, was the foundation of the Democratic New Deal coalition. During the glory years of the American Empire, a man with little education but a willingness to work could get a job that paid more than his father had ever dreamed of earning. By his late twenties he could afford a down payment on a house and from only his earnings support a family in middle class splendor while his wife stayed at home and raised their children. Unless he had exceptional moral or intellectual failings, he could pretty much expect to hold his job until he chose to retire.
Meanwhile, at the home and in the culture, the male breadwinner ruled the roost. Women knew their place, as did black people, and homosexuals lived in some secret world beyond the pale. After a day at the factory, sipping Pabst Blue Ribbon beer while reclining in his Barcalouger, the white man could enjoy his unspoken superiority. Today, those ancient verities are gone. Often the wife earns more than the husband, and concomitantly power has shifted within the home. Jobs once reserved for white men are his no longer and anyway the common worker has little of the security his father expected as his due.
Romney is not an attractive candidate. He is stiff, unnatural, and uncharismatic. He oozes hypocrisy. His business experience was as a job destroyer, stripping assets from companies and appropriating their wealth for the benefit of himself and Bain Capital’s investors. He was born to luxury, has no common touch, and the policies he seems to care about most are those that benefit the super rich.
The interesting question is why the economic revolution brought about by Ronald Reagan rallies less opposition amongst the white working class than the social revolution brought about by the civil rights, gay rights, and feminist movements. Mitt Romney’s election will not bring back the days of white male supremacy, but they may well make life even more precarious for the workingman. For some reason that does not motivate their vote. Perhaps Marx was wrong and the social superstructure is more vital to our self-conception than the economic realities that underpin it.
Russell Gold
Currently, the electorate is so evenly split, that there are plenty of ways to exclude groups and have one candidate or the other automatically win. For example, Romney is an overwhelming favorite of married voters, while Obama is overwhelmingly preferred by single voters. But that doesn’t get to the core of your question.
It seems to me that you’re making an error by ignoring a number of phenomena, most especially religion. The social conservatism that you mention is largely driven by religious voters, and understanding why is very difficult if you are not yourself religious. This is something I can speak to from personal experience, having been completely secular for most of my life, and becoming religious much later. I remember how I found religious positions almost impossible to understand and very easy to mock. To the secular individual, it seems very hard to distinguish between religious ideas and superstition, and it seems very easy attribute opposition to social liberalism to mere prejudice, when the actual reasons are quite different. But religious voters are not exclusively white males. If anything, religious women probably outnumber religious men.
So I don’t think it’s the case that “heterosexual White males” have lost. Clearly, religious voters of all colors, both male and female, are losing the social wars, as the increasingly secular society sees no reason to hold to values it deems nothing but intolerance. But how can a secular heterosexual white male be said to have “lost” when he embraces the values that are being adopted?
Economically, things could be different, at least for those who for some reason see themselves in competition with women. That women are now receiving the majority of college degrees and certain managerial posts could indeed be said to be a loss for such men. On the other hand, if you’re married to a successful woman who is helping pay for family expenses, how is that a loss? I am part of a religious community in which it is very common that married women have lucrative careers, and I don’t see any objections on the part of their husbands. I am skeptical that there is anything similar to a religious motivation for wishing women not to be successful.
Where I think you are on the money is noting that today’s male laborer is often not assured of the job security his father enjoyed, and this is a clear loss for them – and they are overwhelmingly white and heterosexual; however, I think you mistake the cause. A generation or two ago, the world was a very different place: in the wake of World War II, the US was the only advanced democracy left untouched and capable of large scale manufacturing in many industries. We enjoyed decades of little competition. That is no longer the case. Japanese cars are now not only more affordable but often of better quality than those put out by American owned companies. The same is true of many other industries, and many unskilled jobs are now easily taken at much lower wages by workers in foreign countries. It is far from clear to me that there are any serious economic policies that can roll any of that back. That means that it is not reasonable to expect a large-scale fight against the change – what exactly would the fight be for?
Given the reality of economics as “the dismal science” it is not obvious that there is a simple policy change that can make the US prosperous again and bring back a plentitude of job security. It’s going to be a tough slog any way you look at it.
John
There are now well over 35,000 different and differing Christian denominations, sects and sub-sects in the world, all competing for market share in the market-place of whats-in-it-for-me consumerist religion. Religious Truth has very little to do with any of it.
What is commonly recognized and promoted as religion in our time and place is only the most superficial and factional and most often dim-minded and perverse expressions of ancient power-and-control seeking ancient national and tribalistic cultism.
Furthermore, the so called great religions, especially Christianity and Islam, are nothing more than the historically dominant cults, which came to dominate the world via military conquest. The bloody applied politics of Constantine’s Sword, in the case of Christianity.
Most of what is now called religion is effectively a form of individual and collective Narcissism. Just because people talk about “Jesus”, the Bible and the “Creator”-God does not mean that they are in any sense religious. People think and act as if religion is about themselves.
As such religion has been reduced to being nothing but a reflection of the mind-created illusions of humankind. The big-time talkers of big-time religion are constantly making double-minded essentially puritannical pronouncements about matters of a social, political, and obsessively sexual nature.. Matters that are essentially about the failed case complications of minimally intelligent human beings.
Hardly anything is ever said about the Spiritual, Transcendental and Divine nature of Reality.
Furthermore, in the midst of all of that, each person’s religious cult becomes his of her “identity”, and the world dominant cults of Christianity and Islam even wage war on one another, through association with nation states that give them power and supply them with weaponry.
In the now instantaneously globalized world the three “great religions” that originated in the Middle East are ALL armed to the teeth.
Ken Auer
Tommy, Tommy, Tommy. I was doing fine with your comments until I hit the paragraph starting with “Mitt Romney is not an attractive candidate”.
Now Tommy, lets be real.
Stiff, unnatural and uncharismatic? He oozes hyporcrisy? Has no touch with the common people?
Jeepers, you should have added Barry O’s name next to Romney’s. What’s Obama’s plan now? Bring back Hollywood and bring back Clinton’s policies? Talk about stiff, unnatural and hypocrites. Obama is white, right? Raised by his well-to-do white Grandparents? Ivy league, right?
Oh yeah, he’s really in touch……
I still like reading your stuff, even if you’re about 120 degrees off of center!
Russell Gold
I sort of skipped over that paragraph, just figuring it was an automatic “find a way to slander the candidate I don’t like” screed. Most of the comments are just different ways of saying, “I don’t like him.”
But if we’re going to fact-check…
“His business experience was as a job destroyer, stripping assets from companies and appropriating their wealth for the benefit of himself and Bain Capital’s investors.”
This is objectively wrong. Depending on how you count, Bain Capital under Romney created tens of thousands to a hundred thousand new jobs. Tom seems to have confused him Romney with Al “Chainsaw” Dunlap, for whom that description would be apt.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303292204577519293959381060.html
Karl
Russell,
You have nailed it, “depending how you count”. I’d wager the WS counter is slanted. Very.
Romney is indeed a job destroyer, achieving this by piling debt onto unsuspecting companies, then sucking out profits and “dividends” before the companies folded and jobs went overseas. One can say Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time.
His method was akin to using someone else’s credit card for a while, then leaving the person to pay that debt, while charging them a fee for having taught them how to borrow money and then tighten their belt.
More importantly, this issue is only one of the handful where he exhibits a total lack of coherence. His flip-flops send GW Bush to the minor league.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829
james
Your thesis is slanderous, lacking in pragmatism, high on false, non-existent narratives.
I supported Obama the last time around, I will be supporting Mitt this time.
Alyson
Interesting perspectives here, and none of them mine: the essence of religious bigotry is its ‘Me and mine first’ emphasis, and this tribalism is part of the American drive for success. For businesses to fleece the workers to benefit shareholders, it is the current modus operandi, and easy debt, as policy, was Reagan’s legacy to the world.
Democracy also has the common good as its sales pitch, and democratic conscience can be appealed to.
As always though it is where people feel they gain or lose that holds the leverage in elections, and groups or individuals have loyalty to varying principles, with a view to short-term gain over long-term stability.