Related to this morning's discussion of Larry Bartels, Thomas Frank, and various theories of the white working class vote, Bartels sent along this guest post on the 2008 election results and how they played into this debate. Enjoy. -- Ezra.
How Obama Survived the Culture War
Much of this year’s Republican presidential campaign consisted of a series of blistering attacks portraying the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, as an elitist, a celebrity, a socialist, a pal of domestic terrorists, and a stranger to “real America.” It would be hard to imagine a campaign better suited to appeal to the culturally conservative working-class white voters depicted in Thomas Frank’s 2004 best seller, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” Obama himself seemed to exacerbate the culture clash when he suggested back in April that “bitter” small-town folks on the losing end of economic change “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” He added that they “don’t vote on economic issues, because they don’t expect anybody’s going to help them.” If that was true—either before Obama’s comments or because of them—then the Democratic ticket seemed poised for big losses among the sorts of people Frank described. So how did voters respond? According to the exit polls, Obama outpolled the previous Democratic nominee, John Kerry, among people from small towns and rural areas and among gun owners. He also did better than Kerry among white males, white Protestants, and white evangelicals. In short, the culture clash seems to have fizzled among many of the people supposedly most alienated by the cosmopolitan bent of the contemporary Democratic Party.
