March 11, 2014--White Men

Democrats finally are paying attention to the fact that in the 2012 election Barack Obama received just 35 percent of the white male vote, down from 41 percent four years earlier.

He won the election because he received more than half of women's votes (55 percent), 93 percent of the African-American vote,  71 percent of the Hispanic vote, 75 percent of the Asian vote, and 60 percent of voters between 18 and 29. That was his winning coalition.

But in the meantime, though Democrats kept the White House, largely because the overwhelming percentage of white male votes went to Republicans, the GOP maintained its majority in the House of Representatives and are threatening to wrest control of the Senate later this year.

This should not be new news. No Democrat running for president has received a majority of white men's votes since 1964 when Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater, carrying 44 states.

What's the problem?

These men voted for Democrats for decades--from at least Franklin Roosevelt's time to LBJ's. But then they began to drift toward the right. Most notably, Ronald Reagan was elected not just because Jimmy Carter and four years later Walter Mondale were weak candidates but because he figured out how to appeal to what came to be known as Reagan Democrats--disaffiliated white men.

Many of these white men felt abandoned by the Democrats because the party began to be perceived as too devoted to civil and women's rights. These men who felt they had worked hard to achieve middle-class status were appalled by their perception that New Deal and subsequent Great Society programs, including affirmative action, were unfair to working people. And, of course, there was a healthy dose of racism and misogyny in the mix.

On the other side of the political spectrum, liberals and progressives began to caricature these men with equal passion and overstatement. If liberals were not tree-hugging N___ -lovers, conservative white males were not all redneck, trailer-trash six-pack guzzlers. In fact, characterizing these Reagan Democrats as such only drove more of them further right as they felt mocked and ignored.

Fellow progressives, let's be honest--we do tend to show not-so-thinly-veiled contempt for these white men. We do not want to engage as equals the less-educated and the unwashed. In our hearts we know too many of us feel this way and those who we largely mischaracterize are not unaware of what we think about them. From this kind of contempt, one cannot expect to widen one's political coalition.

The Democrats' plan seems to be to let demographic changes solve their problem. Hispanics are among the fastest growing segment of the population and as soon as there are enough of them in, say, Texas, just carrying Texas, New York, and California will give Democrat presidential candidates a leg up on an Electoral College majority.

But--and this is a big but--just as we might expect to see a series of Democrats elected to the presidency, we will simultaneously see increasing Republican majorities in Congress.

Waiting for demographics to overwhelm white men, then, will not get the job done. So what to do?

First, acknowledge that the 35 percent of white men's votes Obama received in 2012 (as unpopular as he was and as African-Ameircan as he is) is not insignificant. Nor was the 41 percent in 2008. The challenge for Democrats, then, is how to at least retain that 35 percent and inch back to Obama's 2008 41 percent.

To begin to do this we have to stop making fun of, showing contempt for these frustrated and unhappy men. In addition, we should try to figure out why they feel so disaffiliated. Polls tell us that they think the Democrats are the Mommy Party, more concerned about giving everyone food stamps and welfare than standing up to the unions, communists, and terrorists.

We shouldn't go along with the call to keep the "military option" on the table when confronting Russia in Ukraine; but we should listen respectfully to that argument and not mock it.

When they chastise liberals for pandering to gays, we should calmly state why gays should be given the same rights as the rest of us, and not make fun of their alleged homophobia. We should back off from accusing them of "waging war on women" (war is not the most appropriate or fairest metaphor) and talk with them about their hopes for their daughters.

And in the policy realm, Democrats should look to embrace approaches that would address the concerns and needs of these men. There should be tax breaks as much for them as for the wealthiest. We should make it easier and less costly for their children and grandchildren to go to college. We should improve veterans benefits and emphasize health care that focuses on men's issues, not just reproductive issues.

Above all, we should emphasize approaches to helping low-income people become self-supporting. We should agree with these men that it is not a good thing for people to need government assistance. It should be the last resort. A guaranteed annual income, for example, which many conservatives support, would obviate the need for most of our current safety net programs and offer dignity to those unable to fully support themselves.

For the progressive in me, to come up with a list of viable policy suggestions is not easy. Better minds than mine should be able to come up with an agenda, which isn't pandering, that could increase Democrats' appeal to these alienated white men. Fairness requires this as does smart politics.