Why working class voted Republican in 2010

Michael Barone (February 28, 2011) had an interesting observation worth pondering.

He points out that Republicans did pretty well among whites who did not graduate from college -- the exit poll's best proxy for the white working class -- even in the otherwise dismal year of 2008. John McCain carried non-college whites by a 58 percent to 41 percent margin, more than his 51 percent to 47 percent margin among college whites. Thomas Frank's book "What's the Matter With Kansas?" argued that modest-income whites were bamboozled by the moneyed elite to vote on cultural issues rather than in their direct economic interest. However, Barone counters that is no more plausible than the notion that rich liberals from Park Avenue to Beverly Hills have been bamboozled to vote the opposite way on similar issues rather than for those who would extend the Bush tax cuts. 


The conclusion Barone offers is simple. People are entitled to base their vote on the things they think important. They do not always vote just to maximize their short-term income. For many political analysts, politics is supposed to be about who gets how much when, and people with modest incomes should be eager to take as much from the rich as they can get. Conservative writer David Frum has made the same point and has said that Republicans must come up with policies that will raise ordinary people's incomes if they hope to win.


His basic point is that people are capable of voting in terms of what they think of as the national interest, rather than what may benefit them in the short term. 

As Barone sees it, the recoil in 2010 against the Obama Democrats' vast expansion of the size and scope of government seems to have a cultural or a moral dimension as well. It was a vote, as Washington Examiner writer Timothy P. Carney wrote last week, expressing "anger at those unfairly getting rich -- at the taxpayer's expense." Those include well-connected Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs that got bailed out and giant corporations like General Electric that shape legislation so they can profit. They include the public employee unions who have bribed politicians to grant them pensions and benefits unavailable to most Americans.

At some level, many citizens think that a government intertwined with the private sector inevitably picks winners and losers. It allows well-positioned insiders to game the system for private gain. It bails out the improvident and sticks those who made prudent decisions with the bill. Modest-income Americans think this is wrong. They want it fixed more than they want a few more bucks in their paychecks.