December 30, 2003

All the nice boys love a cowboy

Posted by Daniel

New Year, old obsession … Steven Den Beste takes a rare break from telling us that France is shit to analyse US politics. Take a glance at the URL and you will see where he is coming from. Thankfully, he steers clear (just) of the usual and rather unpleasant analysis which seems to treat white male votes as the only “real” votes and support based on “minority” votes as in some way second-rate or not of the highest quality. But he does massively overstate the importance of white males, and the extent to which a 66-33 split of white male votes in favour of the Republicans is a disaster for the Democrats. Factoid: Al Gore did not so far from this in the 200 election (he actually got 36% of the white male vote) and the race was about as even as it could possibly be. A “36 point margin [ie a 68:32 split -dd] over Howard Dean” isn’t an “insurmountable obstacle”; it’s a two point swing away from the neutral point of the 2000 election and quite the sort of thing that could get lost in differential turnout rates. The rule of thumb always used to be that a Republican candidate had to do at least 60% among white males to have a prayer, because of the inbuilt slant of all the other demographics and Ruy Teixeira thinks that the bar is, if anything, raising year after year.

A Bush lead among white women is much more worrying, because that’s a genuine swing movement, but that doesn’t offer nearly as many opportunities for riding out old hobby-horses about the “far left” and the conclusions aren’t nearly so palatable for those of us in the pale and hairy camp. My personal assessment is that the Democrats are indeed, all to hell, but tending to the nation’s largest and whiniest minority hasn’t really got all that much to do with it.

All of which assumes, of course, that you can generalise over a category as large as “white males” (c: 110m Americans). Which you can’t, not unless you don’t mind writing sentences like this one:

To a great extent, this is because white men as a group prefer cowboys to metrosexuals.[1]

Which you have to admit, could be taken a number of ways …

(by the way, when is some TV network going to have the stones to produce “Black Eye for the White Guy”?)

[1] I added the links for satirical effect, although I doubt anyone was wondering.

Posted on December 30, 2003 03:15 PM UTC
Comments

The “Emerging Democratic Majority” viewpoint is based on the notion that the parties never change their positions and that “whiteness” is an unchanging characteristic. Polls that analyze “white” voting patterns likely include Jews and Italians, groups that would never have been included in a 1920 poll measuring the same thing. I can imagine there was the same assumption of an endless democratic majority early in the century. Just look at all those “colored” working poor immigrants! It just didn’t last more than a few election cycles.

Democrats and Republicans will always be about 50/50 (give or take), because the parties will have to change whenever they become at risk, or else the electorate will.

Maybe the Dems will give up their anti-gun position, or maybe second generation Mexicans will start being considered White, increasing the white numbers.

Either way, I’m dubious of any claims of impending one party rule.

Posted by Rv. Agnos · December 30, 2003 03:35 PM

Always sad to see 3,593 completely useless words ruined by one silly cowboys/metrosexuals sentence.

Posted by norbizness · December 30, 2003 03:51 PM
Democrats and Republicans will always be about 50/50 (give or take), because the parties will have to change whenever they become at risk, or else the electorate will.

I concur, the statistics along racial and ethnic lines are simplistic and misleading and can often skew the real reason why individuals vote the way they do (e.g. economic and cultural). Right now it appears to be primarily Republicans who are trying to make inroads on more likely Democratic voters with proposals such as personal retirement accounts and “faith-based” initiatives to empower counter-constituency groups with the targeted demographic groups. Democrats on the other hand seem to pretty much be playing defense and making little effort at making inroads on their own - Howard Dean trying to court Southerners by first insulting them and then later trying to lecture them about what issues they should/not vote on is more of a “Michael Dukakis in the tank” moment than a serious or sincere attempt – with the exception of some of the State Attorneys General who went after high profile corporate fraud cases to court the burgeoning investor class.

Posted by Thorley Winston · December 30, 2003 04:17 PM

I believe that Bush’s problem in the 2000 election wasn’t so much that he didn’t get a decent percentage of the usual Republican base, as that he didn’t inspire them to turn out in respectable numbers. The precincts Bush carried actually had a substantially larger population than those carried by Gore, but just didn’t vote in as great of numbers. Perhaps if he’d blown off the NAACP convention, and spoke at the NRA convention instead, he’d have actually won the popular vote…

Posted by Brett Bellmore · December 30, 2003 05:06 PM

every time I spend more than 10 seconds on Den Beste’s website I get a headache from the self-righteousness; could somebody with more of a stomach for it tell me what he does for a living, or rahter where he finds the time to write that profusely?

Posted by duetorre · December 30, 2003 05:29 PM

“The precincts Bush carried actually had a substantially larger population than those carried by Gore, but just didn’t vote in as great of numbers.”

Say what? Got a source for this?

Posted by Jason McCullough · December 30, 2003 06:04 PM

Teixeira certainly believes that 2000 was a voter turnout triumph for the Republicans; I suspect that Brett may be right on the absolute numbers, but not relative to trend.

Posted by dsquared · December 30, 2003 06:06 PM

Damn! I had the idea for “Black Eye for the White Guy” months ago. Five stylish brothers arrive at the home of a hopelessly tight-a****d h****y to give him a crash course in soul. It would be great TV.

Posted by C.J.Colucci · December 30, 2003 06:12 PM

could somebody with more of a stomach for it tell me what he does for a living, or rahter where he finds the time to write that profusely?

He’s retired. From his biography page, he’s 50 years old this year and apparently got quite wealthy in the Tech field.

Posted by MattJ · December 30, 2003 06:48 PM

Paging Cowboy Kahlil… you are favored over metrosexuals by angry white men…please respond Mr. Hunkahunkaburninlove.

Posted by nofundy · December 30, 2003 06:51 PM

Yeah and I’ve been pondering ‘Dyke Eye for the Straight Woman’ and trying to make it work. But it would involve throwing out all those beauty products rather than buying them as Queer Eye does, so commercial tv wouldn’t be all that keen. It would be damn funny though.

Posted by Ophelia Benson · December 30, 2003 06:52 PM

Yeah and I’ve been pondering ‘Dyke Eye for the Straight Woman’ and trying to make it work. … It would be damn funny though.

Too late. Already been an SNL skit.

Posted by alkali · December 30, 2003 07:14 PM

Oh, of course - I should have known.

Posted by Ophelia Benson · December 30, 2003 07:32 PM

Good observation on ever whining blacks:

Another example of whining blacks:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/12/30/american_values_cast_a_global_shadow/

It’s all white man’s fault. Please.

Posted by cw · December 30, 2003 09:34 PM

We white boys love the tough guys
We like it when they’re fake
like Ronald, Arnold, Dubya
the sizzle, not the steak.

Posted by bad Jim · December 31, 2003 04:36 AM

Yeah, RR sure was a fake. With everyone expecting to be dealing with the Sovs for fifty years, he said ‘the ashheap of history’, and when Gorby offered him everything in exchange for Star Wars, RR said no, and gently but firmly broke the Russian Bear’s back.

All the while under the gun of global thermonuclear war. What a wimp.

Why any good lefty could have pulled down the wall themselves, and just told everyone to get along or else. No need for tanks or air forces, lefties are invincible. Brave too. All that talk about ‘Better Red than Dead’ was a joke, see.

Posted by Tadeusz · December 31, 2003 06:34 AM

Factoid: Al Gore did not so far from this in the 200 election (he actually got 36% of the white male vote) and the race was about as even as it could possibly be.

2000 did not have an incumbent running, and it dang sure didn’t have the stark contrast in national security policies that it has now. Yuck it up about cowboys and metrosexuals all you wish, but ignore it at your own peril (presuming you are a Democrat, of course.)

Posted by Scott Chaffin · December 31, 2003 07:06 AM

A look at the Dem nomination frontrunners and their “position-a-day” suggests they are going to get a thrashing this time. But note how carefully Hillary Clinton is positioning herself between hawks, doves and metrosexuals (or whatever). I’m betting on her for a strong run in 2008, maybe even the White House.

Posted by Dave F · December 31, 2003 07:25 AM

Steven den Beste tracks back to this Crooked Timber article, and says:

“Crooked Timber thinks that white men don’t actually matter. (White women, on the other hand, do.)”

Says it all really. The sad thing is that SDB probably believes it.

Posted by Peter Murphy · December 31, 2003 07:32 AM

My dear Kosciuszko, not even the Russians used to think that Alzheimer’s disqualified dear leaders!

Posted by bad Jim · December 31, 2003 09:25 AM

Come on, bring back SSDB — you know you want to…

Posted by The Shamrockshire Eagle, editor and sole proprietor of · December 31, 2003 10:26 AM

Jason, this do ya?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/cbc/map.htm

Gore counties (Sorry, not precincts, though I believe there IS a precinct level analysis out there somewhere.) 127 million

Bush counties 143 million.

Posted by Brett Bellmore · December 31, 2003 12:59 PM

Brett: I checked up on this. Republican counties always have a lower turnout than Democratic ones (mainly because Democratic counties aer disproportionately in urban areas). But in the particular case of the 2000 election, this structural advantage in the popular vote was substantially reduced by a massive Republican GOTV effort.

Posted by dsquared · December 31, 2003 02:46 PM

Popular vote-based analyses, are, to be blunt, stupid. If the election actually worked that way campaigns and voting patterns would be different.

Trivial example: as a MA voter, I realized a vote for Bush or Gore was irrelevent. The only interesting question was whether to vote for Nader in hopes of getting the Green party over the 5% threshold for state campaign funding in MA.

Posted by mike e · December 31, 2003 05:59 PM

“Jason, this do ya?”

No, because then you have to cross-reference that with Bush’s margin of victory in those counties, which I can’t find.

Then you have to speculate as to how those don’t vote would have voted if they did. I suspect this goes different directions in different areas.

Posted by Jason McCullough · December 31, 2003 07:54 PM

At least, you have to do that if you want to support the statement “more people preferred Bush even if they didn’t vote,” which I think is what you’re implying.

Posted by Jason McCullough · December 31, 2003 07:55 PM

After black artists went 10-for-10 in the Billboard singles charts’ Top 10 this year, I’d say we already have a “Black Eye for the White Guy” show — one as surface-obsessed and shallow as “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.”

I think it’s called MTV.

Posted by Negrophile · January 1, 2004 02:43 AM

Queer Eye is not either shallow!

Well, yes it is, but it’s shallow in such an amusing way. Camp shallow can be so - so -

well, camp.

Posted by Ophelia Benson · January 1, 2004 09:43 PM

A “36 point margin [ie a 68:32 split -dd] over Howard Dean” isn’t an “insurmountable obstacle”; it’s a two point swing away from the neutral point of the 2000 election and quite the sort of thing that could get lost in differential turnout rates.

Dream on. All other things being equal, Democrats going from 36% of the white male vote to 32% (white males = 40% of electorate) takes a 49% - 49% election to a 51% - 47% election, which is to say, a major ass whipping.

Al Gore was the candidate of the incumbent party during a time of peace and propserity. He had a huge Federal machinery working for him, which is now working for the Republicans, so all other things won’t be equal, they’ll be tilted in the Republicans favor.

This is going to be huge, and I’m going to gloat about it this year, a lot.

Posted by Greg D · January 2, 2004 12:55 AM
Den Beste may not be overstating the case by any means. Steve Sailer has made the case in very great detail that the closeness of 2000 was far more about Bush winning just 54% of the white vote than about him winning just 21% of the ethnic minority vote:
If Dubya had garnered 57% instead of just 54% of whites, he would have cruised to an Electoral College landslide of 367 to 171.

… What if in upping his share of the white electorate from 54% to 57%, Dubya had alienated more minority voters, causing his share of the nonwhite vote to fall by 8 points from 21% to 13%?

A disaster, right? Wrong. Bush still would have won 310 to 228.

What if in winning those three additional white share points, Dubya had lost every single nonwhite vote in the USA?

Incredibly, he still would have won. Bush would have tied 269-269 in the Electoral College and been elected President by the House of Representatives.
A very interesting read.
Posted by Peter Cuthbertson · January 2, 2004 02:48 AM

Frankly I think a huge error is being made by everyone in trying to read too much into the polls 10 months before the election.

Bush did not do well in the polls against Gore in December 1999, Clinton did not do well in the polls against Bush in December 1991, Reagan didn’t do well in the polls against Carter in December 1979 and so on.

Most people in this country have a pretty good idea of who George W Bush is, on the other hand the vast majority of people still have no idea who Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, or any of the other Democrats other than Dean are.

If Bush vs. Dean is still polling the same in October or September 2004 then I’ll conceed the naysayers have a point until then I say it’s still way too early to tell. Ten months is a lifetime in politics. Ten months ago Dean was all but a footnote in the race for the Democratic nomination, today it is his to lose.

Oh and for what it’s worth in early primary and caucus states Dean does best of all groups of likely primary voters with white males.

Posted by Chris Stefan · January 2, 2004 01:11 PM

Chris S. is right, but there’s another factor — the Bush campaign machine is rolling in cash, frighteningly efficient, and has no scruples at all, and the commercial media (except for Paul Krugman) are nerveless and cowed at best. So it’s up to the Democratic Party (usually a weak sister at crunch time) and the grass roots. Conceivably there might be a few Republican and media defections, but those of us who are already angry about Election 2000 might end up being much more angry in late November.

This sounds pessimistic and defeatist, but on the other hand, if the Democrat does win it will be a highly significant victory and will change the political landscape.

The combination of fiscal, civil liberties, environmental, and military excesses by the Bush administration SHOULD mean that he will get no moderate support at all, but that assumes that moderates have an actual point of view and aren’t just wind-sock bandwagoners. Perhaps the key for the Democrats lies in convincing the cynical and apolitical that the election does make a difference, but in my experience I usually find them to be terribly invested in their cynicism and apathy. Real bulldogs of indifference.

Posted by Zizka · January 2, 2004 02:59 PM

Look, I don’t think anyone should be holding out any hopes that the Democrats will win, because they won’t. I’m just making the point that it’s not all about the Carly Simon syndrome of white males. Please, nobody get your hopes up about the Democrats; they’re fucked.

Posted by dsquared · January 2, 2004 04:08 PM

“Frankly I think a huge error is being made by everyone in trying to read too much into the polls 10 months before the election.”

But in 1979, 1991, and 1999 there was not any really important things (ideas or policies) in the public eye.
In 2004, there is. And there is a clear choice to be made between the two parties.

Dubya has said “I intend to protect the US from attacks by our enemies.” And has backed that up by unmistakable actions.

Dean, has said that he’ll depend on getting permission from France.

Ten months is not going to erase this issue, or change either candidate’s stance.

Posted by ray · January 2, 2004 04:45 PM

zizka,

Speaking as a conservative/libertarian blend (like Best Choice grape juice, 100% Natural, but more accurately labled) George Bush either is a moderate, or he plays one in the White House. The middle of the electorate has tolerated Reagan’s fiscal policy (like Bush’s), Nixon’s environmental policy (like Bush’s), the Drug War’s civil liberties policies (like Bush’s) and both Nixon’s and Reagan’s military excesses (like Bush’s) well enough to give landslides to Nixon and Reagan.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that both Ford and Gore were defeated because the middle of the electorate really hates Presidential scandals. Go ahead and feel free to saw the limb off.

Clinton was moderate too, not the rabid liberal some on my side of the fence see. Dean is only slightly less moderate than Clinton.

Bush does have plenty of conservative supporters, though, and Dean has plenty of liberal supporters, but neither is all that far from the center.

I changed from liberal/libertarian (voted for Gore) to conservative/libertarian (will vote for Bush), myself. The change in perspective was illuminating.

Yours,
Wince

Posted by Wince and Nod · January 2, 2004 06:16 PM

Dubya has said “I intend to protect the US from attacks by our enemies.” And has backed that up by unmistakable actions.

I think you mean ‘has backed that up by brandishing for-display-purpose-only turkeys.’

Or perhaps the deeper truth that he’s leading an assault on the US by elements who are making themselves enemies of most ordinary Americans.

Posted by ahem · January 2, 2004 09:39 PM

You know, if the GOP lost 5% of the white vote between 1988 and 2000, while moving significantly to the right, something tells me they’re not going to get those votes back by moving even farther to the right…..

Posted by Jason McCullough · January 3, 2004 03:58 AM

Ahem - would you care to tell someone in the 1st ID that the conquest of Iraq was merely “brandishing for-display-purpose-only turkeys”? Whether you agree or not that removing Saddam has reduced the threat to the US, it’s hard to argue that removing the Taliban has not, and there does seem to be a causal link between Libya’s and the Saudi’s sudden cooperativeness and US actions abroad since 9/11.

Jason - I don’t know if you can call Bush 41’s trying to sound like Reagan in 1988 and trying to sound “compassionate” in 1992 a “move significantly to the right”; and nominating Bob Dole, the “tax collector for the welfare state”, isn’t a significant rightward move, either. Mark Schmitt, “The Decembrist”, says that Bush 43 is a Nixonian Liberal. That doesn’t sound “significantly to the right” of Ronald Reagan.

Posted by Anthony · January 6, 2004 07:39 PM
Followups

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.