White men shun Democrats

[bobbyw24]

By DAVID PAUL KUHN
First published in print: Saturday, March 27, 2010

Millions of white men who voted for Barack Obama are walking away from the Democratic Party, and it appears increasingly likely that they'll take the midterms elections in November with them. Their departure could well lead to a GOP landslide on a scale not seen since 1994.


For more than three decades before the 2008 election, no Democratic president had won a majority of the electorate. In part, that was because of low support -- never more than 38 percent -- among white male voters. Things changed with Obama, who not only won a majority of all people voting, but also pulled in 41 percent of white male voters.

Polling suggests that the shift was not because of Obama but because of the financial meltdown that preceded the election. It was only after the economic collapse that Obama's white male support climbed above the 38 percent ceiling. It was also at that point that Obama first sustained a clear majority among all registered voters, according to the Gallup tracking poll.

It looked for a moment as though Democrats had finally reached the men of Bruce Springsteen's music, bringing them around to the progressive values Springsteen himself has long endorsed. But liberal analysts failed to understand that these new Democrats were still firmly rooted in American moderation.

Pollsters regularly ask voters whether they would rather see a Democrat or Republican win their district. By February, support for Democrats among white people (male and female) was three percentage points lower than in February 1994, the year of the last Republican landslide.

Today, among whites, only 35 percent of men and 43 percent of women say they will back Democrats in the fall election. Women's preferences have remained steady since July 2009. But white men's support for a Democratic Congress has fallen eight percentage points, according to Gallup.

White men have moved away from Obama as well. The same proportion of white women approve of him -- 46 percent, according to Gallup -- as voted for him in 2008. But only 38 percent of white men approve of the President, which means that millions of white men who voted for Obama have now lost faith in him.

The migration of white men from the Democratic Party was evident in the election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts. His opponent, a white woman, won 52 percent of white women. But white men favored Brown by a 60 percent to 38 percent margin, according to Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates polling.

It's no accident that the flight of white males from the Democratic Party has come as the government has assumed a bigger role, including in banking and health care. Among whites, 71 percent of men and 56 percent of women favor a smaller government with fewer services over a larger government with more services, according to ABC/Washington Post polling.

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=915922&category=OPINION#ixzz0jNoKe6K9

[torchbearer]

everytime i see stats on gender and smaller government, women always poll weak-sauce.
i guess the whole innate thing with safety and security overtakes the idea of freedom to live as you want.

[Southron]

everytime i see stats on gender and smaller government, women always poll weak-sauce.
i guess the whole innate thing with safety and security overtakes the idea of freedom to live as you want.

No offense to our liberty loving women here but there seems to be a correlation between women's suffrage and the growth of the State in the last century.

Not that the men who led the growth get a pass either though.

[amy31416]

No offense to our liberty loving women here but there seems to be a correlation between women's suffrage and the growth of the State in the last century.

Not that the men who led the growth get a pass either though.

Well, if you're a paranoid SOB, perhaps you've noticed many of the things they've done to destroy the family over the last 50-60 years. Welfare, hardcore feminism, wars, inflation, normalize 1-parent families, normalize 2-working parents, etc.

It's hardly just women and their innate tendency towards safety and security. Though I'd say that that does make them tend more toward the liberal side. Women are told, and often rightly so, that men are not reliable and that they have to work outside the home for their own security.

I was raised in a pretty traditional family--no divorce, stay-at-home mom (until I was about 14 or so), and that is quite rare these days. Even families who can afford it don't do it, either because both parents have career aspirations or the fact that they think giving their kids "stuff" is more important than spending time with them.

I don't consider myself much of a social conservative, but I'm quite sympathetic to the rationale that destroying the family unit is leading to the unraveling of our society.

[Southron]

Yes I think the government is the new father figure in many cases.

[AlexMerced]

No offense to our liberty loving women here but there seems to be a correlation between women's suffrage and the growth of the State in the last century.

Not that the men who led the growth get a pass either though.

I don't know I'd say that, The growth is more due to to 1913's creation of the fed and income tax, the womens suffrage just happen to be occurring parallel, other countries who had more or less rights for women saw similar growth due to adopting central banks.

Follow the Money, even the culture is dictated by the money

[torchbearer]

I don't consider myself much of a social conservative, but I'm quite sympathetic to the rationale that destroying the family unit is leading to the unraveling of our society.

It does make sense that the fall of the nuclear family would result in the fall of a culture, but at the same time, the science that study these things haven't really shown any strong correlation between the two.
the organization of family structure has evolved with time, and has even evolved between my parents generation and my own.
My father lived on a farm with extended family. granparents, parents, and children all living in the same household.
that is looked down on now as that family structure was replaced by the nuclear family.

at the transition point, most people would have had the rationale that the death of the extended family is the unraveling of our society.

and before extended families, people live in tribes. where all kin lived in small tight communities with many women raising all the children together.

when this family structure gave way to the extended family, the rationale would have been that this was the unraveling of our society.

social science tells us that marriage is on it way out for most people. unintended consequence of marriage licensing by the state as most people now want to avoid the legal pain of seperation. it is much easier to cohabitate. does not mean our society will fall into chaos.

[AlexMerced]

Well, if you're a paranoid SOB, perhaps you've noticed many of the things they've done to destroy the family over the last 50-60 years. Welfare, hardcore feminism, wars, inflation, normalize 1-parent families, normalize 2-working parents, etc.

It's hardly just women and their innate tendency towards safety and security. Though I'd say that that does make them tend more toward the liberal side. Women are told, and often rightly so, that men are not reliable and that they have to work outside the home for their own security.

I was raised in a pretty traditional family--no divorce, stay-at-home mom (until I was about 14 or so), and that is quite rare these days. Even families who can afford it don't do it, either because both parents have career aspirations or the fact that they think giving their kids "stuff" is more important than spending time with them.

I don't consider myself much of a social conservative, but I'm quite sympathetic to the rationale that destroying the family unit is leading to the unraveling of our society.


The idea of the family is just the idea of individuals having a support system with other individuals which is important. Although to see what's happened to families once again look at the money and all the tax rules, if you have "normal" family husband and wife you get many decent tax benefits (aka subsidies to marriage), but if both spouses work and earn there is a penalty.

The tax code reinforces traditional family values, while I have nothing against them, using the government to push any set of values will screw up the market and usually what their trying to push.

In the case, if we agree that subsidies cause an increase in quantity, but not a n increase quality (take a look at house, healthcare, and education) then to be consistent we'd have to expect to see this elsewhere.

As the tax benefits to marriage and childbearing have increased we've seen it increase but not in quality just like education, healthcare, and housing. So these tax code subsidies to me are the hidden cause of increase divorce rates and unwanted children, cause it's these llegal institutions that establish the cutlure which a generation is socialized in.

The government shouldn't be subsidizing anything at all, no matter how good you think the cause, it just causes problems. If there isn't enough of what you like ina free market, there is probably a reason for it.



Also... if there was no government welfare system, individuals would have more reason to establish their own interpersonal support system... aka a family, so free markets would create incentives for families of whatever make-up works best. The Market Works

[stu2002]

Dems' policies are all ANTI white male. Duh

[Epic]

For what it's worth, in virtually every survey, white men are the most politically informed on average.

For example, http://people-press.org/report/319/public-knowledge-of-current-affairs-little-changed-by-news-and-information-revolutions

[MelissaWV]

I don't take surveys.

A lot of people don't take surveys anymore. Hell, a lot of surveys can't even get phone numbers to do the surveys (when they do them by phone) because most of us don't have landlines and wouldn't answer an unknown caller on our mobile phones.

Surveys were never entirely reliable, and they're simply become less so as time goes on.

Who the hell actually has time to answer these things? :confused:

I guess that makes me uninformed and the cause of the world's woes ;)

[Epic]

Those things are averages of aggregates, they don't necessarily mean anything for any one person.

[ninepointfive]

Hey all,

I've figured out what it will take for more women to align with us!
Women will join our ranks when we are proven elected leaders and acquire success. Simple as that.

[AlexMerced]

The idea of the family is just the idea of individuals having a support system with other individuals which is important. Although to see what's happened to families once again look at the money and all the tax rules, if you have "normal" family husband and wife you get many decent tax benefits (aka subsidies to marriage), but if both spouses work and earn there is a penalty.

The tax code reinforces traditional family values, while I have nothing against them, using the government to push any set of values will screw up the market and usually what their trying to push.

In the case, if we agree that subsidies cause an increase in quantity, but not a n increase quality (take a look at house, healthcare, and education) then to be consistent we'd have to expect to see this elsewhere.

As the tax benefits to marriage and childbearing have increased we've seen it increase but not in quality just like education, healthcare, and housing. So these tax code subsidies to me are the hidden cause of increase divorce rates and unwanted children, cause it's these llegal institutions that establish the cutlure which a generation is socialized in.

The government shouldn't be subsidizing anything at all, no matter how good you think the cause, it just causes problems. If there isn't enough of what you like ina free market, there is probably a reason for it.



Also... if there was no government welfare system, individuals would have more reason to establish their own interpersonal support system... aka a family, so free markets would create incentives for families of whatever make-up works best. The Market Works

I repeat

[torchbearer]

Hey all,

I've figured out what it will take for more women to align with us!
Women will join our ranks when we are proven elected leaders and acquire success. Simple as that.

interesting hypothesis. i'd be interested to see if it is a true statement.
you are saying that instead of women seeking the idealogy of security over liberty, they are just seeking that which is successful.
could be.

[dwdollar]

hey all,

i've figured out what it will take for more women to align with us!
Women will join our ranks when we are proven elected leaders and acquire success. Simple as that.

:)

+1000



...

[Travlyr]

Hey all,

I've figured out what it will take for more women to align with us!
Women will join our ranks when we are proven elected leaders and acquire success. Simple as that.

Prosperity is laissez-faire free-market capitalism.

[bobbyw24]

Yes I think the government is the new father figure in many cases.

That's been the problem since the 60s welfare explosion

[bobbyw24]

http://images.politico.com/global/news/100326_tea_party_women_lede_ap_218.jpg

When the tea party movement burst onto the scene last year to oppose President Barack Obama, the Democratic Congress, and the health care legislation they wanted to enact, some liberal critics were quick to label its activists as angry white men.

As the populist conservative movement has gained a foothold over the past year, it’s become increasingly clear that the dismissive characterization was at least half wrong.

Many of the tea party’s most influential grass-roots and national leaders are women, and a new poll released this week by Quinnipiac University suggests that women might make up a majority of the movement as well.

Generalizations about such a decentralized assortment of local groups are difficult, and the poll’s assistant director, Peter A. Brown, cautioned that its finding that 55 percent of self-identified tea partiers are women has a relatively high margin of error.

But tea party organizers and activists say they’ve seen the influence of women firsthand — personified by the politician most associated with the movement, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, the headline speaker Saturday when tea party activists hold a pair of rallies in Nevada, one of them in Searchlight, the home of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Celebrities such as Palin have had less influence shaping the movement, however, than an outburst of women’s activism unusual among conservatives.

“For years, it has been the liberal women who have organized and been staunch grass-roots and policy advocates,” Rebecca Wales, a spokeswoman for Smart Girl Politics, a new group formed to train and mobilize women in the tea party movement. “No longer is it only the liberals. Conservative women have found their voices and are using them, actively and loudly.”

Melanie Gustafson, an associate professor of history at the University of Vermont who has studied and written about the role of women in politics, said the tea party has provided a more direct way for conservative women to have influence than the Republican Party, where she says “women have always struggled for inclusion.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/35094.html#ixzz0jUpkY8C5

[stu2002]

No self-respecting white man would ever wanna be a Democrat.