Ruy Teixeira and Joel Rogers's America's Forgotten Majority

...The Democratic margin among white women with high school degrees and those with some college both dropped by ten points...

...Italics added) NORC found, for example, that the percentage of "traditional" households in which the husband works and the wife does not has fallen from 53 percent in 1972 to 24 percent in 1996, while the number in which both spouses work has grown from 32 to 59 percent...

...Although they write that the closing years of the 1990s "have been famously good ones, both for the U.S...

...Among the most arresting manifestations of the new social order is the gender gap in voting, with men (more tolerant of risk, deregulation, weapons, the general use of force, and exacerbated resource competition) inclined to vote Republican, and with women (more risk averse, more supportive of safe harbors, more receptive to government protection, and more opposed to guns and physical coercion) inclined to vote Democratic...

...The percentage of people saying "it is all right for a homosexual to teach college classes" has grown from 50 percent in 1972 to a decisive majority of 77.8 percent in 1998...

...economy as a whole and for the typical worker and family," they contend that for the forgotten majority, "their economic situation, while improved, has not been fundamentally altered...

...Socialcultural schisms between low- and moderateincome voters have consistently torpedoed the prospects for a durable center-left coalition and, since 1965, have proven lethal to the Democratic Party over and over again...

...3) Do you believe sex before marriage is morally wrong...

...This strategy was tested, albeit imperfectly, by Vice President Gore's campaign...

...AMERICA'S FORGOTTEN MAJORITY: WHY THE WHITE WORKING CLASS STILL MATTERS by Ruy Teixeira and Joel Rogers Basic Books, 2000 232 pp $27 THE BASIC PREMISE Of Ruy Teixeira and Joel Rogers's America's Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters is right on target...

...Voters who were pro-Clinton replied "no" to questions one, three, four and five and "yes" to question two, with the converse true for Dole voters...

...Although the costs and benefits of these revolutions have been widespread, a significant share of the costs has been imposed on the large universe of non-college-educated white men...

...white, Catholic, working-class voters...

...Tom W. Smith, principal investigator at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago writes, "Age and education have the largest and most consistent impact on family values and related attitudes...

...These are, furthermore, the voters who—having lived through 104 n DISSENT / Spring 2001 BOOKS their own interethnic conflicts, as the descendants of earlier Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish, and Slavic migrants—have been among the most directly affected by newer waves of nonEuropean newcomers...

...The abortion rights movement formed the core of the opposition to Ashcroft, as conflict over reproductive rights and obligations has become one of the central issues defining the two parties in the minds of voters...

...Attitudes toward homosexuality have also changed substantially in very recent years...

...Reducing the salience of divisive "identity" issues, as Teixeira and Rogers suggest, while stressing shared economic interests, would be an important first step, but inadequate to the enormity of the problem...

...2) Do you personally look at pornography...

...and of the transition to the high-tech production line...

...These Democratic gains have brought competitive financial resources—and a key base of institutional support—in the form of organized interest groups such as the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Human Rights Campaign Fund...

...Among college-educated women, the Democratic margin actually increased by two points from 1992 to 1994...

...Non-college-educated workers are far less blue-collar than in the past...

...The benefits of rising productivity and growth, in fact, recently appeared to be moving down the educational ladder to benefit those who initially had the hardest time in accommodating change...

...Over the course of his eight years in the White House, Clinton and his advisers saw the potential for shaping a Democratic Party coalition based on the social-moral left jettisoning those non-college-educated 106 n DISSENT / Spring 2001 BOOKS white voters less oriented toward their economic class interest than toward their cultural and religious beliefs and more inclined to join a rightpopulist than a left-populist coalition...

...Bill Clinton was the first, and so far only, Democratic presidential candidate to win as an advocate of abortion rights and women's rights...

...The Democratic Party has, in effect, taken the position of social, moral, and racial liberalism in the culture wars of the past thirty years, and, in doing so, has aligned itself with highly educated professionals, as much as with the traditional working class...

...He is the author of The New Politics of Inequality and Chain Reaction and is working on a book about American men...

...The major revolutions of the last four decades— globalization, the technological-scientificeconomic revolution, the sexual revolution, the civil rights revolution, the women's rights revolution, and immigration reform— have all had costs and benefits...

...From 1991 to 1998, the percentage of people saying homosexual relations are "never wrong" has grown from 14.9 to 28.2, while the percentage saying such relations are "always wrong" has dropped from 77.7 percent to 61 percent...

...In the case of abortion, for example, those who believe that abortion should "always" be legal voted for Gore over Bush by a 70-25 margin, while those who think it should always be illegal voted for Bush by an even larger 74-22 margin, according to Voter News Service data...

...Advised by pollster Stanley Greenberg, a leading advocate of just the kind of political strategies Teixeira and Rogers call for, Gore highlighted the theme of "the people against the powerful" and committed himself to represent "the people" in their struggles against drug companies, health maintenance organizations, and other major corporations and industries that exercise power over crucial choices made by Americans...

...Men and women are not acting as a class, they are acting as two separate interest groups, with differing ideas of what they want government to do and not to do...

...Those born and raised in more recent times have more modern views on family values like easier divorce and the role of women and mothers and on attitudes closely connected to the family like religion and sexual permissiveness...

...Changes in the composition of support for the Democratic and Republican Parties reflect the transformation of American society over the postwar years, and the alliance many non-collegeeducated white voters have made not with the Democratic Party, but with the GOP...

...In the 2000 election, strategists for both George W. Bush and Al Gore agreed that the key target constituency was "America's forgotten majority...

...The finding most devastating for the Democrats is that the Republican revolution of 1994 was driven in large part by the defection to the GOP of male, white, high school graduates and those with some college education but without degrees...

...These are also the voters whose once orderly neighborhoods and classrooms became dangerously violent and whose traditional authority figures in the home and church lost influence...

...rural voters...

...To restore the vitality of a left coalition will clearly require effective political appeals targeted to America's white, non-college-educated majority...

...Findings such as these help explain one of the puzzles facing Teixeira and Rogers: that although Democrats have suffered severe losses among working-class whites, they have made substantial inroads among the professional classes...

...Teixeira and Rogers have made a significant contribution to the political debate in identifying both the broad scope of Democratic losses among once-loyal voters and the suffering such voters have experienced as their livelihoods have been threatened and their families stressed by downward pressures on the working-class male wage...

...hunters (often white, working-class males...

...Teixeira and Rogers have put together a powerful array of data and statistics demonstrating the pivotal role of this critical group, and their argument in behalf of the white working class should be closely studied by all those who seek to influence national politics...

...Gays and lesbians DISSENT / Spring 2001 n 105 BOOKS voted for Gore over Bush by 70-25...

...Similarly, except for the very poor— those with household incomes of less than $15,000—there was relatively little difference in the performance of the two candidates, with Gore doing better among the lower income and Bush among the upper income voters, but not by much: Annual income Percentage of vote Gore Bush 15-30K 54 41 30-50K 49 48 50-75K 46 51 75-100K 45 52 OVER 100K 43 54 These figures suggest an electorate shaped as much by non-economic, "post-materialist" forces as by the divisions Teixeira and Rogers highlight...

...On family values and connected attitudes, more education promotes a modern point of view...

...Those who go to church more than once a week (14 percent of the electorate) were in Bush's corner, 63-36, while those who never attend church (also 14 percent of the electorate) backed Gore, 61-32...

...These voters were crucial to the creation of a conservative presidential majority throughout the 1980s...

...Not only are the backgrounds of America's white, non-college-educated workers exceptionally diverse in terms of ethnic, cultural, moral, and religious experience, the sources of employment for these voters are also very different...

...These are the workers who have been most likely to see jobs and promotions lost as employers comply with affirmative action programs—because some of the toughest programs were ordered for local government bureaucracies, police and fire departments, and the construction industry, once prime employers in America's working-class, white neighborhoods...

...Teixeira and Rogers show that virtually all of the decline in support for Democratic presidential candidates from the start of the 1960s through the 1980s and 1990s has been among white voters without college degrees, most especially white men...

...Just as in the industrial revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the least well educated have had the greatest difficulty in navigating the wrenching transition, and have often been the last to profit from the accelerating rates of productivity and from the generation of new wealth...

...Instead, among all voters— including whites, blacks, and Hispanics— Gore and Bush evenly split both the collegeeducated and the non-college-educated groups...

...By focusing on income to the exclusion of the ways in which the social-cultural and technological revolutions have altered the daily lives of lower income men and women, Teixeira and Rogers are unable to address the salience in modern elections of such issues as abortion, school prayer, gays in the military, civil unions, Internet pornography, welfare reform, faithbased social service initiatives, and gun control— issues that have had a powerful effect in securing Republican victories in the House, the Senate, and now the White House...

...This 'realignment' has occurred within the parties both at the level of elected officials and among the general public...

...Bill Clinton's success in 1992 was based in large part on his ability to persuade them to cast a ballot for a Democrat who would "end welfare as we know it" and honor those who "work hard and play by the rules...

...These figures suggest that the Democratic Party can no longer depend on overwhelming margins from working-class voters...

...The way in which voters answered these questions was more predictive of their presidential vote, Morris and Penn found, than every other demographic measure except race and party identification...

...Many highly educated, upper-income white voters strongly support women's rights, civil rights, sexual privacy, and abortion rights, all of which have become identified with the Democratic Party...

...far more involved in technology, services, and in types of work falling outside the boundaries of traditional class analysis—sometimes on the bottom rungs of management...

...Teixeira and Rogers correctly identify educational attainment as key to defining and targeting "the forgotten majority...

...Exit polling on Election Day found that Gore's populism did less than hoped for to shape a new coalition...

...vien without college degrees have been left increasingly vulnerable not only to economic pressures, but also to status dislocation...

...These are the voters who were required to cede places and grant money in state colleges and universities to competitors benefiting from racial or gender preferences...

...DISSENT / Spring 2001 n 107...

...4) Would you look down on someone who had an affair while they were married...

...THE STRENGTH of cultural liberalism within the Democratic Party was demonstrated in the first days of the current Bush administration, when forty-two of fifty Democratic senators voted against one of their former colleagues, John Ashcroft, as attorney general...

...White voters who say they are part of the religious right gave Bush an 80-18 margin...

...Furthermore, these men and women are today often the parents of children whose public schools are failing dramatically...

...The rights revolutions have changed the character of the two major political parties and have challenged the primacy of class-based analyses of American politics...

...They have often been conflicted about changes in traditional morality—changes spurred by new contraceptive technologies in the 1960s—that have resulted not only in workplace participation by more than 60 percent of mothers of preschool children, but in an American outofwedlock birthrate of 30 percent, a divorce rate of 50 percent, and a steady increase in the number of single mothers...

...The strength of America's Forgotten Majority lies in the effective marshaling of data on both political and economic trends...

...Over the past three decades, the most volatile and influential constituency in American elections has been the white, moderate-income voter, most often without a college degree...

...These are the voters who broke their ties to the Democratic Party to vote for candidates ranging from George Wallace to Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan...

...Teixeira and Rogers focus on less well educated Americans as a single class, whose voting decisions are determined by gains or losses in median wages and family income...

...The 2000 election provided a partial test of one underlying message of Teixeira and Rogers's book, that the "forgotten majority" can be mobilized by a Democrat who makes explicit a left-populist commitment...

...They are less attentive to mediating cultural and social conflicts than they are to cementing economic solidarity...

...Instead, the party's presidential candidates now find their strongest support among those in non-traditional relationships and families: urban and suburban singles, unmarried working mothers, gays and lesbians, the non-religious, and believers in abortion rights—from all socio-economic classes and from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds...

...But crafting such appeals will not be easy...

...THOMAS BYRNE EDSALL is a national political reporter on the Washington Post...

...From 1992 to 1994, the Democratic margins among these two groups of men dropped an extraordinary twenty and fifteen points respectively...

...But by focusing their attention on developing a coherent "class consciousness" based on shared economic interests, they underestimate the obstacles to constructing a bottom-up majority DISSENT / Spring 2001 n 103 BOOKS coalition...

...But this orientation, taken by itself, slights the importance of values issues in shaping contemporary politics...

...The smallest Democratic decline was among college-educated men, whose Democratic margins fell only six points...

...Similarly, the college educated (and especially those with advanced degrees) hold the most modern views while those without a high school education are the most traditional...

...and those who believe that the primary role of women is to raise children and maintain a home...

...of the depletion of blue-collar work in auto plants, steel mills, and machine tool facilities...

...But to understand the current competitive success of Republican candidates among lower income voters, the Teixeira-Rogers analysis should be expanded to include an analysis of the impact on the American electorate of the rights revolutions of the past thirty-five years—human rights, women's rights, civil rights, gay rights, defendants' rights, sexual rights, privacy rights, immigration rights, and, more generally, rights to a liberally conceived personal autonomy...

...These men have been among the first to suffer from the abrupt shift from an economy powered by muscle and machinery to one dominated by computers and electronics...

...Similarly, Teixeira and Rogers's determination to correlate voting trends with income patterns interferes with their account of recent economic developments...

...those who believe that life begins at conception...

...They have been described as "the silent majority," "Reagan Democrats," and "angry white men...

...Gains among economic and cultural elites, however, have come at a cost, and that cost has been substantial losses among voters holding "traditional" moral outlooks, many of them in the lower half of the income distribution— particularly, but not exclusively, religious evangelical conservatives...

...5) Is religion very important in your life...

...These men have taken much of the brunt of global competition and of deindustrialization...

...In the 1996 presidential campaign, Dick Monis and Mark Penn, Clinton's two closest advisers, devised a mechanism for identifying voters likely to back Clinton and voters likely to back his Republican opponent, Bob Dole...

...often hired and promoted because of their acquisition of new skills...

...Greg Adams, a political scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, has studied thirty years of poll data on abortion and argues that since 1980, "the parties have in fact fundamentally shifted to be aligned on social issues, most notably abortion...

...Few politicians understood these trends better than Bill Clinton...

...If economic growth continues as it has, then an analysis of contemporary politics will need to encompass the dispersal to the white, non-college-educated electorate of new and genuinely valuable economic resources...

...Voters in households with guns were for Bush by 60-36, and those from households without guns were for Gore, 64-40...

...Clinton's two plurality victories, however, and the statistical tie between Bush and Gore in 2000, demonstrate that the electorate appears to be not only deeply divided on the issues of the culture war, but evenly divided...

...and paid, in many cases, on the basis of individual performance rather than job classification...

...White voters forming the core of the "forgotten majority" were among those who, as children, were ordered by the courts to participate in busing programs that ended neighborhood public schools—while the affluent remained secure in separate suburban townships or in private schools...

...The percent of people disagreeing with the statement that "it is better if the man works and the woman stays at home" has grown from 34 percent in 1972 to 65.8 percent in 1998...

...Morris and Penn asked five questions, each one of which, according to the pollsters, directly or indirectly reflected a voter's key cultural and moral values and thus his or her likely voting behavior: ( ) Do you believe homosexuality is morally wrong...

...They have been angered by court decisions expanding defendants' rights...