Posted on 03/26/2010 10:58:32 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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.
Obama's brand of liberalism is exactly the sort likely to drive such voters away. More like LBJ's than FDR's, Obama-style liberalism favors benefits over relief, a safety net over direct job programs, health care and environmental reform over financial reform and a stimulus package that has focused more on social service jobs -- health care work, teaching and the like -- than on the areas where a majority of job losses occurred: construction, manufacturing and related sectors. This recession remains disproportionately a "he-cession." Men account for at least seven of 10 workers who lost jobs, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Nearly half of the casualties are white men, who held 46 percent of all jobs lost.
In 1994, liberals tried to explain their thinning ranks by casting aspersions on the white men who were fleeing, and the media took up the cry. The term "angry white male" or "angry white men" was mentioned 37 times in English-language news media contained in the Nexis database between 1980 and the 1994 election. In the following year, the phrases appear 2,306 times.
Tarnishing their opponents as merely "angry" was poor politics for the Democrats. Liberals know what it's like to have their views -- most recently on the war in Iraq or George W. Bush -- caricatured as merely irrational anger. Most voters vote their interests. And many white men by the 1980s had decided the Democrats were no longer interested in them.
Think about the average working man. He has already seen financial bailouts for the rich folks above him. Now he sees a health care bailout for the poor folks below him. Big government represents lots of costs and little gain.
Meanwhile, like many women, these men are simply trying to push ahead without being pushed under. Some once believed in Obama. Now they feel forgotten.
Government can only do so much. But recall the Depression. FDR's focus on the economy was single-minded and relentless. Hard times continued, but men never doubted that FDR was trying to do right by them. Democrats should think about why they aren't given that same benefit of the doubt today.
It doesn’t matter what color they are, men who have self-respect and for individuality have little in common with the Democrats’ Party.
It can all be rolled back, but first we have to retake control of congress and the White House.
Doesn’t really matter does it? When the dollar collapses, it will be every man for himself. God save us from the inevitable.
Do we trust them? I think not.
Race-baiting excuse for the November Demonrat Defeat. Could just as easily write a story that says “Black Women Stick With Obama and the Democrat Party.”
Nam Vet
I think for the first time in my lifetime, the white male vote is going to stop being this open secret and will have to be actively courted the way the women's vote has been all along (medical/the chiiiildren issues).
The truth is that white males are like the bulk of the iceberg under the waterline. We sit there and take the whining, the bitching, the bias against us, and we don't take it all that seriously. But now we see the nation is being destroyed at its very foundations, and we've come back into the playroom and will be sending home that troublemaker who is showing off for the girls, and that one over there whose parents let her get away with anything in her house, and in general doing the unglamorous hard work that the male heads of households have always done, usually without praise, for centuries. We've let the decades of demonization pass--it was all just mosquito-bite annoyances like Olberman and Boxer and Oprah and Hollywood and Cambridge PC girlymen...
Now we're saying "Enough."
They could have just as easily written that every working person who is sick of being fleeced by the government and robbed of their liberty has left the dumocrat party!
What’s wrong, whitey?
Don’like 0bammie d’commie putt’n yo *ss to work fo d’common good?
You betta get’cho *ss back ta work! You got taxes ta pay, repurations, ‘n sh*t, yo!
Did y’all think diswuz’bout equality? Ha! We dun turned da tables on y’all! Haaaaa! Ooooo-eeeee! You in some trouble now, crackuh-*ss!
Oh, I got’cho “commie pig”...right here! Now get ta urnin’ my money, beeyatch. I needs me some paypuh up in here, ‘n sh*t!
Maybe there should be an “election” in June?
Better for Christmas in July.
I plead guilty to that.
But I also recognize the exception, I just don't plan my traffic route at night with my wife and small kids in the car based on that unlikely possibility.
Or maybe its the “Hecession”....
The real title: “Democrats Shun White Men.”
If you are a white man & vote Democrat, you are a moron.
If you are a taxpayer and you vote Democrat, you are a moron.
If you are a legal immigrant and you vote Democrat, you are a moron.
If you are a business owner and you vote Democrat, you are a moron.
Lets cut to the quick or I will be writing these all days...
If you vote Democrat, but you are not a welfare queen, or a homeless bum, or getting Global Warming grants, or a member of SEIU or ACORN, or on General Assistance, on the take, on the dole and slopping in the money trough — then you are a moron.
“Environmental reform?” Man, do these clowns spin.
If you are not a victim and vote democrat you are a moron
It's really about that traditional streak of independence that hasn't quite been extinguished in the white population that libs hate so much.
It makes control that much harder.
On reflection if you vote democrat you ARE a MORON
In 1994, liberals tried to explain their thinning ranks by casting aspersions on the white men who were fleeing, and the media took up the cry. The term “angry white male” or “angry white men” was mentioned 37 times in English-language news media contained in the Nexis database between 1980 and the 1994 election. In the following year, the phrases appear 2,306 times.
Which means in the media there is a way they all decide to propagandize a news story. There must be a central editorial board that creates and decides which way “they will go”
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