October 5, 2007

The White Guy Gap gets some publicity

From The Politico, here's an essay by the author of the new book The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma.

Dems must woo white men to win
By: David Paul Kuhn
October 4, 2007 09:27 AM EST

The 2008 election offers the most diverse array of presidential candidates in history. But this rainbow campaign will hinge on the most durable reality of American politics: White men matter most.

Every election cycle, a new slice of the electorate — suburban mothers, churchgoing Hispanics, bicycling Norwegians — comes into vogue as reporters and analysts study the polls and try to divine new secrets about who wins and why in American politics.

The truth is that the most important factor shaping the 2008 election will almost certainly be the same one that has been the most important in presidential elections for the past 40 years: the flight of white male voters away from the Democratic Party.

The hostility of this group to Democrats and their perceived values is so pervasive that even many people who make their living in politics scarcely remark on it. But it is the main reason the election 13 months from now is virtually certain to be close — even though on issues from the war to health care, Democrats likely will be competing with more favorable tail winds than they have enjoyed for years.

The “gender gap” has been a fixture in discussions about American politics since the early Reagan years. But it is usually cast as a matter of women being turned off by Republicans. By far the greater part of this gap, however, comes from the high number of white men — who make up about 36 percent of the electorate — who refuse to even consider voting Democratic.

In 2000, exit polling showed white women backed George W. Bush over Al Gore by 3 percentage points, but white men backed him by 27 percentage points. Four years later, with John F. Kerry carrying the Democratic banner, the margin was 26 points.

The Bush years have echoed with what-if questions: What if the votes in Florida had been counted differently in 2000, if Ralph Nader had not run or if Gore had been able to carry his home state? What if Kerry had responded more deftly to the Swift Boat Veterans in 2004?

A more powerful what-if is to imagine that Democratic nominees had succeeded in narrowing the white male gap to even the low 20s instead of the mid-20s. Both Kerry and Gore would have won easily.

In 2008, Democrats are assembling behind a front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, with singular problems among white males.

Back in 2005, I wrote in VDARE.com:

I suspect that liberals are now paying the price for decades of insulting white men. White males make up about one third of the population, but the problem with white guys, from a liberal perspective, is that they happen to be the people who get most of the big things done in this country. That's just unfair, no, that's downright evil of them.

Now, white men are probably the most tolerant and forbearing of any American group—they've been raised to take it like a man—but they are also only human. So, when they finally do get mad, they are a formidable force.

And, increasingly, the Republican Party has become a covert exercise in identity politics for white men. A peculiarly ineffectual exercise because of the Republican determination to camouflage this fact by promoting policies that obviously do white men no good.

Because white men are, on average, the best team players, the best organizers, and the best managers in America, the Republicans are now consistently beating the Democrats in the blocking and tackling departments of politics, even when the Democrats are closer to objectively correct on issues like the Bush Administration lying the country into the War in Error. The GOP can draw on more—and more motivated—white male talent. ...

There's nothing unnatural about the people who keep the country running wanting to have a large say in running the country. The problem, though, is that white male identity politics is the self-love that dares not speak its name.

So, many Republican white men studiously avoid endorsing policies that would actually help white male Republicans, such as immigration restrictions. They are too intimidated by fears of being accused of bias in favor of themselves. Of course, every other group in America is free to be flagrantly biased in favor of its own members' welfare, but white males aren't allowed that freedom.

So, instead, Republican white men meekly accept their leaders' Invade-the-World-Invite-the-World policies to show how unprejudiced, how self-sacrificing they are. They send their sons to die in Iraq so that some medieval anti-American Ayatollah can win an election. Bush and Rove push affirmative action at colleges and flooding the country with immigrants to prove that their party isn't really what it obviously is: the white guy's party.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Republican white men meekly accept their leaders' Invade-the-World-Invite-the-World policies to show how unprejudiced, how self-sacrificing they are."

I believe they accept it because a leader of his party, as President, has enormous sway over that party. Once in power, the people who put party first hold more sway than the principle people and is ultimately why power never lasts forever. I fell for this and whenever I bring up criticism from the right, it really catches people off guard. I really thank Sailer, Buchanan, and Auster for helping me to realize why, in ways I couldn't understand, I found so much so unsettling about the Republican's actions.


Ron Paul is our Ross Perot. Perot didn't siphon votes off a strong president and throw the election to a weaker one. There was a principled and strong leadership vacuum in the first Bush and the party of '92 that created the Perot phenomenon and would have doomed them regardless. It looks like '08 is shaping up that way, too, unless a real leader can emerge on the Republican side.

They all had the guts to blow off the minority debates so there's hope!

Anonymous said...

As my grandpa used to say, when friends turn to foes, ask not what you've done to them; ask, what favor you've done them. White males have done the world, ahem, and endless stream of favors -- by just being, well, white men. And oh boy, does the world resent that.


JD

Anonymous said...

Bush and Rove push affirmative action at colleges and flooding the country with immigrants to prove that their party isn't really what it obviously is: the white guy's party.

That analysis is wrong. Rich white goyim such as Chmpy Jr. are different from you and me. They have internationalist plutocratic interests that average guys don't have.

Privately, they look down on the common sort of white folk, whom the non-Jewish plutocracy play for fools. For example, why couldn't one of the Bush daughters enlist in the US military, as many daughters of the white common stock have done?

Bush Jr. is a fake Bubba, just like his Daddy.

Anonymous said...

White males have done the world, ahem, and endless stream of favors -- by just being, well, white men. And oh boy, does the world resent that.

i don't much care who exactly invented the light bulb. but it is a relief that it wasn't a woman, a black, a jew or a muslim. because if it were we would never hear the end of it. the media would pound into our heads the need to give thanks to the inventor's identity group every single time we reached to flip a switch. it would always be said that that special group was the group that lit the lamp for the world.....that finally brought us out of the dark ages......that shone a miracle light into places that before were shrouded in darkness.......and on and on.

but because it was a white male inventor the light bulb is.... yawn......assumed to have been there all along.....like a mountain range. something with no particular parentage.

Anonymous said...

Ron Paulnuts are not serious, they're the Republican version of Howard Dean.

Good insights Steve, but things have significantly changed since you wrote your article. GWB's view of open border / amnesty has been decisively rejected, and the leading Rep contenders have all embraced immigration restrictions in one form or another. Moreover by 2-1 Rep voters don't like Free Trade and think it impoverishes America. More to the point economic downturns to recessions mean that anti-Immigrant measures work better.

Which party wants Open Borders, La Raza, replacing English with Spanish, and pandering to anti-White Guy sentiment the most? Yes that's Dems.

Anti-White guy sentiment and politics is inevitable because power is a zero sum game. If you have more of it someone else has less of it. Women, minorities, gays, La Raza, etc. only win when white men lose. Dems bet the farm on this, so white men will continue to lose and the only question is why ANY ordinary white man votes Democratic.

The answer of course lies in what the Democratic Party is all about: a coalition of status-obsessed yuppies who make lots of money, and various angry anti-American/anti-White interest groups. Feminists, women, minorities, etc.

McCain's melt down and Romney/Fred/Rudy's rise speaks to the requirement of Reps to be against open borders. To win, the requirement is clear: no more open borders, send immigrants legal and illegal home. But particularly the illegal ones. It's also an obvious vote getter in the general election.

As far as "invade the world" Steve that's your one obvious blind spot. Islam has been at war with the West since it's inception. More recently under passive Clinton, the 1993 WTC plot was to kill 50,000 people by toppling one tower onto the other and it nearly succeeded. After the failure the same group of related folks plotted and in 2001 achieved their goal. With help from Saddam, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia in various ways (which amounted to logistics or looking the other way, depending on the regime).

GWB's gamble that "bringing democracy" to Islam would work is over. Point of fact, no President will ever seriously consider Democracy or human rights as important for generations.

But America faces real problems with hostile regimes. Unless you'll blindly trust guys like Ahamdinejad (once again "Death to America" opens Friday prayers) or Osama (when he topples Musharaff who hangs by a thread). Over 260 soldiers surrendered to AQ in Pakistan without firing a shot, and the Supreme Court there made Musharaff give back the Red Mosque to the Taliban.

White guys don't like passively cringing and begging foreign powers/organizations not to hit us. Which is Hillary's strategy. They don't like talk.

Expect Rep candidates to propose: a whacking big navy, from the current 600 ships to 1,200 or more (back to Reagan levels), and big Air Force. Purpose: to bomb the bejabbers out of any potential foe.

Example: Iran is getting nukes. It can't be trusted. No one wants to invade either. But their nuke facilities are spread out. They need power and roads to assemble their nukes. Which make excellent targets. Cause you can't move or hide roads, bridges, or power plants.

Sherman in Georgia found it easiest to simply destroy railroad bridges and rails. He fought almost no one. Killed almost no one. Lost almost no one. He even stopped burning warehouses because it was a waste of time. That food and ammo did no one any good just sitting there, with no way to get it to Lee's army in Northern VA.

White men like action that wins, not feeling good about themselves in a gabfest. Hillary is sure to lose the white men vote massively to someone like either Rudy or Fred who will have some sort of Reaganesque plan.

And did I mention the advantages of military spending on ships and planes? Someone has to build that stuff and that's white men.

Anonymous said...

"White men like action that wins, not feeling good about themselves in a gabfest. Hillary is sure to lose the white men vote massively to someone like either Rudy or Fred who will have some sort of Reaganesque plan.

And did I mention the advantages of military spending on ships and planes? Someone has to build that stuff and that's white men.

10/05/2007 4:00 PM"

There aren't that many white men in the skilled trades needed for defence work anymore. Those industries are, to a large extent, dying. How much longer can Bridgeport stay in business when China is turning out cheap machine tools. The Chinese are now also building a log of our electronic test equipment. They seem intent on doing to us what the Japanese did to us in consumer electronics (i.e. completely capturing those markets by an aggressive campaign of product dumping), but they intend to do it in everything.

And we don't need a 600 ship Navy with 15 carrier groups to police the Shat-al-Arab waterway or some miserable stinking river in Africa (where, as I recall, you also think we should stick our noses).

Anonymous said...

For example, why couldn't one of the Bush daughters enlist in the US military, as many daughters of the white common stock have done?

I don't expect the Bush daughters to enlist, since the security risks (from our own side) would be hellacious. What bothers me is what we all very well know: even if daddy weren't president, and even if they were boys, they still wouldn't have joined. That's not the plutocratic thing to do. That's for, in Bill Kristol's immortal words, "yahoos."

The fact is that the Republican Party has succeeded in making economic issues relevant again for white men. More and more white men, even college-educated, white collar whites, feel like they're falling behind. And even if they don't personally feel that way, they're more and more anxious about the fiscal stability of an America with an $800 billion trade deficit, a growing national debt, and soaring, unfunded entitlements.

So how do Republicans retain the white vote? It's hard to turn to social issues anymore. 27 years after the Reagan revolution, does anyone really think that Republicans are gunna cut spending, outlaw abortion, create school choice, end affirmative action, or reign in immigration?

Anyone?

Anonymous said...

Which party wants Open Borders, La Raza, replacing English with Spanish, and pandering to anti-White Guy sentiment the most?

Actually, I think we have a tie.

i don't much care who exactly invented the light bulb. but it is a relief that it wasn't a woman, a black, a jew or a muslim. because if it were we would never hear the end of it...

That's the funniest thing I've read all day. Thanks.

but because it was a white male inventor the light bulb is.... yawn......assumed to have been there all along.....like a mountain range. something with no particular parentage.

And not just any white guy, but an American white guy. I think that's important, because so many people, Jews especially, like to claim that America "would be nothing" if it wasn't for their ethnic group.

Sorry, but no. Not that they haven't made contributions, but America was doing quite well before they came along. (In fact, given how our govenrnment has gone from taking 5% of GDP in taxes to 33%, you could say we were doing better.)Look in an almanac at a list of the major inventions of the last 200-300 years and what you'll notice is how so many of them were white Christian Americans of north European descent.

Anonymous said...

Expect Rep candidates to propose: a whacking big navy, from the current 600 ships to 1,200 or more (back to Reagan levels)

Our current Navy is only about 300 ships. A 600 ship Navy was a dream of the Reagan Era that was never quite reached.

The firepower of those 300 ships is something to behold, however.

Anonymous said...

Couching this as "The White Guy Gap gets some publicity" is not telling the whole story here. This David Kuhn column is an inter-Party response to the Thomas Shaller "So Long, White Boy" column at Slate.com from last week.

What's going on here is radical leftists are pushing the slightly more pragmatic liberals to officially cleanse the Democrat party of straight white males and straight white male political concerns. This is very serious stuff, Steve. That recent "So Long, White Boy" column was a trial balloon straight out of Noel Ignatiev's neo-Bolshevik Race Traitor program...a program which was too radical even for Harvard.

But with increased non-white voters due to immigration, and the reduction of married white women due to reduced marriages, the "So Long, White Boy" strategy will eventually become viable.

Anyone with a white male in their family should wake up to the future desires of certain mainstream political players. The desire is that white males be essentially silenced politically. And here in 2007, voicing that desire is completely mainstream. It won't get you shunned on the dinner party circuit. It won't get you fired.

Steve, you might consider concentrating on this not-too-distant future more in your political writings. You seem slightly fixated on the demographic situation today. But the demographic trend is what matters. And the trend is ominous for whites in America.

A new estimate of the illegal alien population is out that puts the number between 20-38 million! This while the media trumpets a "crackdown" that cites a total of a few thousand illegals deported. The time for traditionalists to panic was yesterday and today. Not tomorrow.

The Leftists have an endgame planned for whites in America that does not remotely resemble the role that whites play in society today. The headline "So Long, White Boy" speaks volumes. The words are filled with contempt. That is writing on the wall.

Ron Guhname said...

I've got nothing to add except that it's nice to know that there is at least one place where my sex-race demographic is not a dirty word. Of course, the pleasure is a bit diminshed when I realize that we're probably all white men saying these things, but, hey, I'll take what I can get.

Anonymous said...

i don't much care who exactly invented the light bulb. but it is a relief that it wasn't a woman, a black, a jew or a muslim. because if it were we would never hear the end of it.

but because it was a white male inventor the light bulb is.... yawn......assumed to have been there all along.....like a mountain range. something with no particular parentage.


Although Jews qualify for victim status in some circumstances, they are considered to be whites when it comes to excelling at science, math, engineering, inventions, etc. I'm not aware of any inventors who are lionized for being Jewish. To qualify for the special victim status enjoyed by blacks, hispanics, women, &co, a group must be inherently *less* skilled than white males.

Anonymous said...

I don't expect the Bush daughters to enlist, since the security risks (from our own side) would be hellacious.

The Bushes could at least do what the Brits have done with Prince Harry. He's in the B. Army, although he's not going to war.

Anonymous said...

I wish you all could start saying "white men" and not "white males."

Anonymous said...

Expect Rep candidates to propose: a whacking big navy, from the current 600 ships to 1,200 or more (back to Reagan levels), and big Air Force. Purpose: to bomb the bejabbers out of any potential foe.

Warships make sense when dealing with potential foes like China, but as far as I'm concerned we shouldn't need any more carriers when dealing with threats in the Middle East. So long as we need oil, we will always have a stake in what goes on over there. And oil is right now so critical to our survival (how I wish it weren't) that if they don't want to sell it to us then we should just take it.

We've spent over 4,000 lives and $600 billion on our current war in Iraq. What to do after? At least some small portions of that land should be claimed as garrisons for American soldiers and airmen, to ensure the peace. We can either do that either by force or through "voluntary" long-term leases (the typical 99 year thing, as with Guantanamo). Transporting airplanes, tanks, and personnel carriers to the other side of the world is time-consuming and expensive. If we're gunna have another war over there ever (and we will), then we'd best not have to do it again.

Those who'd oppose such garrisons should remember that we already have them in Saudi Arabia, which necessitates kissing even more arse than we'd have to kiss in Iraq. Leaving S.A. would also allow us to pull out of the Muslim Holy Land (one of Osama's big complaints) in a way that saves face. We would end up with turf more central than Saudi Arabia, too.

Anonymous said...

The Bushes could at least do what the Brits have done with Prince Harry. He's in the B. Army, although he's not going to war.

NRO has up a picture of one of the Bush daughters (the blonde one). She looks like her dad, but with boobs. Very, very disturbing.

Anonymous said...

Those who'd oppose such garrisons should remember that we already have them in Saudi Arabia

Not anymore.

Jim O'Sullivan said...

" What if Kerry had responded more deftly to the Swift Boat Veterans in 2004?"
Even in VDare articles are we going to act as if The Swiftboat Veterans for Truth were a problem only because Kerry response to them was not "deft."
C'mon. He had no better response than that arrogant non-specfic bluster he displayed because they were right. If they had been wrong, he would have proven them so by signing the Form 180. In fact, he would have signed it as soon as he told the rest of us that he wanted to be our President, before anybody ever got the chance to hear of them.
But he can't sign the Form 180! Why do you think that is, folks?
I hate to keep harping on this, but it gets annoying to hear people say that they lied about Kery, as if they really lied about Kerry. They didn't lie about Kery. Oh yeah? Name one.

Anonymous said...

Much anti white male bias comes from Madison ave, Hollywood, & the bowels of large politically correct corporations ad departments that write the scripts in such a manner as to demean white males while building up black males, gays, single moms ,interracial marriage etc. I suggest at least half of accepted advertising by big media come from the heartland.