[Mb-civic] EXCELLENT: What Kind of Hater Are You? - E. J. Dionne - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

What Kind of Hater Are You?
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By E. J. Dionne Jr.
The Washington Post
Wednesday, March 15, 2006; A19

Consider the portraits that Republicans and Democrats paint of each 
other. They explain much of the loathing in our politics.

Democrats see Republicans as a collection of pampered rich people who 
selfishly seek to cut their own taxes, allied with religious 
fundamentalists who want to use government power to impose a narrow 
brand of Christianity on everyone else.

Republicans see Democrats as godless, overeducated elitists who sip 
lattes as they look down their noses at the moral values of "real 
Americans" in "the heartland" and ally themselves with "special interest 
groups" that benefit from "big government."

Notice that each side is waging a class war in condemning the other as 
nauseatingly privileged. Yes, these are both parodies. But parodies are 
weapons in political battles, so it's important to assess the relative 
truth of each side's claims.

Begin by dismissing the claim that the economically privileged have 
become Democrats. In the 2004 election, according to the main media exit 
poll, President Bush won 63 percent of the votes cast by Americans in 
households earning over $200,000 a year, and 57 percent from those in 
the $100,000 to $200,000 range. All things being equal, wealthier people 
vote Republican.

But conservatives counter that Democrats are the party of choice in 
swank, well-educated latte enclaves: suburban Boston, New York and 
Philadelphia; Montgomery County, Md.; and Microsoftland around Seattle, 
Silicon Valley and Hollywood. John Kerry's blue states are, on the 
whole, richer than George Bush's red states.

All true -- meaning what, exactly? One of the hottest political science 
papers floating around the political world and the Web comes close to 
solving the mystery of how Democrats can do so well in certain well-off 
places and still not be the party of the rich.

The paper has a fetching title: "Rich state, poor state, red state, blue 
state: What's the matter with Connecticut?" Dr. Seuss, who wrote "One 
Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish," meets Tom Frank, the author of the 
influential book "What's the Matter With Kansas?"

The authors -- Andrew Gelman of Columbia University, Boris Shor of the 
University of Chicago, Joseph Bafumi of Dartmouth and David Park of 
Washington University in St. Louis -- show, through careful statistical 
analysis, how several things can be true at the same time.

Yes, Bush carried a lot of poor states -- but with heavy support from 
the rich people who lived in them. The class war is being waged more 
fiercely in the Republican states than in the Democratic states. The 
income divide is especially sharp in the South, where it is reinforced 
by a strong racial divide.

"In poor states," Gelman and his colleagues write, "rich people are much 
more likely than poor people to vote for the Republican presidential 
candidate, but in rich states (such as Connecticut), income has almost 
no correlation with vote preference. . . . In poor states, rich people 
are very different from poor people in their political preferences. But 
in rich states, they are not."

This suggests that our country may be even more polarized and divided 
than we thought. Not only do red and blue states vote differently, but 
they cast their votes according to different patterns.

The paper's authors also take a nice swipe at the media, arguing that 
reporters tend to overemphasize the role of rich Democrats in elections. 
Why? Journalists, they write, "noticed a pattern (richer counties 
supporting the Democrats) that is concentrated in the states where the 
journalists live," notably the environs of Washington and New York. The 
class polarization in such deep red states as Oklahoma, Texas and 
Mississippi goes largely unreported.

Gelman and his colleagues help us understand why southern Democrats such 
as Bill Clinton and John Edwards may be more attuned to the power of 
populism than Northern Democrats such as John Kerry -- and, perhaps, 
Hillary Rodham Clinton. Their paper also helps explain why Southern 
Republicans such as President Bush pursue policies that are hugely 
beneficial to their wealthy base even as they try to diminish the 
political impact of class warfare by shifting the argument to other 
subjects: religion, values or national security.

The divide in American politics is about more than the ideological 
distance between the two parties. Right now red-staters and blue-staters 
live in two different political universes. It's no wonder that political 
moderation is out of fashion -- though the winner of the 2008 round may 
be the person who can scramble the patterns of Dr. Seussian politics.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/14/AR2006031401116.html?nav=hcmodule
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