What’s the Matter with What’s the Matter with Kansas?

I've already written some on why I think the Third Way report authored by Elaine Kamarck and William Galston and recommending a move to the Center for the Democratic Party in order to win elections was...well...tosh. (See, I can be polite!). Then along came Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, authors of the influential book, "Off Center", with their key finding in favor of a Coalition of the Left that:

the problem is not just polarization. It is unequal polarization — unequal between Democrats and Republicans, unequal in its effect on the governing aims of liberals and conservatives, and unequal in its effects on American society.

Now, via Tapped and brought to my attention by Fester, comes a report prepared by Princeton's Larry M. Bartels for the annual meeting of the American Political Scientist Association. Bartel's key findings are... and you should be sitting down and holding on to something solid here...that:

Has the white working class abandoned the Democratic Party? No. White voters in the bottom third of the income distribution have actually become more reliably Democratic in presidential elections over the past half-century, while middle- and upper-income white voters have trended Republican. Low-income whites have become less Democratic in their partisan identifications, but at a slower rate than more affluent whites – and that trend is entirely confined to the South, where Democratic identification was artificially inflated by the one-party system of the Jim Crow era.

Has the white working class become more conservative? No. The average views of low-income whites have remained virtually unchanged over the past 30 years. (A pro-choice shift on abortion in the 1970s and ‘80s has been partially reversed since the early 1990s.) Their positions relative to more affluent white voters – generally less liberal on social issues and less conservative on economic issues – have also remained virtually unchanged.

Do working class "moral values" trump economics? No. Social issues (including abortion) are less strongly related to party identification and and presidential votes than economic issues are, and that is even more true for whites in the bottom third of the income distribution than for more affluent whites. Moreover, while social issue preferences have become more strongly related to presidential votes among middle- and high-income whites, there is no evidence of a corresponding trend among low-income whites.

Are religious voters distracted from economic issues? No. The partisan attachments and presidential votes of frequent church-goers and people who say religion provides “a great deal” of guidance in their lives are much more strongly related to their views about economic issues than to their views about social issues. For church-goers as for non-church-goers, partisanship and voting behavior are primarily shaped by economic issues, not cultural issues.

Bartels has statistics to back up each claim. He calls his paper "What’s the Matter with What’s the Matter with Kansas?" in refernce to Thomas Franks' celebrated book of that name.

Franks had claimed that “conservatives won the heart of America” by convincing Kansans and other people of modest means to vote against their own economic interests in a vain effort to defend traditional cultural values against radical bicoastal elites. This now appears to have been a Republican fireside story - designed to soothe their own and frighten the opposition - given credence by Franks' work.

The tragedy, to me, is that Whats the Matter with Kansas? did indeed scare the Democrats. They have now become a self-fulfilling prophecy - in fear of becoming distanced from the common voter and being seen as out-of-touch leftwing nutcases and intellectual elitists they have instead distanced themselves from the common voter who was always leftwing to begin with - and are now seen as intellectual elitists chasing voting fads and scare stories, out of touch because of a move to the center.