My mom, a disaffected Republican from a largely conservative suburb south of Denver, was up for the weekend. (Thanks for the free babysitting, Mom!) I shared in a previous diary how she's a big fan of Obama and thinks the GOP is "going down the tubes." She's not too tech savvy, so yesterday, I was showing her my laptop, introducing her to Daily Kos :>) and showing her a few choice clips from the Daily Show.
This morning, I had her read a piece by David Frum the NY Times Sunday Magazine entitled “The Vanishing Republican Voter” (Frum is a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute) I thought that I'd share some highlights from the piece, plus our (anecdotal) reactions.
The focus of the piece is how economic inequality (or homogeneity) impacts elections, with Washington DC and its Virgina suburbs and exurbs as the prime examples. I wouldn't necessarily say that that serves as a good boilerplate for other urban areas. Frum argues that in situations of higher inequality (more economic disparity between the top and bottom), voters go Democratic, whereas in situations with greater economic homogeneity, voters go Republican. I’m not sure how well one can really argue this with one case, and I’m sure a cherry-picked one at that. But we did find it interesting to read Frum’s comments about how Republicans are losing voters on economic issues. My mom vociferously agreed. She is really worried about what retirement is going to be like for her. With the stock market and economy tanking, she's worried about her savings lasting. That's not imaginary; that's her life, John McCain. It's not some game.
Republican economic management since 2001 has not yielded many benefits for middle-income America. Adjusting for inflation, the incomes of college graduates actually dropped by 5 percent between 2000 and 2004.
This speaks to my own fears. If my husband and I are not in the "economic elite", are we just struggling to not lose ground, forget about moving ahead?
IN SHORT, the trend to inequality is real, it is large and it is transforming American society and the American electoral map. Yet the conservative response to this trend verges somewhere between the obsolete and the irrelevant.
Conservatives need to stop denying reality. The stagnation of the incomes of middle-class Americans is a fact. And only by acknowledging facts can we respond effectively to the genuine difficulties of voters in the middle. We keep offering them cuts in their federal personal income taxes — even though two-thirds of Americans pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes, and even though a majority of Americans now describe their federal income tax burden as reasonable.
I think he’s right, obviously, because I vote for Democrats for the most part. The big Republican tax breaks (for the rich) which broke the budget? Not a lot of benefit here. I have no confidence that Republicans are worried about workers and the middle class. I don’t have a big ol’ wad of money that I’m trying to “protect” from the teeming masses like what I perceive to be the target (economic) demographic of the GOP.
My mom has been a Republican all her adult life, first because she was married to my dad, and then after they divorced, because of inertia and buying into the idea that the GOP was economically conservative. She sees that with the current GOP, at least, that is a big fat lie. She is incredibly bitter about it. Kind of like someone who has suddenly come to her senses and realizes she's been had.
What the middle class needs most is not lower income taxes but a slowdown in the soaring inflation of health-care costs. If health-insurance costs had risen 50 percent rather than 100 percent over the Bush years, middle-income voters would have enjoyed a pay raise instead of enduring wage stagnation. …. But it remains unfortunately true that the Republican Party as a whole regards health care as “not our issue” — and certainly less exciting than another round of tax reductions.
And how. Like I said, working to try not to lose any ground. Forget about working to get ahead. My mom faces it with Medicare, my family faces it with employer-provided health insurance.
At the end of our discussion, my mom took a deep breath and said, "I don't think I'm ready to register as a Democrat. But I think I'm ready to go independent." I'm going to pick up a voter registration card for her. Unaffiliated voters are now the biggest bloc in Colorado, and I told her it was a great option for her.
Anyway, it's an interesting read. Frum is obviously trying to give the Republicans a much-needed road map, but I think Dems can learn a lot from it, too. I also wanted to give an update on my mom's continuing political evolution.