Late Afternoon/Early Evening Open Thread

Although tons of ink have been devoted to the demise of the Democratic Party's New Deal coalition, remarkably few analysts seem to have noticed that the net decline in support for Democratic presidential candidates among white voters over the past half-century is entirely attributable to partisan change in the South. It is equally notable, in light of the alleged abandonment of the Democratic Party by working-class cultural conservatives, that white voters in the bottom third of the income distribution have actually become more loyal in their support of Democratic presidential candidates over this period. Republican gains have come not among "poorer folks" but among middle- and upper-income voters--and even those gains have been concentrated entirely in the South.

--Larry Bartels, in Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, to be reviewed this coming weekend in Sunday Kos.