An election all about values
The distaste for elites that once was transformed easily into distrust of conservatism became transformed into distrust of liberalism. And so a culture gap opened up for many Americans. Their concern for family values and cultural issues trumped even economics.
All of which goes a long way toward explaining the Republican use of cultural populism to mobilize voters, exploiting explosive social issues like abortion--especially "partial-birth" abortions--gay marriage, school prayer, and guns. Recent polls by both Time and MSNBC/Knight Ridder indicate that the number of voters who are responding primarily on moral and family-value issues like gay marriage and abortion has increased to between 15 and 18 percent; in the most recent Time poll, George Bush is winning over the culturally driven voters by 70 to 18 percent, a margin that shifts the overall poll findings by as much as 7 or 8 percentage points toward Bush. This is true, as well, in the battleground states, where the GOP margin on social issues is critical. MSNBC's polling firm indicated some 12 percent in Pennsylvania and 16 percent in Missouri would pick moral and family-values issues as the most important in determining their presidential vote this year, and Bush's lead over Kerry among these voters ranges from almost 8 to 1 in Oregon to more than 10 to 1 in Ohio and more than 12 to 1 in Missouri. In other swing states, including New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, Bush overwhelmingly tops Kerry on moral and family issues. In every state where Bush led that was measured, the moral-issues and family-values margin was more than his overall lead.
The paradox is that this is happening despite the fact that during the Bush administration the wealthy received disproportionate tax breaks and corporate America predominated in the councils of power. Many turned out to be among Bush's major contributors. It is happening even though, unlike during the 1980s, when corporate America was downsizing and corporations suffered along with the people they laid off, today corporate America is benefiting from outsourcing, through higher profits, while the people who are being laid off are the ones being hurt. It happened despite the fact that many social indicators whose epidemic growth created such a cultural divide in the 1960s and 1970s and provoked Middle America have begun to drop: crime, abortion, teen birth, divorce, teenage drinking. It happened despite growing middle-class economic distress, especially families' increasing difficulty of access to a college education for their children because of skyrocketing costs.
Cultural values, then, have clearly become much more powerful in the political makeup of America and Americans. This goes a long way, I think, toward explaining why the Democrats have had so much trouble gaining traction in a year they should have owned.
advertisement
