Will 2008 Be a Remake of 2004? The Role of Working Class White Men

Among political scientists, it is a truism that many working-class white men left the Democratic Party in 1968, voted largely Republican in 1972, came back home for a moment in 1976, and switched to Ronald Reagan in 1980 (a detailed analysis here). Many pundits think that Bill Clinton "won many of them back to the Democratic Party in 1992," but data do not support this opinion. Exit polls actually show that in 1992 Bill Clinton won about the same share of white men as Michael Dukakis in 1988. It was Ross Perot who moved many of them away from the Republican candidate and undid George H.W. Bush.

Democrats have been the party of minorities since 1972, and they did not really compete for white men since the Ford-Carter race in 1976. But in 2008, whith the Republican Party and its standard bearer remarkably unpopular, a war led by Republicans that has lasted longer than Second World War, during a struggling economy, and at the 40-year mark of the Republican majority (no presidential coalition has ever lasted more than four decades: the New Deal one survived only 36), Democrats have their best opportunity in a generation. Yet the Democratic ambition will only be realized by winning more white men, as many scholars realized a few years ago (see, for example, Ruy Teixeira).

It’s not only a southern problem: the bulk of the white men voting in Democratic primaries are not the same white men who migrated from the Democratic Party in the last half century, as David Kuhn has demostrated in his book, The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma. Contrary to New York Times’s Paul Krugman opinion, it was not only Southern white men nostalgic of George Wallace who left the Democratic Party. Krugman quoted Princeton's Larry Bartels as saying that outside the territory of the 11 Confederate States, “[in] the rest of the country the Democratic share of the two-party presidential vote among white men was 40% in 1952 and 39% in 2004." 

Bartels uses 1952 as a starting point but that year both parties attempted to convince Dwight Eisenhower, a centrist who was the hero of the Second World War, to be their nominee. When Ike chose the Republicans, many white men followed him, giving to the Democrats an unusually low share of the vote. Therefore, the 1960 race is a more accurate starting point: It was a narrow contest and prior to the shift of 1968 that defines presidential politics to this day. 

Looking at 1960, one discovers that between that year and 2004, Democrats lost 12 percent of the non-Southern white men and 17 percent of white men in the South: simply too much to win the elections. Conventional wisdom dies hard in presidential politics but clinging to it will damage the Democratic party for many years more.

This year, white men initially backed Clinton: their first instinct was to be with the frontrunner. But unlike white women, as Obama became more widely known, white men had no stake in the symbolism of her candidacy. Therefore, they were more willing to swing to the senator of Illinois.

Many of these men casting Democratic ballots today are of the 37 percent of white males who voted for John Kerry in 2004, a share of the vote that left the Democratic candidate 3 million votes behind George Bush. Yet, so far neither Clinton nor Obama understand exactly how to reach out to them, a problem critical to a victory in November, when John McCain will flaunt his military record in order to appeal to this key constituency. In John McCain, any Democrat will find a daunting opponent with white men. He is the embodiment of much they admire.

A simple look at the 2004 exit polls provides a telling lesson for Clinton and Obama. Those white men who voted for George W. Bush in 2004 said the "issue that mattered most in deciding their vote" was terrorism (35 percent) or moral values (31 percent). Yet among the minority of white men who voted Democratic, only five percent said terrorism and 10 percent said moral values. In other words, Clinton's muddled stance on Iraq and hawkish stance on Iran was wrong for most Democratic white men.

For those Democratic white men, the foremost issue in 2004 was Iraq (26 percent) and economy/jobs (35 percent). Clinton's recent effort to mount a broad economic appeal may prove too late in a year when economic catastrophe for millions of American families is already there.

Clinton failed to consider white men in her strategy. Obama's campaign was more successful (particularly after Edwards drop off) because his broad appeal, less obsessed with individual subgroups. He reflected the framework of the Democratic mind in 2008 and therefore attracted white men sympathetic to that mind.

Consider when 2004 voters were asked what issue mattered most in deciding whom to support. White men who voted Republican said they supported the candidate who "has clear stands on the issues" (30 percent), is a "strong leader" (31 percent), or is "honest and trustworthy" (18 percent).

Meanwhile, of those white men who voted for John Kerry: five percent valued that their candidate was a "strong leader," 10 percent valued most that he had "clear stands on the issues," and nine percent said is "honest and trustworthy." White men, like white women, are not one monolith. Yet in the general election, the patterns shared by all those white men who left Democrats will have to be considered by the political left.

Those white males who supported Kerry most valued the personal qualities of a candidate who "will bring about needed change" (47 percent), is intelligent (17 percent), and "cares about people like me" (13 percent). That "change" ranked so high on the list explains Obama's appeal, at least in part.

Using education level as an indicator of social class, you find that white male Democrats without college educations are roughly three times more likely than those who graduated college to value that the candidate who "cares about people like me." In comparison, those who graduated college are roughly three times more likely than those who did not value that the candidate "is intelligent." White male Democrats who graduated college were also three times more likely to say the issue that mattered most was the war in Iraq, where Obama benefited from his early stance against the war. It is no surprise that they would be more sympathetic to Obama today.

Equally, that working class white male Democrats want to believe that the candidate "cares about people like me" certainly explains in part why Clinton has generally held on to their support. Obama's strategy to leave behind the cultural politics of the '60s and run a post-racial campaign appeals to some independent white men: will that be enough? In the 2006-midterm elections many white men were open to supporting Democrats, particularly moderates, even in states like Virginia and Montana, where George W. Bush got 60 percent in 2004.

It will be this presidential election that tests whether Democrats can turn working class men’s frustration with Republicans into a new majority. This is why the contest for white men is larger than the Democratic primary and is a harbinger for who becomes America’s next president.

The Return of Stagflation and Its Political Consequences

The return of "stagflation" to the American economy (a word almost forgotten by the media, as serious inflation had not been a problem for 27 years in the US) and the combination of inflation with a possible recession triggered by the housing market slump seemed unthinkable since Alan Greenspan's stewardship at the FED started working its magic.
Now, the word "stagflation" is popping up in the headlines of every newspaper: The annualized inflation rate for the past three months has been 6.8 percent, while unemployment is going up and growth is slowing, as Ben Bernanke said yesterday. The prices of oil and of gold hit new highs every week, while the dollar continues to drop to new lows compared to the Euro and other world currencies.
This is serious stuff -- and Bush's "stimulus" packages, will only make things worse because it's not a problem of lackof demand but a problem of lack of trust inside the overgrown financial and banking sector.
If the Republican party wanted to do everything to stop John McCain from winning the presidency this fall, it would implement an economic policy exactly like the one that is developing right now. There is no way that any Republican can hold the White House if the economy starts looking like that of Jthe late Seventies, that made President Ronald Reagan. Of course, the Democratic Congress this year will not even consider passing any legislation to prevent the crash.
Whoever will enter the White House on January 20, 2009, will have a task as formidable as the one of Franklin Roosevelt's in March 1933.

Magic Moments/2: The President as Hostage

Responding to the desire for "change," Barack Obama implicitly promises to voters that he wants (and can) "wipe clean the slate of history and begin again from scratch," as John Judis writes in TNR. Few columnists, however, have measured the implications of this promise, something that is worth a pause.

No Country, of course, can free itself from geography and history: this should be obvious from Anchorage, Alaska, to Puerto Rico in the Caribbeans, as it is plain from Lisboa to St.Petersburg, and from Teheran to Sidney. Unfortunately, the US still thinks of itself as a Country with a "mission" to fullfill, nothing like the other, "normal" countries of the world. It is American exceptionalism that supplies the bedrock for the pretense of being able to "begin again from scratch" when needed.

American exceptionalism, as most ideologies, is an important resource for leaders who position themelves on its wavelength. However, in time they are bound to disappoint their followers because promises based on ideology cannot be fulfilled. Leaders who surf the desire for political change will disappoint even more, because voters don't realize that the Founding Fathers did their best to prevent changes to their almost-perfect machinery.
Any political scientist, or historian, could tell citizens that separation of powers, checks and balances, and countermajoritarian institutions like the Supreme Court were devised precisely to forbid changes, and to create a structure that will last for centuries. The Constitution's authors were not optimistic about human nature, nor was Abraham Lincoln, who openly expressed his doubts concerning the political institutions born in Philadelphia: "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure." They had more faith in Law that in their fellow citizens, and ingeniously created a weak federal government that would not put Liberty in danger.
In time, the weak government grew strong but obstacles to its reform are as formidable today as they were in 1787 or in 1861. American Presidents cannot be tyrannical, but neither can they be efficient. Their appetite for reform inevitably clashes with lobbies, petty squabbles in the House, money interests in the Senate, and frank hostility in the Supreme Court. The Commander in Chief can easily invade a foreign country, but has trouble in giving health care to children.
Congress could, and would, pass legislation in order to give health care to children, but only if Big Pharma, American Doctors, and other relevant lobbies give their assent. And both branches of Government will bow to the Supreme Court if this institution will rule that the Costitution doesn't guarantee health care to American citizens.
Magic moments come only once in a generation, and often are a source of tragic disappointments when politicians like Bob Kennedy or Martin L. King pay the price of their committment. However, the "Candidate as Messiah" remains a dangerous delusion, even in the best cases. Should Barack Obama become President, he would probably be a weak President, not because of a lack of character, or of political qualifications, but because the Constitution wants him (or anybody else) this way. Sure, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan were strong leaders but even them were able to implement only a fraction of their ambitious agenda.

Arthur Miller, Where Are You When We Need You?

Many scholars of American political campaigns remember how the mainstream press savaged Al Gore in his debates of October 2000 with George W. Bush, because of his "pedantic" attitude. Pundits took issue with his puzzled and exasperated look listening to the nonsense mumbled by his opponent: "Lack of respect," "pretentiousness," "arrogance" were the judgments of his critics. No columnist seemed interested in evaluating Bush's arguments, and in in saying whether Gore's detailed observations were correct or not. The late Arthur Miller, in his excellent I presidenti americani e l'arte di recitare (1) remarked that newspapermen became movie critics: they were interested only in the performance of the two "actors" on stage, and perfectly indifferent to the issues discussed. Who was more briliant? Who did find the best one-liner? That one was the "winner," and therefore should become President of the United States.
Apparently, not much has changed since 2000: last Tuesday there was a tense debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the last one before March 4th critical primaries in Texas and in Ohio. What was the focus of New York Times's ADAM NAGOURNEY in his piece? Writing about Hillary Clinton, he observed: "in contrast to other debates where she mixed a warm smile with a sharp attack — she was stern and tense through most of the evening, speaking in an almost fatigued monotone as she recounted her criticisms of Mr. Obama, some of them new but many of them familiar. She often sat staring unsmiling at Mr. Obama and at Tim Russert of NBC News."
Too bad, "she was stern and tense through most of the evening" and therefore is not qualified to be President of the USA. She was "speaking in an almost fatigued monotone" and this is not acceptable. She "sat staring unsmiling" and therefore her political proposals about health care, taxes or foreign policy passed away. Well, if this is the tone and substance of the campaign, as seen by the New York Times, there isn't much hope for American democracy in 2008.

(1)We couldn't find an English edition for this text, and we'll be grateful to the reader who will point out to one.

Magic Moments/1: The Candidate as Messiah

Last week, we stressed the desire for change among American voters (see Money and Planning, or Message and Listening to the voters?, below).
Today, The New Republic's John Judis puts this widely spread sentiment into context: "Obama is the candidate of the new--a "new generation," a "new leadership," a "new kind of politics," to borrow phrases he has used. But, in emphasizing newness, Obama is actually voicing a very old theme. When he speaks of change, hope, and choosing the future over the past, when he pledges to end racial divisions or attacks special interests, Obama is striking chords that resonate deeply in the American psyche. He is making a promise to voters that is as old as the country itself: to wipe clean the slate of history and begin again from scratch."
Judis continues: "early generations of Americans became captivated by the idea that they could create a future without reference to the past. The revolutionaries who fought for America's independence saw themselves as breaking not only with the Old World but with history itself. "The case and circumstances of America present themselves as in the beginning of a world," Thomas Paine wrote in 1792. Thomas Jefferson believed the new nation should regularly renew itself, arguing that, if necessary, "[t]he tree of liberty must be refreshed ... with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
His conclusion: "Today, the conditions seem propitious for another Adamic moment: six years of fruitless war, the looming prospect of another recession, a political system paralyzed by partisanship. Enter Barack Obama, the latest representative of Emerson's party of innovation, radical reform, and hope. He has appropriated these older themes and translated them into the political rhetoric of the early twenty-first century."
This issue of an America always ready to start again, to be "reborn" without reference to the past has been throughly analyzed in the past, at least since the important Lewis's book of 1955 The American Adam. However, it is not clear how much this feeling operates with success in politics: William Jennings Bryan's hopes of "regenerating the Republic" were dashed in 1896. Franklyn Roosevelt did prevail in 1932, and was able to found a new political order, but in more recent times the political system appears to be insensitive to any desire for change. In 1968, "change" meant the election of Richard Nixon, a vice-president between 1953 and 1961. In 1980, "change" was the arrival at the White House of Ronald Reagan, an astute repackaging of Barry Goldwater's ideas of 1964. In 1992, "change" allowed the bizarre texas millionaire H. Ross Perot to collect 19% of the popular vote but the Presidency went to Bill Clinton, who -confronted by a hostile Congress- never had a real chance of implementing his ideas. And today, it's not a given that "change" will deliver the White House to Barack Obama, a candidate not really battle-tested against the formidable Republican war machine.
In other words, Americans do crave for change, but their political system seems to be well insulated against it. Maybe we should start thinking less to the candidates and more to the structures that channel political aspirations and movements, or we may wake up on November 5 with the same feelings artfully described by Vachel Lindsay 112 years ago:

Election night at midnight:
Boy Bryan's defeat.
Defeat of western silver.
Defeat of the wheat.
Victory of letterfiles
And plutocrats in miles
With dollar signs upon their coats,
Diamond watchchains on their vests
And spats on their feet.
Victory of custodians,
Plymouth Rock,
And all that inbred landlord stock.
Victory of the neat.
Defeat of the aspen groves of Colorado valleys,
The blue bells of the Rockies,
And blue bonnets of old Texas,
By the Pittsburgh alleys.
Defeat of the alfalfa and the Mariposa lily.
Defeat of the Pacific and the long Mississippi.
Defeat of the young by the old and silly.
Defeat of tornadoes by the poison vats supreme.
Defeat of my boyhood, defeat of my dream.

(From: "Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan")

It's the economy, stupid!

Bill Clinton's "War Room" during the 1992 campaign had the poster "It's the economy, stupid!" prominently on display. It was the brainchild of James Carville, one of the most original, and successful, political consultants of the Nineties. This year, according to Rasmussen Reports, "The economy has emerged as a top voting issue for Election 2008," because "During the past week, consumer confidence fell to the lowest level of the post-9/11 era." It's no surprise that, facing the social catastrophe of millions of families that lost the homes in the subprime mortgages mess, "most Democrats believe that reducing the income gap between rich and poor is more important than creating economic growth." Are Clinton and Obama proposing anything substantial on this front?
The deep economic divisions inside the American electorate have been Jeffrey Stonecash's object of analysis for many years. Stonecash, who teaches at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, recently wrote Split, an important book about political trends in the USA. You can also read an interview with him here at America2008.

Money and Planning, or Message and Listening to the voters?

Primaries in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania are still weeks ahead, but newspapers are already publishing obituaries of Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign. The Christian Science Monitor writes that: "When the dust had settled after Super Tuesday, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton were locked in a dead heat for the Democratic presidential nomination. Since then, over the past two weeks, Senator Obama has gone on a tear, winning 10 straight primaries and caucuses, and forcing Senator Clinton's back to the wall. Obama now leads the former first lady by almost every conceivable measure – total delegates, total popular vote, national polls, and finances. What happened? On Clinton's part, her straits represent a massive failure of planning and organization, analysts say. Her campaign operated on the assumption she would have the nomination effectively locked up with the 22 contests on Feb. 5, and it spent accordingly. The lack of a Plan B has left her scrambling for cash and organizing late in the post-Super Tuesday contests." So, it was a technical problem, a defect of planning. Too bad that now it is too late.
While there is a kernel of truth in the analysis, all this remains within the boundaries of a mistaken vision of American elections. True, the know-how of electioneering is important, resources and planning are as important as they would be in a military campaign, but it is wrong to look at American elections as games of chess, baseball or football. The media love the format of competion, they crave for personal duels, and nothing excites the journalists pack more than candidates going mano a mano (the bizarre, faux-Italian, slang for "close combat").
This approach neglects the facts that voters, too, want to have their say. Public opinion remains less compliant that many would love it, and Political Communication is not yet an exact science. While the list of successes in manipulating citizens through skillfull propaganda is longer than the Mississippi river, sometimes the "handlers" of politicians fail miserably not because of a lack of professional skill but because they don't register with citizens' fears and hopes.
Clinton's mistake was not in the technicalities but in the central assumptions of her campaign: that experience was all important, that name recognition was a priceless asset, that the network of supporters hard-won before and after the White House years was a resource that could not be matched by Obama or Edwards. Unfortunately, in 2008 experience and name recognition are not central considerations in the minds of voters. Hillary should have looked to the polls that show how only TWELVE PER CENT of likely voter think that Congress is doing a good job, while FORTY-SIX think it's doing a poor job. Just 4% of Democrats believe the nation is better off today than it was four years ago, while 91% disagree. According to Rasmussen Reports, "Sixteen percent (16%) say the country is heading in the right direction while 78% disagree and say the United States is on the wrong track. These figures are slightly more pessimistic than they were in December. Women are more pessimistic than men." And what about the issues? 80% of voters think that the Economy is of top importance to them, a few points ahead of Government Ethics and Corruption, a top issue for 76% of Americans.
These numbers do tell a story: voters want change. Change in Iraq (two thirds want the troops home in a short time). Change in the "benign neglect" Congress and the President adopted toward the economy. Change in the "productivity" of institutions, paralyzed by special interests (a polite word for corporations' lobbysts).
All this explains McCain's and Obama's successes. Voters want to turn the page, and therefore rejected "experience" as an important qualification for candidates: Giuliani had experience in dealing with 9/11, and went nowhere. Romney had experience as a businessman and a governor, and voters snubbed him. Hillary Clinton had a lot of experience, and in fairness it appears that she has learned from it, but this is not the right year for the message.

This campaign is for the Democrats to lose

Only ONE state has switched sides in this map drawn according to the 2004 results: Ohio. That would be enough to give Democrats a majority.

As you may recall, a few days ago Marco Polo made a few calculations about the Electoral College (the machinery that assigned the Presidency FOUR TIMES to the losers since 1824). We predicted an easy majority of 273 votes for the Democratic candidate -whoever he or she is- and a possible majority of 298 Electoral Votes, throwing in two winnable swing states such as Nevada and Ohio.
Today, the much-respected Rasmussen Reports offered its evaluation: "If the Presidential election were held today, the Democratic candidate would be poised to win 284 Electoral Votes. That’s 14 more than the minimum needed to capture the White House. The Republican candidate could expect to win 216 Electoral Votes while 38 more would be in the Toss-up category." It appears that 284 is very close to the midpoint between our two forecasts, the low one of 273 and the high one of 298 Electoral Votes. Rasmussen gives as "winnable" by the Democrats even states like Virginia, where they won for the last time in 1964.
As everybody knows, the magic number to enter the White House is 270 (What will happen if each candidate gets 269 votes? Be the first to send the right answer and win our prize). A simple truth: in 2008, the campaign is for the Democrats to lose.

Castro resigns: Will the American Obsession with Him Fade?

It was 3AM in the US, last night, when Reuter broke the news that Fidel Castro has resigned, citing this letter to Granma website: "A mis entrañables compatriotas, que me hicieron el inmenso honor de elegirme en días recientes como miembro del Parlamento, en cuyo seno se deben adoptar acuerdos importantes para el destino de nuestra Revolución, les comunico que no aspiraré ni aceptaré- repito- no aspiraré ni aceptaré, el cargo de Presidente del Consejo de Estado y Comandante en Jefe."
It will be interesting to see, now, if the irrational obsession with him felt by all American Presidents from John Kennedy through George W. Bush will decline. Among international relations scholars, there is a consensus that the ailing Cuban regime has been kept alive by the US embargo, a powerful stabilyzing factor in the island. Unfortunately, American politicians have been kept hostage of the powerful Cuban community in Florida, the State that gave Bush the 25 votes in the Electoral College need to become President in 2000.
There are literally hundreds of book dealing with the CIA and Cuba, most of them of modest interest. One that had new material when published in 1994 was David Corn's Blond Ghost, while a more recent one is Dan Bohning's The Castro's Obsession. Corn write the first biography of Ted Shackley, who ran from Miami the inter-agency program to overthrow Castro in the early Sixties.
A more scholarly approach, focusing on the larger picture of the different path chosen by Canada, Mexico, and Spain toward Cuba (constructive engagement) is found in the book by Michele Zebich-Knos and Heather Nicol Foreign Policy Toward Cuba: isolation or engagement? The authors have assembled a group of scholars to describe the domestic causes and evaluate the international effects of these different approaches.

Election 2000: listening to the other side

Some readers have taken issue with the choices of books we proposed about the election of 2000 (see Election rigging in Harlem?). Basically, their complaint is that some publications that defended the Supreme Court decision Bush v. Gore didn't make the list.
While this Review makes no pretense of being a "balanced" forum (we strongly support progressive ideas, and fight conservative ideologies) we respect the canons of scientific discussion, and will try to convince those who held different opinions that we have good reasons to think what we think. In this particular case, we have no trouble in admitting that a couple of publications that offer serious arguments do exist. One is Richard Posner's book Breaking the Deadlock. Posner is a real conservative intellectual, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and one of the most influential American legal theorists. He has been too much controversial a personality to make to the Supreme Court, but half of the members of the Court today wouldn't qualify to be his clerks (to WHICH half of that body we think, we'll let you guess). In any event, his book should have been mentioned, and we apologize for not putting it on the list (not that we subscribe to a single paragraph of his conclusions, of course).
Another volume, this one a "balanced" book, is E. J. Dionne's and W. Kristol's Bush v. Gore. It offers journalistic commentary (Dionne is also a respected author of political essays, among them the brand-new Souled Out) but the book has value because it puts together the basics (various legal decisions, not only the last Supreme Court's per curiam opinion) and also a number of editorial stuff that offers a good deal of insight about the pundits' reasoning during those critical weeks.

Independents and Reagan Democrats: do they matter?

There is much talk, these days, on Independents and "Reagan Democrats," and about which of the potential candidates will have more appeal to them in November.
Apparently, the pundit class is not interested in looking more in depth into the issue, which has been throughly analyzed by political scientists and pollsters. One problem with the theory "You can win a Presidential Election only convincing the independents" is the fact that Karl Rove (above in a mock-photo, courtesy of About.com) won many an election doing precisely the opposite, that is polarizing the contest to the extreme. Jonathan Rauch of the National Journal, for example, points out that, "Bush-era Republicanism was all about suppressing the center and mobilizing the extremes, on the (correct) assumption that conservatives outnumber liberals. It worked, for a while, because of 9/11 and because the Democrats unwittingly cooperated. Forced to choose between the Republican Right and the Democratic Left, independents leaned Republican or just stayed home."
Rauch is correct in saying that "It worked, for a while," but this strategy is not a consequence of 9/11: it was advocated by Barry Goldwater as early as 1960, and put in action by Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan ran on the same platform of Goldwater in 1964, and won because a combination of different factors: the split in the Democratic traditional base after 1968, the hostages in Iran, the rallying to the conservative cause of a small number of intellectuals previously Democrats, and last but not least his personal appeal: it is well known that Americans liked the guy, much less his policies.
In the long run, however, the traditional support for the Democrats by workers and low-income families remained strong, as Larry Bartels of Princeton demonstrated. Contrary to the opinion of Thomas Frank in his much-hyped What's the Matter with Kansas?, Bartels maintains that less-fortunate Americans do vote Democratic, the problem is that they often don't vote in numbers large enough to win (here). It is well known that 90% of millionaires do vote, while individuals with an income under $30,000 often skip the ballot box (maybe, voting on Sunday, or making Election day a holiday would improve the turnout of those who must take 2 or 3 jobs just to stay afloat).
Therefore, a strategy that doesn't antagonize independent voters but counts primarily on the democratic base is perfectly reasonable. The trouble is that Democratic candidates really don't have an economic platform appealing to workers and low-income families: anybody is aware of Clinton's, or Obama's, proposals to save from catastrophy the millions of American families that lost, or are about to lose, their home in the subprime mess? Are they talking about reregulating the financial sector in any meaningful way? Obama is an inspiring orator, but platitudes about "change" will not rally displaced workers behind him in Ohio.
Politically, this year the situation in the field is this: a Democratic candidate not too weakened by a long battle in the primaries can easily win in November. It will need only to keep the blue States where John Kerry prevailed in 2004, and win in states like Iowa, Colorado and New Mexico (white or pink on the map): that would make 273 votes in the Electoral College. In Iowa and New Mexico a few thousand votes more (or, a few thousand votes LESS in the Republican column) will suffice. Colorado has been leaning Democratic in recent years, electing several smart politicians like governor Bill Ritter and senator Ken Salazar. For good measure, one can bet that Nevada and Ohio are winnable in 2008, creating a large majority in the Electoral College for a Democratic President who will have reinforced Democratic leaders in Congress (the party should pick some seats in the House and in the Senate as well).

Election rigging in Harlem?

Has the "example" of successful election rigging in Florida in November 2000 spread INSIDE the two parties? According to the New York Times in some precincts of Harlem not a single vote was cast for Barack Obama. That seems, well, difficult.
The investigation is under way, but the larger topic of the integrity of the elections in a federal system is not in the news. This is truly surprising, given the amount of literature created not only by the stolen election of 2000, but also by the strong suspicions cast over the critical results of Ohio in 2004, suspicions that are still alive today (see this). You can also find an analysis of various issues of 2004 presidential elections (in Italian) here.
Among the analysis of the Florida case, we recommend Jeffrey Tobin's Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election and Vincent Bugliosi's The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President Of course, those books were hardly alone: in a more scholarly fashion, the issue was tackled by Robert Watson (Counting Votes), Mark Whitman (Florida 2000: A Sourcebook on the Contested Presidential Election), Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Electing the President, 2000), Cass Sunstein and Richard Epstein (The Vote: Bush, Gore, and the Supreme Court), Jarvis's Bush v. Gore: The Fight for Florida's Vote, and, more important, Roy Saltman: The History and Politics of Voting Technology: In Quest of Integrity and Public Confidence. Saltman traces the evolution of voting technology, highlighting how the antiquated systems in use today are a legacy of the 1950s. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to disentangle the responsibilities of federal, state, and local authorities in monitoring and counting the votes. It would be even worse if the various factions inside the parties took advantage of these obsolete and undemocratic procedures to rig the primaries, too.

This week, you may want to read...

While political autobiographies usually are among the most despicable literary genres, as a service to our readers we shall point to three books "written" by the three main candidates to the nomination: Living History by Hillary Clinton, Dreams of My Father, by Barack Obama (I sogni di mio padre in Italian) and Worth The Fighting For by John McCain.
As for Hillary Clinton, a much better work is the in-depth biography by Carl Bernstein, the stubborn muckraker of Watergate fame, who left the "Washington Post" several years ago and has produced a nuanced portrait of the former First Lady: "A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton," now in paperback.
Of course, the phenomenon of the last two weeks has been senator Barack Obama, of whom you should read "Dreams of My Father," even if the book is much less charismatic than the author on stage.

McCain's book is interesting because it includes a chapter where he details how Karl Rove's dirty-tricks machine derailed his candidature in South Carolina eigth years ago. "Bush's brain" spread the slander that McCain had fathered an illegittimate child with a black prostitute, and that was enough for Republican voters to switch to Dubya in 2000. This year, trying to court the hardcore Republican base, McCain stated that he has only admiration for "Rove's political mind." Is this the truly independent candidate, the "maverick" of the Republican party?

Democracy and Culture

George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but in 2006 a National Geographic poll found that only 23 percent of those with some college education could locate Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia on a map. Today, almost half of 18- to 24-year-old Americans don’t think it is necessary to know where Iraq, Afghanistan, or other countries in the news are located. On February 12, a new book by Susan Jacoby hit the shelves, and the author finds a generalized hostility to knowledge in the US. She sees the dangers of that old habit. She fears that anti-intellectualism (“too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.

Not only are Americans ignorant about essential civic and scientific knowledge, but very often they don’t think it matters. Many a political scientist maintain that public opinion is, in the long run, perfectly rational even when citizens do not know which party controls Congress (for example, Page and Shapiro in The Rational Public). Is that really possible?
This has been an issue discussed since the Fifties, when Richard Hofstadter published his Anti-Intellectualism in American LIfe but it was revived in the Seventies by Neil Postman and, of course, helped to propel Allan Bloom's pamphlet The Closing of American Mind on the bestseller list.
Unfortunately, the discussion itself often is trivial: describing the You Tube video of brain-dead TV personality Kelly Pickler, as the New York Times did, doesn't make the debate advance of a single inch.
One should look not only at the appalling conditions of high education in the US, but at the reasons why no administration, no Congress, no governor, and no candidate this year, seems to consider that a national emergency. Only in 1957, scared by the launch of Soviet satellite Sputnik in the sky, the country reacted with a crash program to increase science education at every school level, and made an effort to have more engineers and mathematicians graduate from American universities. That was the Cold War, of course...

A Matter of Personality?

The campaign of 2008, as those in 2004 and 2000 seems to be dominated by the question: “Who are these men and this woman?” Notwithstanding their long record of public service, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain are engaged in refining the answer, offering the voters "new" and "better" insights on their own personality, sometimes tryng of "creating" a new one, as senator McCain does, pretending of having always been more conservative, and faithful to the party line, than he was.
Senator Barack Obama has the advantage of presenting a very short record, and therefore his image so far is "new" and appealing.
With the three candidates, spouses and children are prominently displayed, moments of devotion and prayer recorded by the cameras, hobbies and pets presented as evidence that the candidates are close to the common man. Better: that they ARE the common man, plus uncommon courage and determination. Who will be the most convincing performer is a matter for November 4th to reveal.
Albeit hardly new in American public life (one has only to think to the 1892 election of Grover Cleveland, or to Richard Nixon’s autodefense in TV, or to the Clinton-Lewinsky soap opera) the obsession for the private life of the politician has not been investigated in depth. It is often understood as a despicable result of the new role of the media, or of the rise of negative advertising. Here is a massive volume of 2003 that offers a large amount of scholarship useful to situate historically what Jean Bethke Elshtain called the “displacement of politics” in the US (Elshtain 1997, 166).
The book is "Public and Private in American History", edited by a group of Italian historians: Raffaella Baritono, Daria Frezza, Alessandra Lorini, Maurizio Vaudagna and Elisabetta Vezzosi.
The work was published by Otto, a publishing house based in Italy that produces texts in English, too.
The editors have collected an impressive number of essays, 27 in all, dealing with various topics, but the focus of the book is on the progressive erosion of the public-private dichotomy, a process that should be investigated in its historical development. Isaac Kramnick, for example, traces the now-forgotten origins of the Constitution as a “Godless document” (bitterly opposed by Anti-federalists) and argues that the Bush administration faith-based initiatives (not to mention photo opportunities of the cabinet meeting to pray) “are turning [James Madison] over in his grave” and that “Franklin, Jefferson and even Washington, would be appalled with all the God talk in American public life [today].” (Kramnick 2003: 29).
But how did we arrive where we are now? Alan Brinkley looks at "Public and Private in the Culture of the Sixties" (a timely essay, 40 years after 1968), Daria Frezza at "The Public Boundaries of the Private Sphere in the Discourse of Early Twentieth-Century Social Science", Raffaella Baritono at the reflections of women social scientistis in the Progressive era. The current confusion and pitiful state of the public discourse are the result of processes that developed over the entire Twentieth century, and accelerated after 1989. Weintraub: “While the public/private distinction is inherently problematic and often treacherous, frequently confusing and potentially misleading, it is also a powerful instrument of social analysis and moral reflection.” (Weintraub 1997: 38).
While one may regret the absence of essays dealing with the impact of the media on the issue discussed (with the exception of Maurizio Vaudagna’s piece about Roosevelt’s use of the radio), this volume is full of interesting contributions and will be useful to scholars and students alike in this year of elections.

Fabrizio Tonello


Baritono et al. (eds.), "Public and Private in American History. State, Family, Subjectivity in the Twentieth Century, OTTO: Turin, 2003".
Elshtain, J. B., "The displacement of politics", in: Weintraub-Kumar (eds.), pp. 166:181.
Kramnick, I. "A Moral Republic: Public and Private in the Political Thought of the Founders", in Baritono et al., pp. 13:30.
Weintraub-Kumar (eds.), "Public and Private in Thought and Practice", University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1997.
Weintraub, J., "The public/private distinction", in ib., pp. 1:42.