It’s a truism in American politics that President Obama has a hard time appealing to white working-class voters, the assumption being that whether you support or oppose the president is a function of race and class (and, to a lesser degree, geography, since Southerners are less likely to vote for Obama).
But this demographic view of voting behavior, while not entirely wrong, fails to capture the nature of support for Obama among whites, and misses a crucial dynamic among the electorate more broadly. To a large extent, it is not class or education that explains political preferences. It is personality; specifically, the degree to which white voters believe in order and hierarchy. In fact, it turns out that plenty of less well-educated whites who tolerate ambiguity and disdain hierarchy are highly supportive of the president. Conversely, many well-off, college-educated whites who dislike ambiguity and embrace hierarchy oppose the president.
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2 comments:
Makes no sense because well-off, college-educated whites over whelmingly support the president
Weiler's thinking has always been short of facts and long on hope. He's projecting more of his own prejudices than actually developing a cogent thesis on the body politic.
He completely leaves out the classical and historical debates of ordered liberty vs libertineism (and its modern nihilistic/dsytopic cohorts), individual rights vs group rights, and the tensions of enumerated, implied, resulting and inherent powers.
All of these debates and arguments intertwine for a much more nuanced explanation that Weiler provides, or chooses to see.
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