An Old Democratic Fault Line

[marmar]

from The American Prospect:



An Old Democratic Fault Line

Beneath the profound novelties of this year's Democratic race lurk the same rifts that have characterized the party for 40 years. Breaking down New Hampshire's vote, the old divisions of class, and the sometime divisions of age, are plain to see.

Harold Meyerson | January 10, 2008 | web only



All 50 states hold elections, but only New Hampshire raises the dead. John McCain and Hillary Clinton, like Bill before her, have now been saved from political extinction by Granite State voters, who have managed in the process to set up a protracted contest for the Democratic presidential nod. (The Republicans were never going to avoid one.)

The battle in the Democratic Party features divisions that the world's oldest political party has never before experienced, just as it has never before seen candidates like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The gender gap, up to now a phenomenon that distinguished one party's supporters from the other's, has become a phenomenon that distinguishes one Democrat's supporters from another's.

But beneath the profound novelties of the Democratic race lurk the same rifts that have characterized the party's presidential contests for 40 years. Breaking down Tuesday's vote, the old divisions of class, and the sometime divisions of age, are plain to see. Like Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale and Al Gore before her, Clinton is winning downscale and older voters, and the support of party regulars. Like Eugene McCarthy, Gary Hart and Bill Bradley before him, Obama has the backing of more upscale and younger voters, and independents.

Obama carried the college towns. Clinton swamped him in working-class Manchester. Among voters who told the exit pollsters that they were getting ahead economically, Obama won 48 percent support and Clinton just 31 percent. But among voters who said they were falling behind economically -- and there were twice as many of those as the "getting aheads" -- Clinton led 43 percent to 33 percent. She led Obama among voters from union households, and she led among voters who said the economy was the most important issue -- which a plurality did.

Over the past week, Clinton showed a keen eye (not just a damp one) for the economically anxious. In Saturday's debate, she was the only candidate to bring up the sharply rising unemployment figures, and in one campaign stop after another, she waded into the weeds of proposals that would generate good jobs. Obama spoke brilliantly of changing history, Clinton prosaically but empathetically of providing employment. There was nothing prosaic, however, about her victory.

But it doesn't follow that because Humphrey, Mondale and Gore all won the nomination, Clinton should be favored, too. Obama, for one thing, is no McCarthy, Hart or Bradley. His ability to command African American support is obviously vastly greater than theirs. (Running against Mondale -- and Jesse Jackson -- in the 1984 Alabama primary, Hart actually won 0 percent of the black vote.) Obama's ability to inspire -- and to pull young voters to the polls -- exceeds that of his upscale-vote predecessors; it exceeds anything American politics has seen in a long time.

Moreover, Obama's appeal should be able to cross barriers of class as it has barriers of race. He was, after all, a community organizer on Chicago's South Side and has longtime fervent admirers among Illinois union leaders and activists. His election-night concession speech in New Hampshire came complete with references to South Carolina textile workers and Las Vegas hotel dishwashers, and with an English-language version of the old United Farm Workers battle cry: "Yes, we can" (" Si, se puede"). With each passing day, Obama incorporates more of John Edwards's attack on corporate power into his stump speech. (As does Clinton, who went after pharmaceutical and oil companies in her own election night speech.) In short, Obama clearly intends to contest Clinton for at least some of her working-class base. .....(more)

The complete piece is at; http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=an_old_democratic_fault_line

[Demeter]

1. The Age Line Is Phony; the Class Line is Fatal

A good candidate for the country is good for ALL age groups. If not, that's not a good candidate.

Anyone who wants to discriminate on economic class lines really belongs in the GOP. Get thee hence!

[OHdem10]

2. Age Line is there

Obama did well High School, College Students 20 somethings to 30 somethings

HRC --over 40s and up.

There is a good chance this contributed to turn out. The Boomers
said just a minute here, we ain't dead yet. We are going to be
heard too. We may not be ready to turn the page .We migh have some
unfinished business.

[SoxFan]

3. The Boomer Arrogance

This attitude drives those of us who are from Gen X, Gen Y, and whatever the hell we call the folks in the 18-25 crowd absolutely up a wall. I'm 40, so I came of age politically in the mid 1980s. For my entire more-or-less adult life, the dialogue has been driven and framed in the context of the early-vintage Boomer generation. Our views were never welcomed, and unless you were ready to kiss up to those who preceeded us, you were brushed aside.

Obama, while technically a tail-end Boomer, is not really a member of that generation. He was a grade schooler during 1968, a middle schooler during Watergate. His sensibility is that of the anti-ideological, pragmatic generation born in the 1960s and early 1970s. His message doesn't depend on the victimology and resentments of the Boomer generation. That's why it is so appealing to people like me, my siblings, and many of my friends in their 20s, 30s, and early 40s.