McCain-Palin, Obama, and Romney: Considering the Working-Class Vote

I have been somewhat critical of Republicans in the early history of this blog, so it may seem natural that I am an Obama voter.

Actually, however, I voted for McCain in 2008, despite my low estimation of his conservative principles, and my long-hold disgust with his tendency toward geopolitical war-mongering with Russia and other allies.

Why?

My vote, counted in a state with little chance of a Republican victory, was cast out of a desire to express solidarity with Palin and her broader constituency (outlined nicely in an Ape Man at Ethereal Land post, himself a member of working class rural America albeit one with an extensive knowledge of Spinoza). Indeed, I felt nothing but contempt for bigoted lynching of Palin’s personal life and depiction of her as too stupid for office (as a disclosure I have significant family connections with Alaska).


As Palin’s national career has progressed, it has become clear that she is not a great candidate for political leadership, probably because she seems to prefer a normal life to one in pursuit of power. However, I am continually distraught by the classist assumption that if one comes from a rural, non-rich background, or lacks an elite pedigree or talks in a way deviating from classic or upper-class American normalcy (more Minnesotan than Alaskan in Palin’s case), than one is unfit for office. Indeed, Palin, far from the dunce portrayed by the drama major Tina Fey, has a talent for speech delivery matching or exceeding that of Obama.

The reaction of a certain strand of American life to Palin, omnipresent in the media but not the public writ large or even Blue States, who have their fair share of non-educated working class whites, revealed that hate-fueled class discrimination against the white rural working-class is alive and well in 21st century America, so much so that someone identifying with this class will be painted as a troglodyte. A popular Facebook group of the time, populated with clueless high-school and college students without any leadership experience, stated “I [the member] have more foreign policy experience than Sarah Palin.” This clearly begs the unarticulated questions: What does that mean about Obama’s limited international experience – is he to be instructed by the bumbling Biden? What about Clinton’s foreign policy record before the presidency? Is no governor qualified for the presidency? I was most distraught about the episode because it revealed that our elites’ fantasy is to transform American democracy into a mirror of rigid European class hierarchy, in which only the intelligentsia is allowed to be considered for power.

However, in opposite to the disillusioned 2008 Obama supporter, I am probably going to vote for the incumbent this time around, despite the rather dismal economic track record of the past four years.

Why?

Romney has clearly been an elite since birth, and doesn’t even have the sense to mask it with a false persona like George W. Bush did. He made his fortune in the most blue-blood, insider of all American industries, the indefensible private-equity cabal. It seems he has nothing but contempt for the white, working poor who indeed make up much of the 47% he derides. If you get into policy specifics – difficult as he is so vague it is hard to pin him down – it seems that, like Obama, he derives his views from a cadre of elite academic advisors that are, if possible, even more misguided than their liberal counterparts. One only has to read Glen Hubbard’s partner blog – Romney’s key economic advisor -- to see pure deficit hysteria in action: http://balanceofeconomics.com/ I fear for the country if these men take Geither’s seat at the table, and I am no fan of Geither.

In contrast, Obama has an interesting relationship with the white, working poor, as Ape-Man notes, in that it is rare for someone with a Harvard degree to attempt to see more than irrational stupidity as driving conservative values among the white-working class (see What’s the Matter with Kansas for this). His famous “guns and religion” quote, if examined closely in context, was actually an attempt to prompt Bay area elitists to sympathize with the rural, white poor voter whose economic condition has been decimated by the fall of US manufacturing. Indeed, where the San Francisco audience he was speaking to likely saw (and sees) rural white Ohio voters as hopeless rubes swindled by Republicans, Obama correctly identifies the lack of economic help from either party that causes them to choose values as an election decision criteria. Indeed, I think the following paragraphs from his defense of this quote are worth quoting at length:

“But I will never walk away from the larger point that I was trying to make. For the last several decades, people in small towns and cities and rural areas all across this country have seen globalization change the rules of the game on them. When I began my career as an organizer on the South Side of Chicago, I saw what happens when the local steel mill shuts its doors and moves overseas. You don't just lose the jobs in the mill, you start losing jobs and businesses throughout the community. The streets are emptier. The schools suffer.

I saw it during my campaign for the Senate in Illinois when I'd talk to union guys who had worked at the local Maytag plant for twenty, thirty years before being laid off at fifty-five years old when it picked up and moved to Mexico; and they had no idea what they're going to do without the paycheck or the pension that they counted on. One man didn't even know if he'd be able to afford the liver transplant his son needed now that his health care was gone.

I've heard these stories almost every day during this campaign, whether it was in Iowa or Ohio or Pennsylvania. And the people I've met have also told me that every year, in every election, politicians come to their towns, and they tell them what they want to hear, and they make big promises, and then they go back to Washington when the campaign's over, and nothing changes. There's no plan to address the downside of globalization. We don't do anything about the skyrocketing cost of health care or college or those disappearing pensions. Instead of fighting to replace jobs that aren't coming back, Washington ends up fighting over the latest distraction of the week.

And after years and years and years of this, a lot of people in this country have become cynical about what government can do to improve their lives. They are angry and frustrated with their leaders for not listening to them; for not fighting for them; for not always telling them the truth. And yes, they are bitter about that.”

Here, Obama identifies what’s lost in utility-maximization arguments in support of free-trade: a job or employer in a community can produce much greater psychological value than even raising absolute levels of consumption (seen in endless bundles of cheap, purposeless goods and services available at Wal-mart, affordable even for those on unemployment or inadequately employed.) We nearly all may be richer in real terms in America thanks to globalization, but, as Obama emphasizes, communities and personal experience nonetheless can degrade significantly without employment (and mass unemployment since 2008 has only heightened this critique).

So what did Obama do to confront the Great Recession, which has further decimated rural income, job numbers, and migration to the city? Did he change the Washington equation? Not as far as I can see. In 2009, he imported Summers and Geither as his economic team, who promptly increased the bailout of Wall St. covertly, further enriching insiders through the PPIP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-Private_Investment_Program) – after all, we must save the banks to save the economy! They have done little to nothing that I am aware of to counteract globalization, and their central legislation was a mostly useless stimulus package that targeted income through slow, shovel-ready projects to government insiders while giving a pittance of support to indebted working-class families.

Now, you could argue that the Affordable Care Act is Obama’s one contribution to working-class America, with its expansion of Medicaid and provision of premium subsidies to lower income workers. If you take a look at it though, the touted subsidies will still not be very high for what are really fairly low income brackets.

Say for example I am a single adult earning $30,000 in income annually in a medium cost region. My premium will be $6,978 of which the government will cover $4470; the remaining total will still eat up ~8.4% of annual income. To put this in perspective, if my salary was $200,000 this would be an almost $17,000 single coverage premium in terms of equivalent percent of income.

Moreover, the provisions to combat medical inflation among private plans are mild at best, more likely toothless and fanciful in practice as they rely on curbing the 30% of wasted medical care spending perhaps proved by the Dartmouth (but with considerable questions). While 30% may be wasted, I do not see anything in the ACA to transform American healthcare to a well-oiled machine through use of HMO like Accountable Care Organizations alone. I only see medical inflation cooling if continual income falling prompts less health spending.

So in some ways the law only codifies and extends what will likely be an increasing private insurance healthcare burden on lower-wage American workers. The key flaw underlying flaw in the ACA is that it was explicitly crafted to be “budget neutral” over a ten year stretch thanks to an antiquated, gold-standard notions of government solvency. Unfortunately, now that Robert’s decision has opened up the door for states to decide whether to expand Medicaid to poor childless adults, we will likely see a truly unfortunate system in which childless adults in some states who earn under 133% of the federal poverty line will not qualify for any healthcare support while those 133-400% will.

Thus, despite trying to understand poor white America, Obama has done little to help them, aside from “Obamcare” which promises mixed results, although I suppose it is a game-changer in ways both good and bad. However, where Obama has only paid lip-service to deficit reduction, Romeny’s economic team seems fully bought into a reducing deficits, increasing prosperity mindset, so I think he is likely to be more harmful for the economy if elected, even if does not have the legislative support to repeal Obamacare, “reform” Medicare, or other plans. (Interestingly, he also seems lack no temerity in exploiting Obamacare antipathy among the public, strange given his pioneering efforts in Massachusetts. I suppose this calls his character into question.)

In the end, I will likely vote for Obama after snubbing him in the historic 2008 election. I sometimes wonder if he ever gives thoughts to fielding heterodox policy prescriptions in search of a solution to solve our mass unemployment problem, magnified in the youth and minority constitutes who make up much of his constituency. Or perhaps his presidential stature has removed him completely from the problem at hand. It will be interesting to see what happens to his first-term caution if he wins lame-duck status.