As President Bush's polling numbers falter, Democrats are beginning to
salivate over the prospect of winning the November elections. So
everyone is asking, what is the demographic group that holds the key to
election success?
The answer: white men, who represent a whooping 45 million of the total
U.S. electorate.
Back in 1976, Jimmy Carter attracted a majority of white male voters to
seal his underdog Presidential bid. But around that time, the Democratic
Party began to view women as one of its core constituencies, and to
define women's needs through the lens of radical feminism. Not
surprisingly, white men began to abandon the Democratic party in droves.
So by the time the 2000 elections rolled around, only 36% of white men
voted for Al Gore, compared to an impressive 60% for George W. Bush. To
Democratic pollsters like Celinda Lake, that was a demographic disaster.
During the 2002 mid-term elections, white men came through again,
handing Republicans control of the Senate.
So now Ms. Lake is arguing the Democrats will never win the White House
unless they begin to reach out to the massive voting group she has
dubbed the NASCAR Dads. Indeed, the male gender gap has become so
worrisome that the liberal New York Times recently ran an article
offering advice on how to rev up the NASCAR vote.
But the jocular tone of the article, "Yes, Democrats Can Win (Some)
White Male Voters," betrays the fact that the Democratic establishment
has no intention of taking the concerns of white men seriously. Donna
Brazile, Al Gore's former campaign manager, says breezily about Kerry's
efforts to connect with this group, "The only thing he hasn't done is
sit down with a six-pack and chew tobacco with them."
Brazile further confirms how clueless the Democrats are when she makes
this pronouncement: "White males, especially working class males, care
about their jobs, and they care about things like health care."
That statement is about as profound as saying that mothers care about
their babies. That's because Brazile fails to explain why millions of
men have fled the Democratic Party since 1976.
If the Democrats really want to attract the white male vote, they will
need to overcome two major hurdles:
First, white men are likely to be the primary breadwinners for their
families. They view higher taxes as an obstacle to their ability to be
good providers. An ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 70% of men
favored smaller government, but only 48% of women believed the same way.
So men are far more likely to view big government as part of the
problem, not the solution.
Second, men (and many women, as well) have grown tired of the Democrats'
endless pandering to female voters. On his website, candidate
John Kerry
promises, "As president, I will put American government and our legal
system back on the side of women."
Really, it is doubtful that there is anyone left who truly believes the
U.S. government is NOT on the side of women.
The fact that the Kerry campaign would run these canards reveals an
unsettling truth - that in order to win the female vote, Kerry believes
that he needs to continually nurture women's sense of grievance and
victimization. Is that John Kerry's concept of female empowerment?
True, Kerry has begun to appear in photo-ops attired in full hunting
regalia, thinking that will get him in good with the redneck crowd. But
how many millionaire preppies who hail from Massachusetts know the
difference between a shotgun and a pea-shooter?
Despite all the consciousness-raising by Celinda Lake, the Democrats
have made no headway in bringing white men back into the fold. According
to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, John Kerry is stuck with
exactly the same numbers as Al Gore: 36% of the white male electorate.
That's why it looks like history is going to repeat itself on Tuesday,
November the second.
