It has been about a week, and I can begin to think somewhat more rationally about all this. Kevin Drum, over at Washington Monthly, has a rough and dirty comparison of the 2004 exit polls over the 2000 exit polls, looking for actual evidience of where Bush picked up votes.
He argues that it wasn't the values thing at all, but the economy instead. While Kerry garnered 80% of the votes of those people who said that the economy was the most important voting issue, Bush got a big pile of votes from people who said the ecomomy was in good shape (though, presumably, not the most important voting issue). Hence, argues Drum, Bush won not because of values (which he argues was about a wash), but because he convinced more people that the country is in good shape economically (when most of the actual data says it really isn't all that good).
I'm not sure I buy this analysis. Drum has no actual data for "values" from 2000 (the question wasn't asked), so he is unable to have direct comparisons with the 2004 data. He may be right about Bush getting the vote of the people who think the economy is in good shape, but he fails to note what percentage of the electorate that is: if it is large, then that does explain Bush's win, but if it is relatively small, it doesn't. That's the key statistic for Drum, and it isn't in his post.
I think the underlying reason for Drum's argument is to continue to push for the Democrats to not move into the "values" camp, and to avoid fighting the Republicans on their own turf - to not turn the Democrats into Republican-lite. If you accept that as Drums motives, you can see the logic to the way he is (mis)reading the raw numbers.
Certainly the Democrats need to figure out why they have lost. But accurately finding out why is much more important for long term (2008) success than short term posts.
Posted by baltar at November 8, 2004 09:57 AM | TrackBack | Posted to PoliticsOf course we'd all do well to keep in mind in the post-mortems that what we're really trying to understand as what issues affected turnout, and what issues affected "swing" voters. Many people never vote, and many who do are loyal to their party or ideological inclinations come hell or high water.
The statistic that's really got me thinking is the switch in the movement in the seniors/elderly vote. That seems really rather large if it's accurate - I'd be interested in what was moving that bloc of voters.
Posted by: Armand at November 8, 2004 10:33 AM | PERMALINKHave you got a cite for the elderly/seniors voting switch? Data or something? I'd like to see that.
Posted by: baltar at November 8, 2004 12:55 PM | PERMALINKNo, I don't have any data. But the CNN poll says Bush won 54% of voters 60 and over - a 7% increase from 2000. That seems to me to be a pretty big swing in one quarter of the electorate and I'd be interested in see what moved that set of voters.
Posted by: Armand at November 8, 2004 01:01 PM | PERMALINKDon't know if you saw the piece in the WaPo this Sunday by Michael Kinsley, but I think he offered an important message that the democrats should not forget. The question of values is not just one of positioning, and there are values being pandered to that are entirely inconsistent with the liberty on which this nation-state was founded. Similarly, rushing to embrace the values of the Republicans does little to reassure those who are not Christian, and likely to be turned off by too much republican-lite behavior. Too little attention is given to this, likely because no one wants to be identified with non-Christian values (which, of course, is something else Kinsley points out - that you can't be dominant and claim to be oppressed) as Christianity dominates in the US (various estimates range upwards of 75%). If the GOP is the party of Christ, then someone has to stand up for everyone else (even if they are only 25% of the population). From Kinsley:
So, yes, okay, fine. I'm a terrible person -- barely a person at all, really, and certainly not a real American -- because I voted for the losing candidate on Tuesday. If you insist -- and you do -- I will rethink my fundamental beliefs from scratch because they are shared by only 47 percent of the electorate.
And please let me, or any other liberal, know if there is anything else we can do to abase ourselves. Abandon our core values? Pander to yours? Not a problem. Happy to do it. Anything, anything at all, to stop this shower of helpful advice.
There's just one little request I have. If it's not too much trouble, of course. Call me profoundly misguided if you want. Call me immoral if you must. But could you please stop calling me arrogant and elitist?
I mean, look at it this way. (If you don't mind, that is.) It's true that people on my side of the divide want to live in a society where women are free to choose abortion and where gay relationships have full civil equality with straight ones. And you want to live in a society where the opposite is true. These are some of those conflicting values everyone is talking about. But at least my values -- as deplorable as I'm sure they are -- don't involve any direct imposition on you. We don't want to force you to have an abortion or to marry someone of the same gender, whereas you do want to close out those possibilities for us. Which is more arrogant?
We on my side of the great divide don't, for the most part, believe that our values are direct orders from God. We don't claim that they are immutable and beyond argument. We are, if anything, crippled by reason and open-mindedness, by a desire to persuade rather than insist. Which philosophy is more elitist? Which is more contemptuous of people who disagree?Posted by: binky at November 8, 2004 01:12 PM | PERMALINK