United States Politics: ∆τ_i*ε*φ*m_i<0 where ε=4 and φ=0.25

[benji]

lol, 2003 article:

In the mature New Democratic theory, the crucial swing voters are suburban soccer moms and their spouses, the office park dads. Forget working-class Reagan Democrats, who represent the old politics and are declining in numbers anyway. Seek votes in affluent, educated, and tolerant suburbs-where voters conveniently want the government to create “private-sector economic opportunity” that will enrich the New Democrats’ business backers-while reaping the benefits of demographic growth among blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. As pollster Mark Penn puts it, Democrats “must develop a message and policy agenda that consolidates earlier gains among suburban women and minority voters while capturing a much larger percentage of suburban men.”

What were this message and agenda to be? The DLC did not lack for policies; beginning in the late eighties it had developed carefully thought-out plans that addressed real problems while avoiding offense to corporate interests. Focusing on the use of market mechanisms in the delivery of government services, it endorsed charter schools, managed-competition in health care, and a raft of smaller reforms. A communitarian strand of thought led to support for national service for young people. The ideas were worthy, but they were thin gruel. As attractive as some of the individual proposals might be, they were no more attractive to the New Democrats’ target voters than to anyone else, and they were hardly the inspiration of a movement.

...

But the politics of gun control contains hidden pitfalls. It can be argued plausibly that what offends control advocates is the gun owners as much as the guns. The movement is centered, after all, in affluent suburbs where armed criminals are rare. In the wealthy New York, Philadelphia, and Washington suburbs where voters are most exercised by the issue, insider trading is a more common felony than assault with a deadly weapon, and shutting down stockbrokers instead of gun dealers would yield a sharper reduction in the crime rate. What the fervor for gun control does is reinforce social distinctions between these neighborhoods and the more plebeian precincts where guns are common. It’s not hard to see why a deer hunter might think it has more to do with snobbery than public safety.

These overtones matter because the numbers still don’t add up for the new coalition. The recent Maryland gubernatorial election is a textbook example. Democratic candidate Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, running in a state about as demographically congenial as one could hope, followed the DLC recipe to a T. Her campaign focused heavily on gun control while avoiding any hint of populism. Unable in a state election to run as a foreign policy hawk, she did the next best thing by choosing a Republican admiral as her running mate.

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The Maryland election reveals another trap awaiting the New Democrats. Their strategy largely takes minorities for granted, relying on Republican racism and xenophobia to maintain high levels of Democratic support. But Republicans have read the demographic tea leaves, and they make no secret of their intention to cut into Democratic margins, especially among Asians and Hispanics. New Democrats are hard put to respond. Their economic conservatism precludes a pocketbook appeal to low-income voters; to maintain minority support they must fall back on explicitly racial issues. Thus, when Maryland Republicans signaled their openness to diversity by nominating an African American for lieutenant governor, Townsend could only counterattack by pointing to her opponent’s past voting record on civil rights. She wound up making racial preferences the sound bite of the campaign’s only debate.

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Unable to appeal to the common citizenship of all, they call on the seamier side of elite altruism, the sentiment of moral superiority over the benighted white working class.