Chief among Krugman’s problems is his (strange) reliance upon a political scientist (Bartels) who represents a minority opinion pertaining to the voting habits of “working-class” whites. Among other errors, Bartels confuses the working-class with the (mostly non-working or under-employed) poor, and then proceeds to build an argument from this shaky foundation. As the poorest members of society continue to vote Democratic, Bartels rejects the argument that working-class voters throughout the nation have abandoned the democratic party, and Krugman has improbably signed on.

But as any number of research studies have shown, in almost every part of the country whites (except the very poor) have trended Republican for many years — with the exception of Clinton’s re-election victory. One could argue that wealthy whites have started voting more Republican, except they haven’t (their voting patterns seem to be pretty consistently Republican over the years) and there are not enough of them to explain why Republicans keep winning.

The established and majority opinion of political scientists is that an increasing number of non-union working-class whites have trended Republican since the 60’s. For whatever reason Krugman wants to propose a mono-causal explanation (southern whites are racist) that is simplistic, unscientific, and politically damaging to the Democratic Party.

I do however disagree that “the question is whether, today, one party or the other is more interested in alleviating poverty…” The Democrat Party has been pouring money into anti-poverty programs for decades and yet we have the same problems today that we had prior to the “War on Poverty”. If the Democrats really want to alleviate poverty, you would think that after almost 50 years they would be willing to consider trying a new approach.

Personally, I don’t think the Democrat Party wants to truly alleviate poverty because it is a major source of political power for the left. I don’t believe that your average, everyday Democrat thinks this way. I do, however, believe that there is an unspoken understanding in the inner circles of the party that the welfare state provides a permanent source of political power. Alleviating poverty is not the goal, the goal is to sustaining it and to maintain the institutions that feed into it.

The real question should be “How do we deal with this issue?” There are a wide range of ideological perspectives on this question. Accusing those who disagree with you of being racist is nothing but an attempt to silence opposing views.

I think it’s pretty hard to assert real similarity between the reconstruction era republicans and democrats and the present-day parties.

Still, go back and look at the party politics of reconstruction in the 1860s and 1870s more carefully. There were republican reconstruction governments in plenty of southern states. The process whereby northern republicans decided to give up on radical reconstruction and leave politically active black southerners to their fate at the hands of a bitter, defeated white population is tragic, but also pretty well documented. the democrats certainly became, over the 1870s, the dominant political party again in the south, and certainly enforced the existence of a black–but also white–share-cropping underclass.

the civil rights movement happened in spite of, not as a result of, southern elected officials of either party.

i guess the main point here isn’t all this historical debating, though it is important.

the main point is that state intervention in the economy does not equal socialism or communism, neither of which is the same thing as the soviet union. if you want to be philosophical about it, i’d say that the free market is an abstraction that could never exist in a world that always already has inequalities of material and position to overcome–this is the weight of history. given that the world isn’t fair, how do we reduce human suffering within it? sometimes we do it by allowing private enterprise to do its thing, and sometimes we don’t. but there’s a real decision there to make, always depending on circumstance.

Back then, in the South, the Democrat Party WAS the government. African-Americans who tried to enter the political arena had no choice but to try to become involved with the Democrat Party because there simply was no alternative. African-Americans, because of the influence they imparted, eventually changed the face of the Democrat Party in the South. Unfortunately, this change coincided with the rise of Leftism in America during the 1960s that poisoned the hearts and minds of all too many.

Today, there is a blurring between the rise of African-American political power and the rise of Leftist propaganda in American political life. Leftists and African-Americans both view their political power as bound to each other’s fate. Anyone who opposes socialism or communism are automatically cast as racist. This is wrong and intellectually puerile.

100 years ago voting was restricted across much of the US by race and, let us not forget, income. this was done both officially by government institutions and unofficially by ‘citizens’ acting on their own initiative. by the latter, i mean lynching. African-Americans were regularly tortured to death in public by white mobs–this was technically illegal, but more or less commonly accepted practice. LEGAL means for excluding certain classes of citizens from their right to vote (poll taxes and grandfather clauses, for instance) ended fewer than 50 years ago. this is not so long ago.

What concerns me is Republican party activists that will fight to deny women a decision about their own reproductive health, while at the same time cutting adoption, WIC, and children’s health care programs.

Jesus has been a Republican hood ornament too long. I encourage folks to embrace the vision of Jesus, and act accordingly.

sturner, I do not think this is a coincidence at all. The American Left has been creating a dependent underclass in America for the past 100 years because you guys think minorities are incapable of achieving success unless “White America” gives them a helping hand. The sad thing is that the left has created this dependent underclass for the sole purpose of manipulating them at the polls.

Also, it is a fact that the states with the highest percentage of African-American residents have the most resistance to welfare spending.

Do you suppose that is a coincidence?