Fit To Print

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

April 23rd, 2008

Paul Krugman had an excellent op-ed in the Times last week about Obama’s comments in San Francisco. Krugman discusses whether the argument Barack was making — basically, Thomas Frank’s argument from What’s the Matter With Kansas — is correct.

Frank’s thesis states that a lot of low-income voters vote against their economic interests to vote on things like God and guns. The data runs somewhat contrary to this, suggesting that low-income voters have, if anything, trended Democratic since the 1960s, and while religious voters are more likely to be Republican, that correlation is actually stronger among more affluent voters. Frank’s book provided a great snapshot of middle America, with some broad conclusions that were either inaccurate or have a narrower scope of application than he implied.

Chiming in on Obama’s remarks, Kevin Drum sums it up nicely: “Trying to reduce America’s cultural schisms to mere symptoms of economic frustration just won’t work.”

So just as Barack can address uncomfortable truths with an eloquence and sincerity that few can match, he can sometimes oversimplify causality to avoid these uncomfortable truths. He has trouble in this case because while a lot of his better policy ideas will have a trickle down effect on small towns in middle America, his economic plan addressing the meat and potatoes issues of these areas — job creation, job security, home foreclosures and healthcare — are decent but don’t do enough.

Furthermore, while he can rail against NAFTA and outsourcing; with regards to globalization, that train has sailed, to quote Austin Powers. We aren’t going to repeal NAFTA, and we aren’t going to get back the quality factory jobs we lost to improved technology and cheap foreign labor. We have a changing economy that has left a good part of America behind, and while I believe Obama offers the best chance for helping out those folks, we haven’t really figured out all the ways we‘re going to do that. So voting for Obama requires a leap of faith from them. And based on the track record of politicians and their promises over the last billion years, who can blame voters if they remain a bit skeptical.

So all of that is true, but I don’t see what it changes. Refuting off-the-cuff remarks that don’t accurately encapsulate Obama’s thinking on the issue ignores the broader observation that Obama is trying to explain the world to voters, while Hillary Clinton and Long John McCain don‘t trust them with that information. Now, if Obama just doesn’t understand the world, or is merely better at pretending he’s being sincere, then that is a problem. And that is what dear Krugman is worried about. And I am too. But I don’t think criticism of Thomas Frank is the lens under which Obama will be revealed as a misguided phony.

Entry Filed under: Politics