Vanishing Republican Voter

I came across this most self-affirming article. It self affirms that I'm not crazy. When I graduated the in year 2000 I thought I stepped on the doorsteps of prosperity. I was first in my family to go to college. Sadly, what I faced was a downhill economic trend that made me really grateful I went to college but at the same time very disappointed. So this article, which has a most amusing title, is in fact a true analysis of a very real trend affecting me and most Americans: The Vanishing Republican Voter. Below is my own excerpt since the article is rather long and you may just want to get the gist.

The Vanishing Republican Voter
By DAVID FRUM
Published: September 5, 2008

Note: Sarcasm mine :)

"Since 2000, something has changed. Incomes at the middle have ceased to rise. (No really?) Between 2001 and 2008, the amount that employers paid for labor rose impressively, at least 25 percent. Yet almost all of that money was absorbed by the costs of health insurance, which doubled over the Bush years. (Tell me about it.) In the 1990s, thanks to the advent of H.M.O.’s, health-care costs rose more slowly, so more of the money paid by employers could flow to employees. Out of their flat-lining incomes, middle-class Americans have had to pay more for food, fuel, tuition and out-of-pocket health-care costs. (Damn shame!) In the past few months, they have suffered sharp tumbles in the value of their most important asset, their homes. (There's no place like home...) Their mood has turned bleak. Almost 70 percent disapprove of the policies of George W. Bush.

At intervals over the past two decades, Gallup has asked Americans whether the United States is a society divided into “haves” and “have-nots.” Back in 1988, more than 70 percent of Americans rejected this description. (LOL) This year, the country split evenly: 49-49. When asked, “Are you better off than you were five years ago?” only 41 percent of middle-class Americans say yes, the worst result since pollsters started asking the question half a century ago.

If health-insurance costs had risen 50 percent rather than 100 percent over the Bush years, middle-income voters would have enjoyed a pay raise instead of enduring wage stagnation. But it remains unfortunately true that the Republican Party as a whole regards health care as “not our issue” — and certainly less exciting than another round of tax reductions.

Republican economic management since 2001 has not yielded many benefits for middle-income America. Adjusting for inflation, the incomes of college graduates actually dropped by 5 percent between 2000 and 2004. (Im still paying back that school loan too... Argh...)

Leaving aside the District of Columbia, 7 of America’s 10 best-educated states are strongly “blue” in national politics, and the others (Colorado, New Hampshire and Virginia) have been trending blue. Of the 10 least-educated, only one (Nevada) is not reliably Republican. (Hmmmmm.....)

A big part of today's economics is also immigration. Immigration is good for America as a whole only because — and only to the extent that — it is bad for the poorest Americans. Conversely, low-skilled immigration enriches upper America, lowering the price of personal services like landscaping and restaurant meals. And by holding down wages, immigration makes the business investments of upper America more profitable.
Middle-class Americans surely share in the cost-lowering benefits of immigration. But the middle class also pays the higher local tax bills that can result from immigration. Immigrants do not qualify for many federal benefits, but they do use the roads, schools, hospitals and prisons supported by state and local property taxes — the taxes that fall most disproportionately on the middle class. (Yes, the article is referring to Latinos...)

The trend to inequality is real, it is large and it is transforming American society and the American electoral map. Yet the conservative response to this trend verges somewhere between the obsolete and the irrelevant. And so we arrive at a weird situation in which the party that identifies itself with markets, with business and with technology cannot win the votes of those who have prospered most from markets, from business and from technology."