Mystery of the Missing Voter

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

The key statistic from the post below is a striking one indeed. Shakespeare's Sister points out that in 2004, the national median income was $35,100, while the median income of the electorate was $55,300. In other words, poor people are voting at a much lower rate than rich people. Then she cites Cernig's view that "they don't vote simply because neither Republicans nor Republican-Lites have policies that address their concerns!" There's some truth in this claim, but a lot more error.

Democrats support a bunch of policies that directly benefit poor people -- in particular, raising the minimum wage and expanding the EITC. Republicans, by contrast, push for cuts in all sorts of antipoverty spending, from Social Security to Section 8 housing vouchers to Medicaid to home heating assistance. When you add superior Democratic economic management, this all makes a difference -- the poverty rate fell from 15.1% to 11.3% over Clinton's two terms, and rose each year in Bush's time. We certainly could offer a lot more than we're offering, and I think we absolutely ought to. But the fact that poor people aren't coming out at the same rate as the rich and voting for Democratic policies that are clearly better for them makes me suspicious of claims that larding on more genuinely helpful initiatives will be enough to turn out more poor voters. I wish I could regard increases in antipoverty spending as a means to win elections, but barring some really special stuff (which I'll describe further down) I'll have to regard them merely as an end in themselves.

The problem is compounded by the fact that Democrats don't control the government, and have controlled it for only 2 years of the last 24. If we actually could pass some ambitious antipoverty policies like free health care for kids, we could make it immediately obvious to poor people that the Democrats are their friends. (Make no mistake, we tried real hard in our two years, with a plan for universal health care. And at midterm elections, we were completely crushed. O poor huddled masses, where were you?) When you're not in power, you just have to argue that your policies will be better. And then you're subject to the difficulties Nick points out:

They look at Kerry talking about his health care plan, they look at Bush talking about his health care plan, and in the rush of a few 90 minute debates, it can be very hard to tell the difference. So, they look at the personal qualities of the candidates, with the idea that those personal qualities will somehow reflect the behavior of the candidate once he's in office. Some voters are in fact looking at the candidate's views on abortion and gay marriage in that way.

I see two things we can do about this. First, we can offer antipoverty measures so bold and exciting that Republicans won't be able to offer an obfuscatory proposal with a similar name that can be confused with our awesome proposal. Given the awesome ability of Republicans to obfuscate and the total inability of the media to cut through their obfuscation, this is going to be a tall order. I really don't know how the obfuscation games will play out -- if we offer a plan that funds health care for all children, and the Republicans offer tax deductions for childrens' health care, will poor people know that our plan helps them a lot while the Republican plan does nothing for them? I hope so, because otherwise it's hard to see what we can do.

The second thing is to make sure we absolutely blow away the Republicans in the "personal qualities of the candidates" game. If we want to show that we are the party that will help poor people, it'd be great to have a candidate whose public persona and media profile are fundamentally associated with helping the poor. We need to nominate someone whose background and mannerisms don't set him apart from the voters we're trying to attract. The ability to give powerful speeches about income inequality would help too. Of course, the candidate should actually have a good set of policy proposals to deal with the issues -- some of which have a shot at overcoming obfuscatory Republican counterproposals. Where, o where, can we find such a candidate?