David Paul Kuhn and the Neglected Voter

Description: Kuhn discusses the drift of men from the Democratic Party to the GOP.

Question: What inspired you to write “The Neglected Voter”?

Transcript: I was inspired to write “The Neglected Voter: White Man and the Democratic Dilemma” because what I noticed in the 2004 race . . . presidential race was there was this glib mention of the NASCAR dad. So I actually took a look at the data, and what I was stunned to notice when you actually look at the exit polls and the polling going back to 1980 especially when the gender gap came onto the scene in 1980, the emphasis for almost a quarter century was on Democrats’ ability to win women and Republicans’ problems with women. But if you actually look at the polling – despite hundreds of stories, hundreds of political science papers, all the TV’s pieces on Democrats’ strengths with women – what actually occurred was that the Republican Party won men and the Democrats lost men. And that made the female quotient among the Democratic Party look stronger. So certainly the Democrats have remained strong with women, have gained strength with women, and particularly that Democrats are really in a great position today with women – regardless of whether Hillary Clinton wins a nomination or not. But what happened in 1980 as the crucial turning point with trends that began in ’68 and earlier is that absolutely clearly that the Democrats lost men. And the fact . . . The base fact behind the Republicans’ ability to win five of the last seven presidential elections it turned out, is that the Republicans won more men than they were losing women. So why? So that was the question. What was it the Republicans were doing to win men, yet not turn off women? What was this masculine appeal? And so I looked more at the data, and what I found going back to 1952 was that if you divide . . . 1948, excuse me . . . is that if you divide the income brackets between working class, middle class, and wealthy, the Democrats beginning in ’48 and most potently in ’68 and 1980 lost a quarter of working class white men. They lost a quarter of the Roosevelt Coalition while losing almost no women in the working class. In the middle class they lost about 19 percent of women, but they lost twice that amount of men. So the fact is the sundering of the Democratic majority was a story of men, and this was simply missed. It was simply told . . . gender gap was told only as if women were the only gender out there. And it’s not to say that the story of women in politics isn’t important. Of course it was. And of course as they suddenly became a majority of voters, their story became even more important. But that didn’t explain how the Republicans rose and came to dominate again five of the last seven elections. So with all that data in my head, I drove between the two presidential conventions. In 2004 I drove the whole country from coast to coast, stopping in all 19 swing states and just talking to hundreds if not thousands of voters one conversation after another. And it was in that journey that I noticed and encountered so many men who weren’t actually even in 2004 happy with Bush. They weren’t happy with the war in Iraq. They had misgivings, but they couldn’t even conceive of voting for a liberal. And all the . . . all the weight that would carry to them, and all that meant, and everything that John Kerry had come to symbolize to them. Because I remind you I was driving in August, and it was in that month that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads came out. So it was really a poignant moment really in American political history to drive the country and talk to people. And it was in that drive that I realized that it’s not just that the gender gap was misunderstood. It’s not just that the Republican majority came fundamentally from winning men from the Democratic Party. But it was also that there was something deeply American, and human, and sociological going on here with these men.

Question: Have the Democrats been emasculated? What defines masculinity?

Transcript: Yes, to some extent. Now that brings up, that raises flags among, like, feminists for example. I’m not saying that a man has to be president. And I’m not even saying that that we want our president to be John Wayne. And clearly that type of . . . the American conception of masculinity shifts with each decade; with each sort of trend. You know the movies that John Wayne made in the ‘ 50s would be like appalled like me . . . and I write about like masculinity. I care a lot about . . . they’re just . . . they are just absurd. There is this one movie where he drags a woman by her hair. So no one is saying that, you know, American presidents should be John Wayne. But as I put out in the book, if you take . . . if you go back to the presidents since the Democrats . . . since the Republicans cemented their majority, and the . . . I remind, and of course I’m keenly aware that we could be at the dusk of the Republican majority. We very likely are. But as I like to remind Democrats, that’s because of mistakes by the Republican Party. And those mistakes are not the making of a new majority. You have to come up with your own message and reconnect with the very voters you left behind. But to veer back to your basic question, if you look at the Democratic candidates for president going back, let’s say, to 1976, and you mold . . . let’s run through ‘em. Jimmy Carter, okay? Let’s keep going. Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry. Now take those Democrats and mold them into one man, okay? This is a mental exercise. Now go back to 1976 and take all the Republicans. So we have Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush. We continue on to Bob Dole. We continue then to George W. Bush. Now take all those Republicans and mold them into one man. And take. . . and try to forget . . . When you do these types of men, now try to forget, if you’re a liberal, all those things about those men that really you despise. And if you’re conservative, try to forget all those things about the liberals you really despise. But you have two types of men. And what do you have? You have really the traditional archetype of manhood, and the new man on the Democratic side. Now that is simplistic, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not true. And so why did that Republican man win? And Democrats always . . . so many in the liberal base look back and say, “Oh, we really won in 2000.” I believe they really won in 2000. I believe the election was taken from them. Let’s . . . It should have never been that close. Al Gore . . . That race should never have been that close. It should never have been able to happen, so that’s a Democratic mistake. You’ll hear people point out, “Oh, if they had shifted 70,000 votes in Ohio, Kerry would be president,” that doesn’t matter. You don’t build a new majority by hoping to eke out a presidential election. So absolutely, I am saying that the Democrat . . . Whatever it is, it’s clear that the Democrats were portraying a different conception of manhood than the Republicans. And it’s clear the Republicans won. Now it was not only on imagery. They had a message, and that message was based on policy and content, and that matters just as much. And now we come into the present at the . . . what is very likely dusk of the Republican majority, at a time when the Republicans are extremely weak and will very likely have John McCain as their nominee; which really is serendipitous for that party, though he faces great push back on the base. And we also are under the very real possibility that Hillary Rodham Clinton could be the Democratic nominee. And we’re certainly on unknown territory with a female candidate, but there are two facts that I always point out with Hillary Clinton – two or three. One is that Democrats have not won a majority of white women since 1964. So the Democrats’ problems with men transcended to many of their . . . I mean passed on to many of their wives. And there’s a deep . . . there’s reasons why they’ve had problems with White women. They have had won more white women than the Republican party, but they haven’t won a clear majority. They only won more White women than the Republican Party in 1996. So they didn’t even in 2000 or 2004. So Democrats, the problem is that they win a majority of women because they do so strong with minorities. And they win a . . . likely the plurality of white women. But that’s nowhere near enough to compensate for their failings with men. Because if you go back to the 2000 race, which was a very important race. It was pre-September 11th . It was a seminal race in many respects. The Democrats won women by two, three percent depending on the exit poll; but they lost men by like 27 percent. So they have such a white male gap with men. And that’s a key term, “white male gap”. They have such a white male gap with men that they have to overcompensate with women. And even with Hillary Rodham Clinton’s very real potential to galvanize the base of women, and to reach over to some independent women, all the polling of late shows that she has a lot of problems with men, and she will likely offset many of the men . . . many of her gains of women with men. And you’re gonna hear people say that it’s because these men are sexist, but there’s just no evidence for that. Because these men have had problems with Democrats for a long time, and those Democrats were white guys. So whether it’s Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton, the problems that these men have with the Democratic Party are far deeper than color and gender. Yet at the same time the Democratic party could ask for better turf, for better terrain to make an appeal to Independents, which are predominantly men; more likely to be men than women.

Recorded on: 2/5/08