Security, social issues trump identity politics
MIAMI -- The Spanish-language TV ads come fast and furious here, from a Republican spot comparing Osama bin Laden to Fidel Castro to a John F. Kerry commercial featuring a proud Latino family locked in poverty by President Bush's economic policies.
In Florida, with its powerful right-wing Cuban community, the Hispanic vote often favors Republicans, though Democrats plainly are hoping for a strong turnout of non-Cuban Hispanics to tip the election in their favor. One way or the other, this seesaw battle is being replicated in battleground states such as Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico. In those states, increased Latino registration is giving Democrats hope, while Republicans are counting on winning a far higher percentage of Hispanic votes than four years ago, when exit polls showed the president taking about a third.
As both parties have recognized, candidates in close elections need not win a particular bloc to seize an advantage -- they just have to do better than in previous tallies.
Such thinking is behind the Republicans' raising the specter of gay marriage in some black churches and the Democrats' efforts to portray Bush's toughened sanctions against Cuba as a wedge separating Cuban-Americans from their relatives on the island. It's also testimony to the great distance that the two parties have traveled over the past 20 years, transcending the identity politics that held sway from the 1960s until the 1980s.
Now, there's a cottage industry of writers such as New York Times columnist David Brooks, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, and The New Republic's John B. Judis who track various subgroups and their twisting passions: ''security moms" trending rightward, ''
But there's some truth to it: Rarely have both Republicans and Democrats been able to make such persuasive, though sharply contrasting, appeals to so many different pieces of the electorate.
Al From, the president of the Democratic Leadership Council, which was instrumental in pushing Bill Clinton and now Kerry toward centrist positions, points out that 20 years ago the Democratic platform sought to redistribute wealth to various disadvantaged groups; now it focuses on creating wealth for everyone. That change, as much as any over the past two decades, has freed voting blocs across the spectrum to switch parties, because voters' economic interests are no longer tied down by one party or the other.
From the New Deal of the '30s through the Great Society of the '60s, most voting blocs knew who was on their side. Democrats stitched together a coalition based on concern for the disadvantaged and promoted social programs aimed at helping them: welfare and food stamps for those in poverty, rural electrification and price supports for those in farming communities, Social Security and Medicare for the elderly, public housing and urban renewal for minority communities.
The Republicans were the party of wealth creation, trolling the Main Streets of America for the votes of small-business owners and the country clubs of the Northeast for professional people and corporate executives. Republicans' core appeal was that everyone would be better off with the nation's finances in order. Democrats directed their various new deals, fair deals, and square deals to people who felt they were on the wrong side of the card table.
Today, Democrats argue that Republican tax cuts are channeling money to the wealthy. If so, the outflow isn't visible to the middle class; middle-class taxes are also lower, too, albeit by a proportionally smaller amount, and the Democrats no longer have big programs to demonstrate what else could be done with the money.
A New York Times poll released yesterday indicated that families just floating above poverty -- earning between $15,000 and $29,000 -- favored Kerry by 57 percent to 40 percent. But the next rung up -- those earning between $30,000 and $49,000, including many blue-collar voters who were the backbone of the New Deal coalition -- are backing Bush by 55 percent to 41 percent.
No longer tied to the Democrats through unions or social programs, many of those voters almost certainly switched parties because of social issues.
Before the Reagan Revolution of the '80s, both parties were divided on issues such as abortion and feminism. Now, Democrats and Republicans split neatly on most social issues. And social issues push voters in different directions; blue-collar voters are more apt to support the Republican social positions, while many doctors and lawyers prefer the Democratic views.
With such polarizing issues on the table this year -- especially the heightened attention to national security -- many traditional blocs have splintered; people who used to vote alike are staring at each other without comprehension.
''I must have a split personality," mused Audrey Ordenes, 36, of Miami, as she stood in line for early voting. ''I have friends who are either very Republican or very Democratic. I don't know any undecideds."
They're in the same age group, of the same ethnic background, the same income range, and hail from the same place, but they're passionately casting votes in different directions.
This year, there are only two voting blocs: Democrats and Republicans.
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.
