Angry? No, Just Dumb

By Doug Thompson

David Paul Kuhn is chief political correspondent for RealClearPolitics. He looked at recent polls that show President Obama and Congressional Democrats tanking among white male voters. In a column for the Los Angeles Times, he writes:

“In 1994, liberals tried to explain their thinning ranks by casting aspersions on the white men who were fleeing, and the media took up the cry. The term ‘angry white male’ or ‘angry white men’ was mentioned 37 times in English-language news media contained in the Nexis database between 1980 and the 1994 election. In the following year, the phrases appear 2,306 times.”

That, you may recall, was the election in which the Democrats lost their majority in both chambers of Congress for the first time in decades.

If the Democrats lose a lot of seats in 2010, expect more of the same.

White male America isn’t angry. It just isn’t stupid.

It doesn’t take a lot of brains to figure out that Obama wasn’t getting to white guy voters in Pennsylvania and Indiana until the economy tanked. Then they turned to him.

Now, Kuhn has summed up the situation as well as anybody can:

“Think about the average working man. He has already seen financial bailouts for the rich folks above him. Now he sees a health care bailout for the poor folks below him. Big government represents lots of costs and little gain.”

Bingo.

I’m not ready to make “Joe the Plumber” anybody’s running mate, but when your party’s lost a major demographic — only 35 percent of white men who vote plan on voting Democratic in the mid-term elections — it’s time to ask if maybe you should be doing something different.

Yeah, white guys ran the country too long. Arguably, they ran the country into the ground with the Iraq War, tax cuts and the untrammeled boyish greed of Wall Street. Still, remember Howard Dean? Remember when he said he wanted guys who drove pick-ups to vote for him? What, exactly, was wrong with that?

What, exactly, is wrong with this: If elected, I won’t foul things up. I won’t go to war without a good reason. I won’t pass anything we can’t afford. For instance, we’ve got to do something about health care because it’s eating our lunch. Medical inflation is running at twice the rate of inflation of everything else and we’ve got to get control of that. I won’t tap your phone and I won’t torture anybody.

Any of that makes me happy. I’m not a spokesman for white guy America, or even old white guy America, but I don’t want much. All I want is a president and a Congress that will stop digging.

Anyway; I’m tired of this topic. On to something else. Let’s see, what other favorite whipping boy do I have? Oh yeah, good old Sony Corp.

The PSP’s market share of the hand-held gaming software market went from 19 percent to 11 percent over the past year, thanks to the iPhone, according to the Tom’s Hardware Web site.

Poor Sony; Those guys just can’t catch a break.

Wow. The president, his party and Sony games all in one column. This is like Doug’s golden oldies or something.

A poll: That’s what’s missing, I haven’t mentioned a poll yet, or political analyst Charlie Cook.

Democratic pollster Peter Hart and Republican pollster Bill McInturff recently asked, “In general, do you think that it is better for the same political party to control both the Congress and the presidency so they can work together more closely, or do you think it is better to have different political parties controlling the Congress and the presidency to prevent either one from going too far?”

Of registered voters, 31 percent preferred one-party rule. That includes those who preferred Democrats and those who preferred Republicans, so event that number is split.

As Charlie Cook put it: “A whopping 61 percent of all adults and 60 percent of registered voters opted for divided government.”

Bingo again. Let these losers police each other. No more one-party rule — by anyone.