Since 1980 white males have behaved as some minorities do: as a voting bloc. It’s America’s largest, casting some 37 million votes in 1988. Over the last three presidential elections, white males have voted for the Republican candidate by roughly a 2-1 margin. The numbers are especially startling in the South, where in 1988 seven in 10 white men voted for George Bush. Those voters were a bedrock of Thomas’s support. “He became a proxy for white males, as well as blacks,” says Alabama political scientist Natalie Davis. “Bush shored up his base with white males, and reached out for blacks at the same time.” Most key Southern Democrats stuck with Thomas for fear of offending white conservatives-and rural blacks-in their home states.
Even as some Democrats look for ways to exploit the anger of women, stoked by the Thomas confirmation, strategists know they can’t win in 1992 if the white male bloc remains intact. “We’re losers if we can’t eat into that Republican base among white males,” says Alabama-bred Frank Greer, a media adviser to Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. “We’ve been giving away too much of the electorate.”
America is divided into opposing camps of “political correctness.” One stresses legally enforced “fairness” and tolerance race, gender and sexual orientation. The other worships individual rights and “traditional” religion and family roles. White males, judging by their voting record, are overwhelmingly in the latter camp.
The clashing cultures can be plotted on a political weather map. High-pressure areas of “fairness” PC are in the Northern Yankee tier and the Northeastern media centers and on the West Coast. “Traditional” PC dominates in the South and newer suburbs elsewhere. Davis, a Democratic National Committee member, says that, in Alabama, “young white males,” 18 to 24 years old, identify with the Republican Party by a monolithic 9-1 margin.
A cottage industry has arisen in Washington to explain such numbers. In new books, authors Thomas and Mary Edsall (“Chain Reaction”) and Peter Brown (“Minority Party”) point squarely to race. They argue that the moving force today isn’t racial hatred per se. It’s white male fears that affirmative action will channel jobs to minorities and women. Census figures show that the median income of white males has declined since 1969. Minorities and women still make less money, but their income curves are rising. In Louisiana last weekend, there was strong evidence that economic fears had unleashed racial resentment that even Republicans can’t control. David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard turned unsanctioned Republican, won a place in next month’s gubernatorial runoff by appealing to white concerns about losing jobs to “them.”
Race and money are only part of the equation. In presidential elections, voters-men in particular–are drawn to candidates who project “strength,” says Elaine Kamarck, an analyst at the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank searching for ways to recapture lost Democrats. “The most important part of the job description, after all, is commander in chief.” In 1992 Republicans will emphasize how Bush has played that role.
But “strength” doesn’t just apply to military matters. “Male voters look for the ‘stronger’ candidate,” says GOP strategist Ed Rollins. “That translates into someone who will stand up and be tough in dealing with interest groups.” GOP strategists think the anger of women’s-rights activists will work in the GOP’s favor. The more Democratic candidates adopt feminist rhetoric, they say, the better for the Republicans. “The women’s groups are going to push the whole Democratic field farther to the left,” says GOP strategist Craig Shirley. Democratic insiders privately express a similar concern. “How can we show we’ll stand up to the next Saddam Hussein,” asks one, “if we can’t stand up to Betty Friedan?”
And now the Democrats may have to mount a new defense on their own most solid voter base, black voters. On the White House lawn last week Bush presided over Thomas’s oath-taking in a campaign-style ceremony. The audience was integrated, the message clear: welcome. Republican operatives think they see a win-win situation. They can secure black votes in the rural South, where Thomas’s story is especially evocative and born-again Christianity crosses color lines. They can offer Thomas as a signpost to lure black entrepreneurs and professionals. But even if Bush fails to win more black votes, he can push the Democrats to spend more time on black concerns, reinforcing the notion of a party beholden to interest groups. “It’s what we call in chess a “fork,” says a GOP insider. “Either way, they lose something. "
Part of the Democrats’ strategy for getting the white male vote is to play the game as rough as the president. Bill Carrick, an adviser to Sen. Bob Kerrey, vows there will be no more Democratic “weenie” campaigns. On economic issues, says Clinton adviser Greer, Democrats will speak to the traditional male role as “family provider”-and argue that the Reagan-Bush years have made it much harder to provide. Clinton and Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, as Southerners, invoke the language of the traditional PC culture. Kerrey, with his record of military valor, has his own route into the white male heartland. Jerry Brown, scheduled to announce candidacy this week, seeks to tap into anger with Washington. Joining many Republicans, he now favors legislative term limits.
But Republicans are plotting to wed voter disgust with Congress-over pay raises, bounced checks and the Thomas hearings–to a cultural attack on Washington itself. They will seek to portray the Democratic-controlled Congress as the epicenter of the thinking they believe white males abhor. Expect to hear about a Capitol Hill crawling with “radical feminists” and “liberals who tried to lynch Clarence Thomas,” predicts GOP strategist Shirley.
In other words, expect a campaign that will make 1988 look tame.
