Jeff, thanks for this. The more complete point of this is that region has a big impact on how people vote. You will notice that the press still thinks that Obama should pick someone for VP who is either Hillary or someone from the South or rust belt because how else is he going to win those down scale voters. Even if they admit on the one hand that Obama won those same voters in Vermont and Oregon, they still don't really beleive it or they wouldn't think the way they do on the VP slot because they live in Washington DC which is in the South and next to the rust belt. They see from where they reside.

The alternative view is for Obama to win the west with a VP from the west and not chase West Virginia and Kentucky. The DP convention is in Colorado for that reason, but it hasn't sunk in to the TV talkers.

Vico, he actually won all income categories in Oregon except <$15k. In states he won, that is typical. He has done a good job in many working-class districts across the country, but you're right, the "elite" meme is going to be played often by the GOP. Elite? [cough] Cindy McCain's millions [cough].

From pollster.com's Mark Blumenthal:

Incidentally, in Oregon, where all votes are cast by mail,** the survey conducted by the networks is not technically an "exit" poll. They conduct supplemental surveys by telephone in the days leading up to the election in many states with significant early voting (such as North Carolina, Texas and California). They ask the same questions by telephone that voters get on "exit" poll questionnaires administered at polling places. In Oregon, however, all interviews have been done by telephone.

So now you know.

Jeff

You're making the same mistake Bill Clinton did--assuming white middle and lower income voters in Oregon are the same white working class voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, West Virginia.

I don't think they are. What yesterday's results tell us is that a young, dynamic, new Democrat can do extremely well in Oregon when pitted against a candidate who essentially runs an inside the Beltway candidacy of yesteryear (or yester-decade).

I really think you are reading far, far too much into Obama's victory here, and completely discounting how incredibly poorly he did in WV and KY.

Just a factual point--you've made a lot in the last couple of postings about Oregon's income and unemployment levels as a way to cast us as a working class state.

Is this really true? Do we have a larger percentage of lower income individuals in service occupations vs. traditional working class occupations compared to, say, PA or OH?

I suspect the answer is "yes" which again undercuts the ability to compare OR results to other states.

Paul, the point of the twin posts on white voters was to refute the Clinton claims (and growing conventional wisdom among media talking heads). They're nothing like each other.

I really think you are reading far, far too much into Obama's victory here, and completely discounting how incredibly poorly he did in WV and KY.

Again, we're on the same page here. My entire effort in these two posts (which you refer to, so I know you read it) is to point out that there's a lot more going on than can be described by the single "white, working-class" variable. A white, working class voter in Oregon is obviously very different than a West Virginian. That's the point of the posts. Am I not communicating it, or are you just bleary-eyed after the long night?

Just a factual point--you've made a lot in the last couple of postings about Oregon's income and unemployment levels as a way to cast us as a working class state.

Another variable issue: what defines "working class?" Since no one else has defined it except for the broad indicators of median income, poverty levels, and per-capita income, I have little choice but to use these in comparison.

My lens in these posts is not one about political science, it's about stopping the media stampede to draw conclusions that--as you point out--are unsupported by inconvenient facts. Oregon is an inconvenient fact in this narrative.

And the thing is, I know you probably won't revisit this thread, Paul, if past history is any indicator. A frustrating end to a conversation.

The rural counties are so baffling to me and have blown me away.

Grant County, for example, gave George W. Bush a higher "yes" vote than any other Oregon county in 2004. In 2006, Grant County gave Kulongowski his second lowest "yes" vote, with only Harney likimg him less. Measure 36 had one of the highest "yes" votes, as did Measure 37, with over 70% approval. Heck, Grant County does not even have an active Democratic Party.

Those in the county aren't just conservative, they are extreme Far Right, having approved a ballot measure with over 70% to kick the United Nations out of Grant County, based upon an anti-semitic, militia based idea that supposes that a Jewish cabal, run through the UN, will begin to take over rural counties as a way of instituting a global government.

And THIS county voted for Obama? The only explanation is that they hate the Clinton name with an unmatched intensity based upon Bill's environmental record. Still, Bill also gave rural counties unprecedented county payments...I'm not sure if I'll ever understand it.

Buckman,

Another way to interpret the disparity in BHO vote getting between white Oregon, Kentucky, and West Virginian voters has to do with the amount of “white guilt” manifested in these areas. White voters in a state like Oregon with a low minority population are much more likely to vote for a charismatic candidate because he is black while denying to exit pollsters ethnicity had anything to do with their decision.

The population of blacks in West Virginia is only 3.2%. Yes Oregon is less (1.9%), but not enough to count for the difference in voting.

The population of blacks in West Virginia is only 3.2%. Yes Oregon is less (1.9%), but not enough to count for the difference in voting.

Yes. Like many other crocks of questionable contents the elaborate "white guilt" scenario was amusing for about two seconds til the smell hit.

The data are that a much larger percentage of Clinton voters in WV admitted that race was a factor in why they voted as they did--a larger percentage than Obama voters in WV and a larger percentage of both candidates' voters in Oregon.

We're supposed to believe that both the people who said race was a factor in their vote and the people who said it wasn't were lying?

And the evidence for the "white guilt" effect is what? The overrepresentation of black people in elected office in Oregon?

Harry,

No need for the patronization..I'm aware of how the electoral process works. The Grant County Democrats I know are progressive on some things but not across the board...I'm impressed and pleased that many voted for Obama. Given overwhelming support for some other conservative, Far Right causes, many Democrats in Grant County, if you look at the numbers, would have had to have voted for at least some of them. Again, impressed that Obama touched so many....

Essay on the "white vote" issue in today's New York Times.

From that NYT article, analysis I can appreciate:

On to Oregon, where Obama won by double digits. A bunch of chai tea sipping elitists, with zero body fat, living in hip lofts while working at Nike, yes? No. Well, they do like running, and tea. Oregon is one of the nation’s whitest states – just under 2 percent of residents are black – but rich it is not. The state is below the national average in both per capita income and median household income. This suggests that Obama doesn’t have a white working class problem so much as a regional problem, in a place where Democrats won’t win anyway. In Oregon, voters’ surveys show Obama essentially tied Clinton for the blue collar vote while running up a big victory. And Oregon, unlike West Virginia and Kentucky, may actually be in play for the general election.

Yup.

Jeff Sorry if I disappoint. I've been out town a lot and the threads get buried. More often, sadly, the debate degenerates into name slinging and the "water cooler" conversation ends.

anyway ... will try to do better.

On above:

1) I like Chuck's suggestion about white resentment. Obama uses this term a lot--it shows both his relative youth and familiarity with social science research. It's actually pretty hard to find hard core racism any more; I don't think hard core racism is involved much in this contest. it's a lot easier to find racial resentment--the sense by one race (mostly whites) that another race (mostly blacks) are gaining unfair advantages. The nice thing about this concept it both that it works, and it captures other racial dynamics that we see in our society (e.g. Black/Hispanic tensions in many cities). Winding back to Chuck's comment, even though the percentage of Black in West Virginia is quite low, regionally there is a lot more Blacks. Oregon is not just white--it is in the midst of the whitest area of the country.

2) I'm still wondering about jeff's use of income and unemployment and the reality of class in Oregon. Others have noted other characteristics that tend to overlap with class in this country--religious affiliation for instance. are we really working class? pink collar? something else?

Paul, pink collar is real working class. Sorry, it just is. The check-out people at the grocery store, and the stockers, and the lower level pharmacy staff are working class. Nurses are working class even if they get paid more and have more education than many other workers, and despite their professionalism, because of their relationship to the supervisory structure.

You may also be showing a Portland bias here. Historically Portland is what and where it is primarily as transportation nexus. Since World War I it has had relatively less manufacturing compared to Seattle or L.A. or even San Francisco -- and the wars were part of that. In 1900 Portland was bigger than Seattle and S.F. was bigger than L.A.

The growth of the service economy doesn't mean people aren't working class.

And if you get out away from Portland and Salem and Eugene, there is an older working class that has been hammered as hard as the Rust Belt, but it was in extractive industries, especially timber, and connected manufacturing in lumber and paper milling. And then there's the ambiguity of farming.

So yeah, it's different from Pennsylvania -- but then again Michigan and Ohio up by the lakes are different from West Virginia; parts of Western PA are like & near West Virginia, but around Philly or Pittsburgh either one it's something different and they're different from one another.

Whoo hoo, you made it back, Paul.

On to definitions, I do think it's time to revisit "working class." That definition arose from the manufacturing boom of mid-century and the trade unions that buoyed the workers into middle-class incomes. Now we have white-collar workers who are sub-middle class earners. There's a cultural and economic aspect to the way we apply a definition.

I confess that for me "working class" is purely economic. If you earn a paycheck, make something at or below the median income, and are not a member of the executive class, I say you're "working class." Doesn't matter if you're sitting at a desk or on the factory line.

Trishka, this bears some more exploration, and I'd like to do so. But this isn't true: "and, you know, looking at the electoral map, with the exception of the south west corner, obama's success was focussed pretty heavily on the willamette valley."

Obama won 22 of 36 counties in all regions of the state.

Chris,

I'd look over trishka's comment, because my sense of voting behavior is that she is right.

You say pink class=working class due solely to income. But pink class tends to be feminized and far less unionized. Pink class is less tied to raw material and manufacturing, meaning they'll react far differently to things like NAFTA/CAFTA.

I also suspect (I'd have to do more work here) that Oregon's lower income populations are have lower senses of ethnic identities, attend church less frequently, and are more suspicious / less trusting of government.

All this means that lower class voters in Oregon will behave very differently than the ones in Ohio or Pennsylvania.

Paul, I'm not disputing the differences in voting behavior by different kinds of members of the working class -- I'm disputing defining working class by relationship to semi-skilled industrial manufacturing that formed the backbone of the CIO and of organized labor's political power at its peak, and that has been hardest hit by the neoliberal trade regime.

The working class has always been broader than that and internally varied. Before "scientific management" created semi-skilled industrial work, and machines increasingly took on tasks of application of sheer physical energy, there were craft workers (some of whom in fields like the needle trades faced severe exploitation via sweatshops and industrial home work) and laborers, those who pushed and pulled and lifted and dug and hauled, and service workers, largely in commerce, and domestic workers. Growth of the finance sector and managerial functions requiring support in the production and manipulation of documents and records created a huge clerical sector.

The old AFL essentially treated laborers as un-organizable. That's why the CIO was created.

Union density outside of public employment is something like 8%. Most of the "white working class" in W. Va. and Kentucky are non-union. Some may be ex-union, especially retired miners & their families. Among currently unionized private sector unions, I'd guess that service sector workers are up to about half now, since there have been so many lay-offs and retirement buy-outs in manufacturing. SEIU is the fastest growing union.

A lot of clerical and service workers are children of manufacturing workers.

As far as I am concerned, all those who do not own their own means of livelihood, but live on a wage or salary, and who are not a managers and thus have limited control over their working conditions, are working class. Even with middle management there can be a kind of ambiguity. These days that means substantial portions of the working class are also highly educated by historical standards. That doesn't make them not working class, it makes them a different kind of worker -- just as an auto assembly line worker & family in the 1960s who became able to buy a house in the suburbs and live next door to a small-business owner or middle manager was a different kind of worker from an impoverished family doing piece-work garment sewing on the Lower East Side of New York in 1905.

My perspective on all this is doubtless shaped by my experience with the highly democratic and militant union movement at Yale in the 1980s, in which largely female and disproportionately minority clerical and technical workers fought against severe underpayment, lack of advancement opportunities and discrimination in working conditions, long justified to them by the idea that there was something more professional about their work, especially because it was Yale, by organizing around a demand for respect, and the slogan "You can't eat prestige." (Also bumper stickers that said "Beep, beep, Yale's cheap", which it was, in the cheapskate sense.

At the time the C&Ts were newly organized. But they were solidly backed up by the "blue collar" & more male building & grounds, maintenance, custodial, dining hall etc. workers -- who if male were often fathers, uncles, brothers, nephews or cousins of the C&Ts. Among those blue collar workers, some were in jobs that corresponded to older trades, e.g. electricians or carpenters, but a lot were service workers. There wasn't much manufacturing going on, and if any of the workers were making physical products, the clerical workers producing documents probably were the largest category.

<h2>I think the clerical and technical workers had it about right: if you have to fight for a decent wage (to get it or defend it) and have to fight for respect from a boss (to get it or defend it), you're working class. To which we might add, if you're vulnerable to downsizing, though that becomes one of the places where the ambiguities of middle management come in. And there are lots of kinds of hard work, and different things that go into making hard work hard.</h2>