RE DK KRUGMAN VS BROOKS VOTER DECISIONS ORIGINS OF LIBERALISM

Here's another plug for this book. Vincent compiled what evidence exists (not much) for how British elections actually turned out: 

"I recently read a book called The Formation of the British Liberal Party. It deals with many different issues, but hits incidentally on distinctions between town and country in the transformation of British politics, mainly during the 19th Century." 

Unknown said...

I'm confused by a point you make in your post: "Brooks notes today that large numbers of red state Republicans voted Tuesday to expand Medicaid and raise the minimum wage. Trump's appeal, he argues, relates to both parties' failure to do anything meaningful for the working class for decades." Except one party expanded Medicaid over the intense opposition of the other party. And those red state voters only had to vote to expand Medicaid because the Republican Supreme Court gave states the option to opt-out of Medicaid expansion, and their Republican governors opted out of it. Similarly, one party is in favor of raising the minimum wage. One is intensely opposed. So one party is trying to do something meaningful for working class people. The other party opposes them.


9:32 PM
RUNNINGDOGLACKEY said...

I've read some very different statistics about 18-39 voting; that between 2010 and 2018 in fact it rose from 21% to 31%.

Which would seem to reflect generally the voting surge of 2018, rather than your statement that it remained flat.

In the case of class interests, and the urban/ rural divide, there is clearly more to the subject, specifically, that Fox News has had a Goebbels effect on older white middle class and rural white communities. So thank God that Trump has offended so many women, although I am impressed by the ignorant white male turnout as well. From my reading, educational levels do not entirely explain the divides - and the voting this year seems to question the actual depth of those divides - but the single fact of education is clearly in play as to class interests. Free compulsory education for all through High School, then widely available or free higher education is the single cure for a public that has - for several generations now - not been trained in skeptical thought. Given the sate of education, to call the mass of college grads an elite is laughable; so many one-eyed creatures in the land of the blind.