When I took a look at the numbers from the recent OH-02 race, I was more or less shocked to see that Hackett had won the rural counties (Brown, Scioto, Adams, Pike). As most of us now know, the race was lost in the suburb/exurb land of Hamilton, Warren and Clermont.
Naturally, I've spent the better part of the last three days trying to make sense of what this means, politically. Aren't the folks out in Brown county the crazy wingnuts that vote on "morals" first, policy second? I have a theory.
I'll attribute it to the rise of the 401K.
Back in my grandfather's day, people had pensions. Part of your compensation as an employee was a solemn promise from your employer, that, based on the amount of time you spent with the company, they'd take care of you after you retired. The burden was then on the company to hold enough money back in profits to pay such pensions, as their number of retirees grew. Not difficult, right?
Well, that's where it gets tricky. Companies don't like having large sums of money on the books allocated to people that don't work for them anymore. It's not good for profits, which is not good for stock prices. So they've always been interested in changing the pension-based system.
In Democrats and unions, workers had someone they could trust in protecting their pensions.
Here's where the 401K moves in. Companies came up with this great idea, that, instead of "US saving for YOUR retirement", "YOU save for YOUR retirement, and we'll make some token gestures to sweeten the deal". The burden was shifted from company to worker. In order to accrue enough wealth in the 401k to realistically pay for retirement, the average employee had to get involved in the stock market.
I used to live in the Cincinnati area. The average person in the exurbs/suburbs of Hamilton, Warren and Clermont counties has 2.5 kids, drives an SUV, lives in a house that has been built in the last 5 years, works for a medium to big company and has their retirement invested in a, you guessed it, 401K plan.
So when companies do well, they do well. We know that Republicans cater to big business. The paradigm has shifted. Instead of looking to Democrats to protect their retirement plans, the average suburban voter is looking to Republicans to grow their plans with their corporate-friendly agenda.
Sadly, it's like Jean Schmidt suggested. Sure, the average voter is worried about Iraq; but they're more concerned with issues that affect them directly.
I'll leave it to others to discuss how we work with this paradigm, or if I've totally missed the mark.