Never have I had an urge to write like now. I have been visiting Philadelphia from Boston, and today I took the regional rail train out to the suburb where my mother lives. This is a working/middle class suburb in PA-13, a district that has gone from Red, to Purple, to solid Blue in the course of the past fourteen years. In 2004, I volunteered as an election worker in my precinct here (I have since changed my registration to my new state of residence), and the results which I certified defied all conventional wisdom. This precinct has a 66-33 GOP registration advantage, and yet the precinct went lopsidedly to Kerry by 70%, with Hoeffel beating Specter as well, and downticket even more blue.
Continued on the flip...
Previously I had not the time to walk about the neighborhood and observe the changes that my time away wrought. By all appearances (I have not checked any statistics, as of yet), the neighborhood has noticably become more middle class. I never saw so many well manicured lawns and SUV's while I lived here. And yet, the cognitive dissonance: with growing economic prosperity, the district did not become more conservative - it became more liberal.
It could be that the republicans of this area are not of the Bush/Santorum variety - they tend to be fiscally conservative and socially moderade to libertarian/liberal. Notably, the Democratic margin of victory in this precinct increased dramatically from 2000 to 2004, and even in 2002 it increased over 2000. Could it be that the denizens of this district and districts like it are growing wise to the fact that despite their populist rhetoric, the Republican party is harming the middle class, is concerned primarily with the rich and with clamping down upon individual liberties? Or could there be something more.
I am left wondering whether the economically populist rhetoric of the Right appeals most to those in dire straits, those where poverty is increasing, where neighborhoods are slipping out of the middle class. Nostalgia for a lost 'golden age,' combined with the despair over actual economic loss, seem to play a large part in the appeal of Right wing populism. These voters, perhaps because of their economic troubles, or perhaps for other reasons, may not have the time or initiative to investigate into whether the rhetoric is but a trap. But it is unquestionable that Republican populism falls on deaf ears with socially moderate fiscal conservatives.
PA-13 is unquestionably a blue district now, and it seems to have become so concurrent with growth in economic prosperity. This bodes well for our candidacies in PA-08, PA-07, and PA-06, all of which border upon PA-13. These districts seem to have undergone similar demographic trends, and two of them, at least are connected with Philadelphia's urban core by commuter rail lines, which do indeed have high ridership. Re-framing the Democratic party as the party of the middle class, and of a middle class of whom all should be members, seems from my observations to be an invaluable tactic.
The question that follows, and to which I have no answer, is how to appeal to voters in areas undergoing economic decline, those still succeptable to Right wing populism. It's an open question, and I suppose it will remain open - but I hope that this is a useful contribution to the understanding of the economics-politics-rhetoric complex.