Will white men sink Obama?
JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GettyImages
Listen to President Obama and Mitt Romney on the campaign trail, and you could be forgiven for briefly thinking only one gender is allowed to vote. Both candidates regularly tailor their message to female voters: You can see it in the president's attacks on Romney's desire to cut Planned Parenthood funding and potentially appoint judges to overturn Roe v. Wade, and in Romney's claim that "this president has failed America's women" due to an uptick in female poverty.
There's a reason for this: Women are widely perceived as more likely than men to be swing voters. In the battleground state of Colorado, for example, both campaigns are open about the fact that they believe whoever makes the best case to suburban women will win the state.
Yet all the talk about women might make it easy to forget that men are a significant chunk of the electorate as well. While women outvoted men by about 10 million votes in the 2008 presidential election, men still made up 48 percent of the electorate. And white men alone made up more than one third of the electorate - 36 percent - according to national exit polls.
It's true that whites are slowly shrinking as a portion of the electorate as blacks, Hispanics and Asians grow in influence, which is why you don't see many news stories about them as a voting bloc. But they still pack a powerful electoral punch. White men, in fact, are providing the biggest drag on the president of any voting bloc as he tries to win another four years in the Oval Office. Even if the president gets his expected 80 percent support from minority voters, he is unlikely to win the election if he can't win more than one in three white men. And he might not.
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A Washington Post/ABC News poll released this week found that white men support Romney over Mr. Obama 65 percent to 32 percent - a 2-to-1 margin. That suggests the president is doing worse among white men then he did in 2008, when exit polls showed he lost white men by a 57 percent to 41 percent margin. The poll also found white men moving away from the president: Romney's 19-point mid-October lead on handling the economy among the group has risen to 35 points today.
The 2008 numbers were actually pretty good for a Democrat, at least when it comes to recent history. Mr. Obama's share of the white male vote was the highest for a member of his party since 1976, when Jimmy Carter won almost half of white male voters. (In each of his two presidential elections, George W. Bush won white men by more than 25 points.) Yet Mr. Obama's support among white men appears to have slipped since 2008. A big loss among white men would particularly hurt the president in the Midwestern swing states of Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa.
The movement of white men away from Democrats over the past four decades, argued Progressive Policy Institute President Will Marshall, is tied to both the culture war and the perception of "a change in the focal point of Democratic economic policymaking."
"Many white men, and many, in particular, non-college white men, have not seen that the Democratic economic agenda is in their interest," said Marshall. "There's an account from the left that says these voters have been estranged from Democrats on social issues. And there's some truth to that. But I also think these voters believe the economic policies of Democrats have benefitted somebody else - not them. Women, minorities, interest groups. They don't feel that Democrats have championed the interests of white male voters in modern times as they did in the days of Roosevelt/Truman."
The good news - or the less bad news - for Mr. Obama is that the problem is far worse in the South than it is in the Midwestern swing states. Look specifically at the white working class, who were somewhat supportive of Bill Clinton in 1996 but have consistently broken against Democrats since that election. A survey released last month by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that Romney led 48 to 35 percent among whites lacking four-year college degrees who are paid by the hour or the job. Yet while Romney led by 40 points among southern working-class whites, the president actually led by eight points among Midwestern working-class whites. The president's relative strength among whites in the Midwest is the reason a state like Pennsylvania appears likely to remain blue despite a relatively large white population.
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and how he handled the situation?
The number of Black men and women in America voting for the more liberal candidate are 95%, which seems remarkable if you look at the unemployment, the economy, foreign policy and the price of gas.
This would not seem to be a good liberal subject to breach!
Filed under Business/Economy
After reaching an October peak price of $3.82 per gallon (Oct. 8), the national gas price average has dropped considerably during the past two weeks. The national average price for a gallon of regular self-serve gasoline has fallen for 17 straight days to $3.58 per gallon Friday, its lowest level since August 4th.
Friday's price marks a 14-cent decline in the past week, yet remain 23 cents below month ago prices and 14 cents above year ago prices. However, the national average is 53 cents below the $4.11 record high set 2008. Regional supply concerns have diminished and demand continues to weaken, two factors that have contributed to the recent gas price plunge.
Crude oil losses extended to a fifth straight day, as of Wednesday, dropping to $85.73 per barrel, a 7 percent drop in a week's time and the first time the commodity has seen this level since July. Oil prices rebounded Thursday due to U.S. economic data: Orders for durable goods surged 9.9 percent in September, exceeding expectations, and first-time jobless claims dropped by 23,000 to a seasonally adjusted 369,000 last week. Also pushing crude oil lower is the fundamental change in supply and demand. The Department of Energy reported a 5.9 million barrel build in the nation's crude oil stockpiles, coupled with decreased seasonal demand, which has caused a decline in oil prices. Crude oil finished the week down 4 percent to $86.26 at Friday's close.
The other kind of white man, which we see a lot in politics, and business is aggressive, if he thinks you have bonded with him he will tell you many of the tricks he has used to improve his life. Some of these tricks will shock you, unless you are his kind of person. He is aggressive with and inflated ego and holds his head high, even in times when he should hang it in shame.
He thinks he will live forever. He is always happy, forward and things nothing of always using other peoples' property as if it was his own, he uses other peoples' money every chance he gets, he takes credit for other peoples work or accomplishments, there is no room for anyone to boast about him because he is too busy boasting about himself. When you meet him, he suckers you into believing he is a very nice guy, when you get to know him, you begin to avoid him like the plague. This is the other white guy. This has nothing to do with race it has everything to do with different types of people.
CBS is so slanted!!
This election is not about race. This election is about liberals vs. conservatives, specifically as regards their views on economics. Obama wants to grow government, tax more, spend more, regulate more, hike energy prices (yes, that is one his goals). The liberal media complains about Bush's spending. Obama spent more in one term than Bush did in eight years.
We simply cannot afford more of Obama's Marxist policies. A vote for Romney has nothing to do with race and everything to do with getting our country back under economic control.
November cannot come soon enough.
Imagine if it were 95% of white men for Romney........wow that would make the news.
95% of Black Americans in fact 98% of American make less than 250,000 a year. 97% of Business owners make less than 250,000