Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Let them eat war1

2003; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 6; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0967026042000269674

1469-5901

Arlie Russell Hochschild,

Military History and Strategy

George W. Bush is sinking in the polls, but a few beats on the war drum could reverse that trend and re-elect him in 2004. Ironically, the sector of American society now poised to keep him in the White House is the one which stands to lose the most from virtually all of his policies – blue-collar men. A full 49 per cent of them and 38 per cent of blue-collar women told a January 2003 Roper poll they would vote for Bush in 2004.2 According to Ruy Teixeira and Joel Rogers, white working-class voters (male and female) made up 55 per cent of voters in 2000. If we define ‘working class’ as people without a college degree, then three-quarters of Americans are working class. Three-quarters of the population is also white, so white working-class voters make up 55 per cent of those casting votes. See Why the White Working Class Still Matters (New York: Basic Books, 2000). In fact, blue-collar workers were more pro-Bush than professionals and managers, among whom only 40 per cent of men and 32 per cent of women, when polled, favor him; that is, people who reported to Roper such occupations as painter, furniture mover, waitress and sewer repairman were more likely to be for our pro-big business president than people with occupations like doctor, attorney, CPA or property manager. High-school graduates and drop-outs were more pro-Bush (41 per cent) than people with graduate degrees (36 per cent). And people with family incomes of $30,000 or less were no more opposed to Bush than those with incomes of $75,000 or more.3 I got these figures by re-analyzing a January 2003 national poll conducted by Roper and sponsored by NBC and the Wall Street Journal.