Thursday, October 27, 2005

Ruy Teixeira on Bartels's 'working class'

Teixeira's analysis of Larry Bartels's paper (PDF) brings up the same issue as Christian_Left did in his comments to my previous post, but adds details about the prevailing definition of 'working class' and how the demographics of Bartels's 'working class' match that definition. The recent Teixeira post contains a link to a May 7 post wherein he recapitulates his reasons for defining the working class by the absense of a college degree, defending that definition (somewhat tentatively) against the criticism of Chris Bowers.

1 comment:

Christian_Left said...

Thanks for the link to the Teixeira commentary. I found it extremely helpful in clarifying some of the doubts I had about the Bartels paper. If Democrats want to actually win the votes of working-class whites, they would do well to pay attention to Teixeira's insightful analyses.

On the other hand, the way that the Republicans are imploding in their own ineptitude and corruption, everyone including white working-class people may lose their taste for the G.O.P.'s smoke and mirrors.