Democrats: Safeway vs. Whole Foods

Those of us cursed with a conservative temperament view the current Democratic race with perplexity.  What is going on?

Conservative columnist David Brooks has the answer.  Think retail.  Think of Mrs. Clinton as Safeway and Senator Obama as Whole Foods.

Hillary Clinton is a classic commodity provider. She caters to the less-educated, less-pretentious consumer.

Yes.  In case you hadn’t looked at the marketing reports on the two campaigns Senator Clinton is winning the less-educated voter by 20, 30, even 50 percentage points.  “She’s got good programs at good prices,” writes Brooks.  Then there is Barack Obama.

Barack Obama is an experience provider. He attracts the educated consumer. In the last Pew Research national survey, he led among people with college degrees by 22 points. Educated people get all emotional when they shop and vote. They want an uplifting experience so they can persuade themselves that they’re not engaging in a grubby self-interested transaction. They fall for all that zero-carbon footprint, locally grown, community-enhancing Third Place hype. They want cultural signifiers that enrich their lives with meaning.

Educated people emotional?  I thought that education taught you to be rational!

Where does that leave the Republicans?  Good point!  I see an opening.  High-school graduates really are not having a very good time in welfare state America.

[H]igh school graduates divorce at twice the rate of college graduates. High school grads are much more likely to have kids out of wedlock... High school grads are much less optimistic than college grads. They express less social trust. They feel less safe in public. They report having fewer friends and lower aspirations.

There is no mystery about this.  The politics offered by the Democratic Party since the 1960s has bought off the votes of high-school grads with the drug of government pensions and social programs and has thrown the less educated into a downward spiral of dependence and despair.  Meanwhile the educated liberals have all got lovely jobs as environmental specialists, college professors, researchers, and administrators.  These jobs may not make the educated liberals rich, but they certainly pay enough for them to shop at Whole Foods.

There must be an opening here for Republicans to learn how to talk to the battered high-school grads.  Actually, we already have.  That’s why liberals have been writing books like “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”  They can’t understand why lower-income Americans vote for Republicans when they ought to vote for Democrats out of gratitude for all the lovely programs that Democrats give them.

Let’s get moving and learn to talk better with the Safeway crowd.  After all, Whole Foods is so pretentious!