culture (war) and economics

From Yglesias, a George Packer story in the New Yorker on the disaffected Ohio working class ("The Hardest Vote"). Short story, they're pissed because they can't afford to get married and raise a traditional family.

The American Prospect ("Remapping the Culture Debate") describes how this anxiety does not lead voters to Democratic economic policies, which they see as alien to their concerns, but rather to cultural issues as markers for who cares more about their problems and thus, presumably, will solve them:

When it came to defining themselves in the nation's ongoing cultural battles -- such as the battle over “family values” -- Democrats had virtually ceded the field to Republicans, presenting an uncertain face to the public. Voters, the research showed, were looking to cultural and lifestyle markers to determine whether or not a candidate was, in fact, going to do right by the economy, the Democrats' one persistently strong area. The Democracy Corps pollsters concluded that voters saw traditional Democratic economic concerns as having little to do with them, being mainly “manifested in costly government social programs or political alliances with labor unions and minorities.” The party's inattentiveness to cultural matters had, paradoxically, left these voters with “absolutely no sense that Democrats have a viable alternative vision that would truly promote broad economic growth or increased prosperity for working Americans.”

But it looks like that may be turning around... now that things are going in the shitter. Prospect:

The new Puritanism and cultural conservatism Frank described can also been seen as symptoms of how, in today’s society, traditional values have become aspirational. Lower-income individuals simply live in a much more disrupted society, with higher divorce rates, more single moms, more abortions, and more interpersonal and interfamily strife, than do the middle- and upper-middle class people they want to be like. It should come as no surprise that the politics of reaction is strongest where there is most to react to.

Sound like any dissertations you've read recently? Heee...