New York Times Death Spiral Watch: David Brooks Edition

John Sides pulls out his sarcasm, and lets loose:

The Monkey Cage: Demography Is Not King, or Why David Brooks Is a Hedgehog, Not a Fox: In this recent piece, David Brooks sees a nation divided:

some social divides, mostly involving ethnicity, have narrowed. But others, mostly involving education, have widened. Today there is a mass educated class. The college educated and non-college educated are likely to live in different towns. They have radically different divorce rates and starkly different ways of raising their children. The non-college educated not only earn less, they smoke more, grow more obese and die sooner....

The ensuing segmentation has reshaped politics. We’re used to the ideological divide between Red and Blue America. This year’s election has revealed a deep cultural gap within the Democratic Party, separating what Stuart Rothenberg calls the two Democratic parties.

In state after state (Wisconsin being the outlier), Barack Obama has won densely populated, well-educated areas. Hillary Clinton has won less-populated, less-educated areas. For example, Obama has won roughly 70 percent of the most-educated counties in the primary states. Clinton has won 90 percent of the least-educated counties. In state after state, Obama has won a few urban and inner-ring suburban counties. Clinton has won nearly everywhere else.

What is wrong with this characterization? First, Brooks uses aggregate-level data (from counties) to infer the individual-level behavior of voters. This is the ecological fallacy. When you look at actual exit polls from some recent primaries, the results are far less stark. In Pennsylvania, voters without a college degree favored Clinton, 58-42. Voters with a college degree favored Clinton too, 51-49.... Somehow I don’t see the “deep cultural gap.”...

[W]hile college-educated Democrats tend to be more liberal than other Democrats... the gap... is not growing.... Moreover, what divide does exist doesn’t really seem to matter much on Election Day: Democrats are highly loyal regardless of their level of formal education. Which is, by the way, why we should expect current divisions among Democrats to be pretty much mended by November.

Why does Brooks make mistakes like this?... Brooks knows... that the world can be easily divided into groups (preferably two) and these groups are really, really different for each other.... Unfortunately, Brooks’ mode of pop sociology obscures far more than it reveals, and forces him to bend the facts to suit this thesis. See also Sasha Issenberg’s famous take-down of the red/blue state piece.

The sad thing is, David Brooks actually appears to read and enjoy social science, and can even talk about it reasonably well.... But in columns like this, he seems content to ignore the data.... If it’s asking too much for Brooks to spend half an hour with the National Election Studies before writing a column like this, then consider this my job application. David Brooks, I will make pretty graphs and easy-to-read cross-tabulations for you. Just say the word...

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Comments

[Bloix]

Sides is reading Brooks' column as if it were intended to make sense. This is a mistake. A New York Times column is logical only by accident. Typically the argumentation, incoherent though it may be, carries the MSM-agreed narrative, and provides cover for the zingers. In today's column, these are mild. Not every column can be a fire-breather if Brooks is to maintain his reputation as a thoughtful commentator. I would call out the following lines:

In Pennsylvania, Obama did everything conceivable to win over Clinton’s working-class voters. The effort was a failure. The great uniter failed to unite…

and

The upscale liberals who revere Obama have spent their lives championing equality and opposing privilege. But they’ve smashed the old WASP social hierarchy only to create a new educational one.

Note that there are no sentences critical of Clinton, who will remain the preferred candidate as long as she appears to have no hope of winning.

[christofay]

Please cut the NYTimes a break for NSA reasons.

As they are self-censoring according to the wishes of the Cheney administration, there are great spreads of space still to fill with "news" when the need to be reported story is not written and printed.

So there is a need for a guy with a name that sounds like a suburban sub-division neighbor, David Brooks, quick with Cheney white noise

[derek]

I thought he was going to say "consider this my job application. New York Times, I will write columns with pretty graphs and easy-to-read cross-tabulations for you, that make more sense than David Brooks, for less than you pay David Brooks. Just say the word..."

[Cal]

It frustrates me that Conservative commentators simply assume that America is fundamentally a "conservative" country. That's a load of ****. America is a radical country formed through violence and revolution and created the first country without a State religion. They do anything and everything to hammer their theme that the country at its roots is "conservative."

[christofay]

Even the "conservatives" are friggin radical. "Project for a New American Century," you mean "my manifesto to gain more power and riches for my buddies and me in a way that has never been done before."

There's your radical make-over for you.

[John Emerson]

"For example, Obama has won roughly 70 percent of the most-educated counties in the primary states."

I believe I saw a chart of this at Shalizi's. "Most educated" means something like "80+ HS grads". It has nothing to do with post-HS education.

This is hilarious, because Teixeira and the other centrists have been saying "forget the white poor, go for the white middle class and the successful working class" for a decade or more. And now Hillary is a populist, after two decades of populist-bashing. She's flailing pretty desperately.

My guess is that non-college whites go for Hillary because the ones who vote are loyal party-member Democrats, and the party people support her. But they'll support Obama when the chips are down.

[Chip Poirot]

Brooks' article misses the big picture. White women go for Clinton at a rate approaching 60-40 (at least recently) and among white men it is close. And women were about 57% of the electorate in PA.

Personally, I don't see the appeal-unless you think Maggie Thatcher and Phyllis Schlafly represent an advance for women. Clinton has morphed into George Wallace. Her campaign repeats and magnifies every right wing lunatic fringe talking point against Obama. Her campaign legitimizes the right wing discourse. She plays to the lowest common denominator by signalling that she wants to "nuke them Ay-Rabbs" over there in Iran and that she will somehow "Break up Opec" while taking stands that are destructive in terms of ecological education.

Some wounds don't heal. Personally, I will not vote for Hillary under any circumstances. Period.

[kharris]

We live in a two-party state, with occassional flare-ups of third parties that serve to trip one of the two main parties, but never actually govern. Both main parties necessarily encompass diversity in income, class, political philosophy, education and a bunch of other stuff. They would not be the main parties if they did not. To wave this fact around as if it were a revelation is just silly. To point to this situation as a weakness in one party, but fail to note that it applies to both, is either stupid or dishonest.

The point at which any of this becomes interesting is when we consider how the parties or individual candidates handle the necessity to draw voters with divergent interests and views. The closes Brooks comes is to recite the results of exit polls. Let's move on.

[Tom Parmenter]

Apropos of David Brooks, H.G. Wells said, "There are two kinds of people in the world, those who think there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't."

[John Emerson]

We live in a one-and-a-half party state, Kharris, and at times in a one-and-three-quarter party state.

[Dick Mulliken]

There are two kinds of people in this world: those that divide people into two kinds, and those that don't. Robert Benchley

[Dick Mulliken]

There are two kinds of people in this world: those that divide people into two kinds, and those that don't. Robert Benchley

[Dick Mulliken]

There are two kinds of people in this world: those that divide people into two kinds, and those that don't. Robert Benchley

[Dick Mulliken]

There are two kinds of people in this world: those that divide people into two kinds, and those that don't. Robert Benchley

[Dick Mulliken]

There are two kinds of people in this world: those that divide people into two kinds, and those that don't. Robert Benchley

[Robert Waldmann]

Apropos of David Brooks, someone said, "There are three kinds of people in the world, those who are numerate and those who aren't"

I assume that Brooks is more dishonest than stupid and that he has come up with the red-state/blue-state and rural+exurb/urban+inner_suburb divides in order to present numbers which suggest to those more stupid than he is that Republicans are the party of the middle and Democrats the party of the rich and the poor (or hell maybe just the rich for all I know).

I don't think that anyone who can actually write a column can be dumb enough to introduce the division college graduate/non graduate and then try to measure relative support for Obama and Clinton by looking at votes by county and not polls. Nor do I think there are many people dumb enough to find Brooks' analysis convincing (unless they really really want to be convinced).

However, I do think that the utter absurdity must not be obvious to many people. That is, the analysis causes a reaction like "well that's not quite right but close enough that I'll just pretend it is OK" rather than "holly sh*t someone just wrote something as valid as 2+2=5 in the New York Times." The second is my reaction. My view of what is going on is that people just can't grasp correlations which aren't zero or one. That when presented with the argument "x is positively correlated with y and y is positively correlated with z therefore x is positively correlated with z" they think either 1) yes 2) that's math I don't get it but must be my fault 3) not necessarily but there are no sure things or 4) wait I think I heard about an exception to that general rule once and not 5) that's like saying 1+1=3. If people had a good sense of probability, Brooks would be embarrassed to make such an asinine argument.

The first is my reaction when someone says that Clinton's gas tax implies giving money to oil companies. Not true as she also proposes an excess profits tax, but close enough.

[Jay Livingston]

Do people (Pennsylvania Democrats in this case) with a college degree vote differently from those without a degree? Among the former, Clinton won by 2 points; among the latter, she won by 16 points. That difference may not be enough to confirm the caricatures that Brooks trades in, but it seems like a real difference to me. (Imagine, for example, a poll that showed Clinton beating McCain by 2 points and Obama beating McCain by 16 points. Would we scoff if someone said there was a difference?)

[harold]

These "divisions" are attempts at "market segmentation" for propaganda purposes.

"Divide and conquer" that is the motto.

God forbid than people should get together and wake up to the fact that they have some common interests!

[Tuco]

"Note that there are no sentences critical of Clinton, who will remain the preferred candidate as long as she appears to have no hope of winning."

It is apparent to me that the Rethugs are afraid of Obama. The MSM propaganda arm of the GOP successfully exploited Reverend Wright but you notice there has been no mention of Hillary's association with Douglas Coe and The Fellowship. Hmmmmm...

[Jack]

It's peculiar that Brooks doesn't mention at least in passing that the Republican is actually cobbled together out of three different broad constituencies: the stupid, the insane, and the evil, or libertarians, the religious right, and foreign policy hawks respectively. And even this doesn't exhaust the possible distinctions, for you might divide the libertarians into the true believers (the truly stupid) and corporate interests who when they promote the free market mean it only to apply to other people (making them evil, not stupid). And the foreign policy hawks can be divided up into those who think war on the model of the Iraq invasion really can do good in the world (again, the stupid) and those who just want to flex American military muscle and kill people (blurring the line between evil and insane). And the religious right, well, the less said the better.

[John Sides didn't look closely enough at the data]

In the Pennsylvania exit poll, Hillary beat Barack by a margin of 41% among non-college-educated Whites, but only by a margin of 10% among college-educated Whites. In North Carolina, Hillary won by a margin of 45% among non-college-educated Whites, and only by a margin of 7% among college educated Whites. In Ohio, Hillary's winning margin was 44% among non-college-educated Whites and 7% among college educated Whites. Source:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/mp_20080507_8254.php
The same big disparity among whites by education is clear to see in most other states as well. It may be mistaken to infer a "deep cultural gap" from this big disparity. But it's mistaken to claim the disparity isn't big and stark.