A few posts below some clarifying detail - regionalism - was provided about the white working class vote for Obama and Romney. Buried in some of the links provided was a more ominous note about whether their vote was even worth worrying about as a purely policy making matter, this applies to anyone in, or any group representing, the needs of the lower classes (the poor and kinda not so well off).
Policymakers tend to not pay attention to them, and shifts in their attitudes about public policy tend to have little or no impact on policy. This is not true for the wealthy. This seems like an obvious intuitive point, but some research has been published providing empirical proof.
Here's a link to work done by Martin Gilens who claims that inequity in the responsiveness of elected officials threatens the ability of the US to call itself a democracy:
In a democracy, all citizens—the rich, middle-class, poor alike—must
have some ability to influence what their government does. Few people
would expect that influence to be identical: those with higher incomes
and better connections will always be more influential. But if influence
becomes so unequal that the wishes of most citizens are ignored most of
the time, a country’s claim to be a democracy is cast in doubt. And
that is exactly what I found in my analyses of the link between public
preferences and government policy in the U.S.
And here's a link to a recent book - the Unheavenly Chorus - that looks at the nature of organized interest in the nation and come to the same conclusion:
The Unheavenly Chorus is the first book to look at the
political participation of individual citizens alongside the political
advocacy of thousands of organized interests--membership associations
such as unions, professional associations, trade associations, and
citizens groups, as well as organizations like corporations, hospitals,
and universities. Drawing on numerous in-depth surveys of members of the
public as well as the largest database of interest organizations ever
created--representing more than thirty-five thousand organizations over a
twenty-five-year period--this book conclusively demonstrates that
American democracy is marred by deeply ingrained and persistent
class-based political inequality. The well educated and affluent are
active in many ways to make their voices heard, while the less
advantaged are not. This book reveals how the political voices of
organized interests are even less representative than those of
individuals, how political advantage is handed down across generations,
how recruitment to political activity perpetuates and exaggerates
existing biases, how political voice on the Internet replicates these
inequalities--and more.
In a true democracy, the preferences and
needs of all citizens deserve equal consideration. Yet equal
consideration is only possible with equal citizen voice. The Unheavenly Chorus reveals how far we really are from the democratic ideal and how hard it would be to attain it.
2301 and 2305 students who have finished reading through Fed 10 and our subsequent analysis of interest groups should not find these allegations surprising.
