Color me skeptical: the shifting loyalties of white male voters.

• Author: Teixeira, Ruy

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma by David Paul Kuhn Palgrave Macmillan, 270 pp.

David Paul Kuhn covered the 2004 presidential campaign for CBS News and currently writes for the Politico, the new Washington tabloid specializing in political news and analysis. His new book, The Neglected Voter, has a very simple thesis: If you want to understand the Democrats' problems over the last several decades, keep your eyes on the white guys; you needn't worry about anything else. White men decided many years ago that they didn't like Democrats, and the next thing you knew we had Nixon, Reagan, and Bushes I and II. Kuhn mentions other social groups in passing, but mostly to clarify why white men are so ticked off at the Democrats. There's something charmingly retro about this approach, and indeed, a great deal of Kuhn's book reads like it could have been written twenty years ago.

Retro or not, Kuhn's book does provide a useful service, by highlighting something that is quite real--what he calls the "white male gap." It's true that Democrats perform very poorly among white men. In the last two presidential elections, Democrats have trailed the Republican Party in that demographic; Republicans won 60 percent of the white male vote over the Democrats' 36 percent in 2000, and 62 percent over 37 percent in 2004. White men comprise a hefty section of the American electorate--36 percent in the 2004 election--and it's difficult to win elections when your party starts out so far in the hole with such a large demographic. And, as Kuhn rightly stresses, this performance is substantially worse than Democrats' performance among white women (hence the "white male gap"). While Democrats had a 24-point deficit among white men in 2000, their deficit among white women was only 1 point; in 2004, Democrats lost white men by 25 points and white women by 11.

This isn't a pretty picture, and Kuhn deserves credit for reminding Democrats forcefully of this problem. This is especially so in an era where most prescriptions for Democratic success steer away from demographic analysis in favor of very broad recommendations like appealing to the emotions (Drew Westen's The Political Brain), kicking ass (Naftali Bendavid's The Thumping, and having big ideas (Matt Bai's The Argument). Kuhn is right to stress that not all voters are the same, and that specific groups of actual voters have to be reached to ensure success.

That said, the...