Pandagon on “nascar dads”:
Every election year, we get a new subgroup that’s this year’s “it” voters – soccer moms, security moms, office park dads, and now NASCAR dads. What always frustrates me about this is that it seems like it’s simply a constant race to see who can classify what largely white, middle-class voters in swing states are concerned with. The convention itself annoys me – soccer moms, for instance, never made up more than 6 percent of the voting population, yet you would have thought that soccer was the new Playstation the way it was taking over America in 1996.
They’re new, easily disposable methods of pretending you’re talking about long-standing electoral groups in new and incisive terms. You know who NASCAR dads are? Working- and middle-class white males with families. You know who office-park dads were? Middle- and upper middle-class white males with families. You know what the difference is? Almost nothing, in real terms. Slightly different motiviations, slightly different economic strata, and a whole lot of assigned psychological and political phobias that various strategists wanted to make into issues.