INDEPENDENCE IS THE HALLMARK OF A NEW, GROWING CORE OF VOTERS

Wired Workers Reject Big-Party Politics

WIRED workers are the wave of the future, political analysts say.
Political parties will learn to surf the new demographics, or go under.

Wired workers solve problems as part of self-directed teams, and
regularly use computers on the job. They tend to be self-reliant,
mobile, affluent, pro-free market, socially tolerant and deeply
concerned about educating their children and re-educating themselves.

And they are multiplying. A 1998 survey for the Institute for the New
California (www.inc-cal.org), a Lafayette-based think tank, estimated
57 percent of California workers are wired. They make up 37 percent of
voters, up from 31 percent two years earlier.

Nationwide, about one-fifth of the electorate is wired, writes Mark
Penn, the president's pollster, in Blueprint, the Democratic
Leadership Council's new journal (www.dlc.org/blueprint/fall/98/article2.html)
for ``new Democrats.''

Wired voters divide nearly evenly among Democrats, independents and
Republicans. Most voted for Clinton in the presidential race, but went
with Republicans in state and congressional races.

Wired workers ``don't feel comfortable with either party,'' write
William Galston and Elaine Kamarck in the same issue. ``They are
likely to believe in self-reliance but backed by government that empowers.''

Galston, now at the University of Maryland, was a domestic policy
adviser for President Bill Clinton, while Kamarck, now at Harvard's
Kennedy School of Government, advised Vice President Al Gore.

Clearly, the president's been listening to their advice about wired
voters' interest in education. In the budget deal, Clinton pushed for
$1.1 billion to hire elementary teachers to lower class size,
federalizing a state and local responsibility. He tried to get federal
money to repair schools, another state and local job.

Earlier, Clinton championed ``Hope Scholarships,'' a $1,500 federal
tax credit for the first two years of college and a ``Lifelong
Learning'' tax credit covering 20 percent of the first $3,000 in
tuition for junior year and beyond.

While the goal is to improve access to education, almost all the
``Hope'' money will subsidize students who would have gone to college
anyhow.

In the industrial model of politics, workers labor in structured,
hierarchical companies, turning one widget over and over again. They
have little control over their own futures.

That describes a small and shrinking percentage of the workforce.
Compared to traditional workers, the wired are more likely to be
college-educated, suburban, married, parents, between 25 and 49;
they're more likely to have family incomes over $50,000 a year.
They're also more likely to vote.

An electorate dominated by knowledge workers ``will be increasingly
skeptical of centralized, one-size-fits-all solutions,'' write Galston
and Kamarck. ``Rather, they will want a government that helps enable
them to succeed, enhances the information to make their own choices
and invests in the most dynamic source of progress and security in the
New Economy -- their own intellectual capital.''

Wired workers are highly critical of public schools, and interested in
alternatives such as charter schools, the INC survey found.
Overwhelmingly, they believe workers will need constant retraining to
keep up; they think employers should pay for it, not the government.

Compared to traditional workers, they tend to be more supportive of
immigration and free trade, less supportive of affirmative action.
They favor privatization of public services such as mass transit, and
want public-private partnerships to revitalize the cities. They want
government to protect the environment, and stay out of lifestyle issues.

``Wired workers are much more likely to want government to encourage
individual savings than to make heroic efforts to save Social Security
in its traditional New Deal form,'' write Galston and Kamarck. ``They
are more likely to believe that government should make sure that
people are free to pursue opportunity and less inclined to believe
that government is directly responsible for improving people's lives.
They are more likely to believe that government should set the overall
rules of the market and then let market decisions control outcomes.''

Naturally, the wired tend to be wired to the Internet, which means
they're likely to seek out information for themselves, rather than to
accept it secondhand.

So the electorate is likely to become even more politically
independent, less committed to one party or the other.

A large and growing number of Americans work together to solve
problems on the job. They will want the same power in their lives as
citizens. Technology is enabling Jefferson's sturdy, self-sufficient
citizen-farmers to return as citizen-workers, the new democrats of the
Information Age.

Joanne Jacobs is a member of the Mercury News editorial board. Her
column appears on Mondays and Thursdays. You may reach her at 750
Ridder Park Dr., San Jose, CA 95190, by fax at 408-271-3792, or e-mail
to JJacobs@sjmercury.com.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry