Frank Rich: "No Sympathy for the Hillbilly"

[Tintrlvr]

How do you gain votes from an electorate convinced that tax cuts spur economic growth, and that healthcare costs can be lowered by letting insurance companies operate beyond state lines (whatever that entails...), that unionization of the manufacturing sector lowers workers' standards of living -- and all that other rot -- that their deeply held political principles are just shibboleths? Efforts by the Democratic Party to argue otherwise just amounts to Democrats lecturing voters that their false beliefs are indeed false -- and no likes a lecturing hectoring know-it-all.

Well, for starters, the Democrats could study how the Republicans convinced these voters of those things in the first place.

Race baiting (and similar, like gay baiting)? I mean, you have to accept that the reasons these sorts of voters turned to the Republicans, both in their voting patterns and in their ideology, are mostly unsavory, either explicitly, or, more often, implicitly.

[Tintrlvr]

How do you gain votes from an electorate convinced that tax cuts spur economic growth, and that healthcare costs can be lowered by letting insurance companies operate beyond state lines (whatever that entails...), that unionization of the manufacturing sector lowers workers' standards of living -- and all that other rot -- that their deeply held political principles are just shibboleths? Efforts by the Democratic Party to argue otherwise just amounts to Democrats lecturing voters that their false beliefs are indeed false -- and no likes a lecturing hectoring know-it-all.

Well, for starters, the Democrats could study how the Republicans convinced these voters of those things in the first place.

Race baiting (and similar, like gay baiting)? I mean, you have to accept that the reasons these sorts of voters turned to the Republicans are mostly unsavory, either explicitly, or, more often, implicitly.

Well there is always the fact that it is TRUE that tax cuts spur economic growth, as many economics professors would tell you.. mostly those professors would debate about how to distribute the tax cut for optimal growth.  But your point is more directly the issue... Republicans have won these voters over on cultural issues (anti-BLM, anti-gay causes)...  This board is blind if it thinks they will win these voters back by offering them free health care, etc.  Obamacare was already passed and the biggest beneficiary states aren't voting Democrat.

Agreed entirely. Social issues are a much more powerful voting motivator than economic concerns, which voters almost unanimously (wealthy and poor, urban and rural, white and minority alike) do not really understand. People talking about "outreach to the white working class voters" seem to be in denial that doing so in a serious fashion requires hurling minorities under the bus, which I for one am not willing to countenance. Any attempt at outreach that does not involve dropping minorities like a hot potato is talking past the issues on which the white working class votes.

[Tintrlvr]

Everyone realizes that diminished turnout among working class voters in urban areas also harmed HRC a great deal across the Rust Belt, right?

Gary, Indiana is 85% black, for instance. Yet swings in both turnout and vote share in cities like Gary and adjacent inner-ring suburbs played a significant role in moving states like Pennsylvania and Michigan away from Democrats. It wasn't just rural voters and it wasn't just whites.

Maybe this has been mentioned already, although I couldn't be bothered to read through most of this extremely depressing thread about an extremely bad thinkpiece.

Either way, if the voices encouraging Democrats to simply ignore the interests of poor voters who have been un-enthused by the party over the past decade prevail, the consequences will be even uglier than what we are witnessing today. A party that decides that certain communities "deserve to die" because they are "negative assets" is a party that deserves to die itself.

It's quite a leap from "ignore the interests of the poor" (which basically nobody left of center except possibly NSV is advocating, either on this forum or in the Democratic Party generally; Clinton talked about the poor constantly) to "ignore the interests of the white working class". Increasing the minimum wage, e.g., is widely viewed as a major Democratic Party plank to benefit the poor, but it won't do anything to win back "white working class" voters because those voters don't vote Republican on the basis of economic issues.