Why the Democrats Still Need Working-Class White Voters

[memphis]

This has all the insight of a David Brooks column. Obviously, it's not binary. Outside of the Deep South, neither party is winning overwhelming majorities of these folks. Torie is starting out with the GOP fantasy that most Democrats live in Pacific Heights and the Upper West Side, which is beyond asinine to anybody who has ever left California or New York. FWIW, I've been to Winchester, VA. It's really not in any way average. It has a decent sized and pretty old town that is far older than anything in my part of the country. Most of us don't live in cute little historic towns. But more importantly, Obama won it. Twice. Unlike Orange County, CA, which Obama lost. Twice. I may as well write an article saying that the Republican have to win more votes than just oil execs who hate mothers and apple pie. The strawman is so absurd and self evident that it's hardly worth refuting.

[memphis]

Actually I mentioned Whittier and Como memphis. My text is a big more subtle than the strawman you created, and then beat up, and incinerated the ensuing mayhem of straw.

Your whole point seems to be that Dems can't win without at least some working class white people. Ignoring the implication that Dems do better among the well off, which is factually incorrect, that doesn't strike you as blindingly obvious? I think you need to meet more working class people. Don't you have a farm in Iowa? How did that state vote, again?

[memphis]

Actually I mentioned Whittier and Como memphis. My text is a big more subtle than the strawman you created, and then beat up, and incinerated the ensuing mayhem of straw.

Your whole point seems to be that Dems can't win without at least some working class white people. Ignoring the implication that Dems do better among the well off, which is factually incorrect, that doesn't strike you as blindingly obvious? I think you need to meet more working class people. Don't you have a farm in Iowa? How did that state vote, again?

You didn't understand my point (nor perhaps the point of the article itself), and I said nothing about non working class white people to boot.

What is your point if not that the Dems need some level of support among working class white people? You're presenting a stereotype of the Obama voter that is not accurate. Republicans do this constantly, in order to drive a wedge between "regular folks" and "them." It's so 20th century. We were supposedly the party of long hairs, welfare queens, and amnesty for Vietnam draft dodgers. With a minor tweak, the Democrats became people who like Starbucks. It's a supremely asinine and petty way to run a political party, and it's not even all that effective anymore. Because the GOP was so successful in running those types of campaigns, people today are more concerned about foreclosure than what the neighbor is smoking or who he's screwing. Bring back defined benefit pensions and people might give a crap about "them" again. In any case, you've already driven off every white person who ever cared about those things. And it's a huge reason why Republicans don't appeal to young people either. The people who grew up when respectable people cared about those things are assuming room temperature very quickly.

[memphis]

It's more a question of perception than what the politician in question actually does. Compare Bush Sr & Bush Jr. Both were really wealthy guys who went to Ivy League schools, but Bush Jr had a much better connection with the white working class because he seemed more like them.

He only "seemed" more like them because of a incredibly cynical and meticulous presentation for the TV. But Bush '88 also did very well amongst white people of all classes, farm crisis and traditional Dem areas like the Iron Range and West Virginia, notwithstanding. I also don't fault Torie for not knowing much about working class people. Outside his breadth of experience.

[memphis]

It's more a question of perception than what the politician in question actually does. Compare Bush Sr & Bush Jr. Both were really wealthy guys who went to Ivy League schools, but Bush Jr had a much better connection with the white working class because he seemed more like them.

He only "seemed" more like them because of a incredibly cynical and meticulous presentation for the TV.

That's the point. There is no reality in politics, only perception.

Not true at all. Thousands of American soldiers are dead and Mitt Romney is millions of dollars richer as a direct result of the policies of Bush Jr. There's a lot of reality in politics.

[memphis]

I dislike it when "working class" is used to mean "not a college graduate", with no economic variables included, as in Torie's link. This group includes plenty of small business owners and managers, among others (and is also a fairly elderly-skewed group, given the historical expansion of post-secondary education).

Of course it's kind of complex what counts as working class, but there's no need to get into this in this type of context; it would not be at all difficult, confusing, or uninteresting for journalists and pundits just to write "whites without college degrees". There's no other group where pundits routinely take the perfectly comprehensible phrase actually used in the exit poll question and substitute a much vaguer phrase with connotations that apply variably to the group in question.

This is hardly the only case of euphemistic language. "Inner city", for instance, gets thrown around all the time to refer to black people. It's very well understood that phrase does not refer to anybody south of 110th street.