Let's Be Honest, Obama Only Cares About Government Jobs

Via Ben Domenech, Daniel Henninger identifies a fault-line within the Democratic coalition Republicans would be wise to exploit.

No subject sits more centrally in the American political debate than the economic plight of the middle class. Presumably that means people making between $50,000 and $175,000 a year. The president fashions himself their champion.

This surely is bunk. Mr. Obama is the champion of the public-sector middle class. Just as private business has become an abstraction to the new class of public-sector Democratic politicians and academics who populate the Obama administration, so too the blue-collar workers employed by them have become similarly abstracted.

You would think someone in the private labor movement would wake up and smell the tar sands. Last week's Big Labor "victory" in Ohio was about spending tens of millions to support state and local government workers. Many union families attached to the state's withering auto plants no doubt voted with their public-sector brothers in solidarity. But why? Where the rubber hits the road—new jobs that will last a generation—what does this public-sector vote do for them?

The hook to Henninger's column is Obama's decision to delay any decision on the Keystone XL pipeline and the tens of thousands of jobs it would have created.

30+ years ago "Reagan Democrats" abandoned their traditional party in droves pushing Reagan to two landslide victories. We don't need a landslide next year (though one is always welcome) we just need enough in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania and maybe even Michigan.

Is anyone in the GOP field up to making the case?

posted by DrewM. at 11:21 AM

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