NYT Campaign Blog: Obama Will Explicitly Give Up on the Working Class White Vote Like No Democrat Before Him Ever Has

Unprecedented, yet again.

For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.

All pretence of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.

The Democrats lost the working class white vote by the unprecedented edge of 63-33 in 2010. Obama hopes to lose them by only the Kerry margin of 17, despite the fact that he himself only lost them by 12 points in his first, and only, winning presidential election.

They're hoping to win more affluent whites, to try to mitigate some of the working class losses.

In his work exploring how to build a viable progressive coalition, Greenberg noted, he has become “much more interested in the affluent suburban voters than the former Reagan Democrats.”

Their secret weapon in getting at least some working class whites to vote Democratic? Joe Biden.

I guess they think that because he's white he can carry the Obama message into white enclaves.

But it's really not about race.

At the end of the day, people tally up what the government gives them, or will give them, versus what the government is taking from them, or, more importantly, must take from them to pay for all the giving it's doing.

The government must have more from working class people of all races. Supposedly this will be doled back out in welfare, but a lot of people really don't like the idea of being on the dole. Especially some weird dole where the government takes more money and freedom from you to return to you some money, minus the bureaucrats' vig.

posted by Ace at 09:59 AM

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