NYT: How Democrats Can Compete for the White Working Class

[Scuba]

The author of this article, Thomas B. Edsall, concludes that white noncollege voters outside the South are less committed to conservative values, but that has been obscured in the south by the "continued ferocity of sociocultural and racial conservatism". The optimism seems to come from his belief that this will wane over time.

Heating up that racism, is of course, the job of Faux News, Limbaugh and other conservative radio "personalities". Another reason why it's important to speak out against their racist dog whistles.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/opinion/edsall-how-democrats-can-compete-for-the-white-working-class.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

On the surface, the Democratic Party’s bid to win back the votes of the white working class looks like an impossible task. Between 2008 and 2012, President Obama’s already weak support among these voters dropped from 40 percent to just 36 percent. Looked at from a different perspective, though, Democratic prospects do not seem so gloomy. There was a wide disparity in Obama’s performance among white working-class voters in different sections of the country: awful in the South and significantly better in much of the rest of the country. This suggests that a targeted regional strategy could strengthen the Democratic Party’s chances with what was once its core constituency. Before we get into regional subtleties, let’s examine the question from the national vantage point.

...

For Democrats, one of the more worrisome findings that Democracy Corps turned up is that these voters are far more suspicious of government than the general public. This is in contrast to Democrats generally, who are by most measures far more pro-government than the rest of the electorate, according to American National Election Studies. Democracy Corps found that less well-educated whites agree, by a huge 46.2 percentage point margin, with the statement “When something is run by the government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful.” This is 11.6 points more than all voters. Similarly, the general public agrees that “It is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves” by a 19.5 percentage point margin, while whites who did not go to college agree by half that. Asked to choose between two statements — “I’m more concerned we will go too far in cutting spending and will cut off programs that middle- and working-class people rely on” or “I’m more concerned we won’t go far enough in cutting spending and our deficits will continue to grow” — all voters came down firmly on the side of worrying about cutting too much, 58-42. The white, noncollege voter was evenly split.

...

The pre-election P.R.R.I. study found that white working-class voters in the South backed Romney over Obama 62-22, compared to a 46-41 Romney advantage in the West, a 42-38 edge in the Northeast and an Obama lead of 44-36 in the Midwest. Similarly, while working-class whites in the South opposed same-sex marriage by 61-32 in the P.R.R.I. survey, in the Northeast they favored it 57-37; in the West they were split 47-45; and in the Midwest they were modestly opposed, 44-49. In the case of abortion, majorities of non-college whites outside of the South believe the practice should be legal, while those in the South were opposed 54-42.

In general, the findings of the P.R.R.I. study suggest that outside the South, Democrats should be able to make significant inroads among working-class whites – and, in fact, they have. In 2008, when Obama was losing nationally by 18 points among noncollege whites, in Michigan he carried these voters 52-46; in Illinois, 53-46; and in Connecticut, 51-47. In the South, the anti-Obama margins were staggering, which did not go without notice. Noncollege whites in Alabama voted against Obama 90-9; in Mississippi it was 89-11; and in Georgia 78-22.

[geek tragedy]

1. Pretty well understood that southern whites

are a lost cause as a voting bloc, as they have been since 1776. The plan has to be how to win without bubba.