Reply #22: Blue-Collar Democrats Culturally Alienated [View All]

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Blue-collar Democrats culturally alienated
%%headline%%Like Casey (after the late Robert P. Casey, governor of Pennsylvania from 1987 to 1995), these voters -- blue- collar and religious, often Catholic -- are liberal on economic issues but conservative on cultural ones.

Sunday, May 25, 2008
BY MARK STRICHERZ
Irmo Antonacci used to vote for Democratic presidential candidates. A son of Italian immigrants, the 80-year-old retiree lives in Jeannette, a down-at-the-heels smokestack town southeast of Pittsburgh.

After dropping out of college in 1950, he got a job installing telephones and joined a union. He registered as a Democrat and became a John F. Kennedy fan. A decade ago, he was the Democratic committeeman from the town's 5th ward.

But Antonacci no longer automatically pulls the lever for the candidate with (D) beside his or her name.

"I'd seen the time from where the party used to be and where the party is now accepting abortion and gay rights," he says. "And I didn't go for that."

On the lawn in front of Antonacci's one-story brick house stands a foot-high statue of St. Francis and another of the Virgin Mary, symbols of a transformation that could spell trouble for the Democrats in November. It's the transformation of a group of voters we might call Casey Democrats, after the late Robert P. Casey, governor of Pennsylvania from 1987 to 1995.

Like Casey, these voters -- blue-collar and religious, often Catholic -- are liberal on economic issues but conservative on cultural ones. Where they once looked to union leaders and their fellow union members for political guidance, they now look to their religious leaders and fellow churchgoers.

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http://www.pennlive.com/columns/patriotnews/review/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1211568927299880.xml&coll=1