Here (fair using most of it):
Obama has not had any difficulty pulling white voters, per se. Where he can’t crack the nut is with the working class, whether they’re white, Latino/Latina, or something else — anything but African-American. The reason AAs are the exception is obvious: Obama has tremendous support from the entire African-American community, understandably so. AAs from every economic stratum support his candidacy. But if Obama weren’t black, working-class AAs wouldn’t vote for him either.
And no wonder. Working people need health care and Social Security, not a goddamn Unity
Pony
I’m moved to remark on this because the meme is circulating that Obama’s problem is that white working-class voters are all a bunch of Archie Bunkers who are too racist to vote for him. This meme is being pushed aggressively by the Obama campaign, especially after the huge Pennsylvania loss. Straight from Axelrod’s mouth to the pages of the New York Times, where it’s dressed up as thoughtful analysis.
The purpose of the racist meme is fivefold:
- To distract from Obama’s real weakness — that he has nothing to offer working people and can’t get them to vote for him to save his damn life;
- To excuse his failure by instead blaming the voters;
- To imply that the only reason people vote for Hillary is because they’re racists, which just goes to show how nasty and icky Hillary is;
- To subliminally remind people that the Clintons themselves are racists, at least according to the Obama campaign;
- To once again mine the seemingly inexhaustible vein of white guilt that sends shivers up the legs of the liberal elites.
The constant repetition of the phrase “white working class” (or variations thereon) is crucial to propagating the meme. And it’s false, because it erases Latino/Latinas along with every other non-AA ethnic group, and shifts the focus away from “working class” (which is where it belongs).
So please, stop saying white working class. Don’t play into Axelrod’s game.
P.S. Similar thing with older voters.
Bingo.
To violently mix metaphors: All the chickens from the right wing dogwhistles Obama sent in Iowa are coming home to roost.
He’s not asking for their votes, so he’s not getting them. And now it’s too late. He can’t close the sale.
NOTE Via the always essential Avedon.
Front page
This is very astute--don't forget Latin@s
This is very astute—it’s clearly a class issue, and this was evident in the Ohio returns. Clinton won every rural and near-suburban county, and Obama won 4 of the 5 big cities (Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Dayton) but failed to capture Toledo. Is it because white Toledoans are more racist than whites in the other big cities? Or is it because Toledo’s economy has been on the skids for 30 years, and it missed the 1990s boom that every other Ohio city benefited from.
Democrats must hang on to and cultivate the Latin@ vote for both short-term and long-term reasons, so to leave them out of the “working class” problem is a big mistake. Short term, if Obama hopes to put Colorado in play, he’s going to need the working-class vote here, which is 1/3 Latin@. (Remember, CO was a caucus state, so the women with kids and working-class Latin@s were disproportionately shut out of the vote because they didn’t have two free hours after dinner on a Tuesday night in February.) Long term, Latin@s are an emerging Democratic constituency that will be key to winning and holding the southwest—think states like AZ, NM, and TX—that will further counterbalance the Solid South. Working class whites live in big states now (PA, OH, MI, IN), but those states are losing population, and the southwest is rapidly gaining.