What's up with the white working class?

    There is a current meme in political commentary---can Hillary, Democrats, win back the white working class vote which was not particularly good in 2012, and seemed to deteriorate even more in 2014? My first response is, for a lot of reasons, I don't like the term "working class" because it is meant to describe whites---with little college education who work with their hands and who are in the lower half, or less, of the economic stratus---as less than or low than. This group describes a lot of friends, relatives and workers with whom I mostly interact. If I must categorize these folks analytically I would rather use a term like heartlander working stiff, or as a last resort, Walmart Mom. They run our infrastructure. And they are numerous. There are, for example, far more white working class folks than black working class folks---hang on, I want to google that---black working class....

    That's odd, the term black working class is scant in the literature. And why is that? Perhaps it's of use to someone to think of blacks as a homogeneous group. What about Hispanic working class? Nope, same thing, I guess they all "work", or something like that---they can be lumped together. Or perhaps "they" don't work, maybe just collect welfare.

    Stereotyping is the tool of the Establishment to get all the "lesser haves" fighting among each other. Manipulating the stereotypes wins elections.

     If all workers and increasingly disenchanted young people came together under one banner, and voted, the economic disparities of this country, the lack of educational opportunities, the squandering of money to fight wars instead of building infrastructure, the over reach of corporations, the special privileges of the financial industry---the entire structure which is arraigned against not only whites who don't have higher education but minorities who are discriminated against---that structure would crumble in a decade or two. 

    The question of whether Hillary, or anyone can attract white working class voters exemplifies the immoral and facetious power structure in our country today. The better question is should Hillary win back the white working class? The answer is obvious. Not doing so will only amplify the wealthy and the privileged, win or lose.  Democrats should attract all working stiffs of every race and age group. It's what the party is about. They are the folks who have been shafted economically---despite the fact that they keep the damn place running and spend every cent they get to keep the economy from tanking.

    It's 1980. Vietnam has been a disaster. Lots of riots and disenchantment. The economics of World War II are wearing thin and we've pissed a lot of money away. There's discontent everywhere, everyone is mad as hell. The Man doesn't like discontent unless he can manipulate it. Let's say we go to the Neshoba County Fair to announce a Presidential run and get this country back on track.

    Comments

    But in some matters, America's white working class is considered politically conservative.


    Indeed.  Many of them are also Democrats by tradition, and this issue came up big time in the 2008 primary as whites from Appalachia broke for Hilary.  The question is... what do they do in a general election?


    I am hoping Bernie Sanders follows through and runs in the  democratic primary.  He will talk to the people who makes this country stay afloat. He is an old style New Deal Politician with a good populace message. He will get that message out and pull the dems in that direction. He likes to talk about rebuilding infrastructure and removing the subsidies to big corporations. He talks about the looming crisis with poverty for our elderly because of not keeping SS in line with inflation. He also talks about reinvesting in education and many more things that worry most working people. He will be a good addition to the debates.  People really want to hear politicians make this part of their message.  


    I love Bernie. He think he would draw support away from Warren, if she gets in it, and from Webb if he enters. (When he gets going I'm afraid he's going to have an aneurysm on the spot).


    He said he would decide by March if he is in.  I think he knows that he won't win but wants to get the concerns of the population in the political discourse of the next election. I follow him on face book and have for a long time.  I just read a blog that he wrote on Kos since I commented.on this thread.  He lays out what his populous message is.  

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/30/1354740/-Fight-for-Our-Progressive-Vision

    Warren does not want to run.  I take her word on it.  I read her book and she is the type of person who will finish what she started. She is where she needs to be.   

     


    The solidarity you propose would be a natural response to being marginalized by the concise list of economic leverages you allude to. The countervailing influence is coming from those who are losing privileges in communities that once secured the fortunes of their parents.

    So there is a lot of coded language about having a right to a special place that never talks about it that way. That is why all our most important policy decisions have a pair of beer goggles strapped on to them. We talk about a system of exchange where the rules determine the game but a lot of money is on the boys and girls tilting the table this way and that.


    "Beer goggles" is coded language for me, had to look it up.

    Well put, Moat.


    Democrats should attract all working stiffs of every race and age group. It's what the party is about.

    I think to do that they have to come up with government programs that actually easily benefit and are not complex (like earned income credit or cash for clunkers.) As in not having to deal with lots of rules or lots of bureaucrats or filling out lots of forms, jumping through hoops, studying up (ala Obamacare, or even something like getting a TSA fast track pass.). Otherwise, libertarianism will continue to have great appeal. Working people don't have time to work the government as well for benefit, and will resent those who they see as having the time to benefit. Libertarianism has appeal because benefiting from government has become so much work, only those who aren't working are seen as benefiting from it. Those who have the time to figure out the rules, those who have the time to play the game correctly, to manipulate the complex system that is seen as stymying for the average Joe/Jill without a paid advisor.

     


    Artsy. I like your thinking. Even as a small business owner, trying to keep up with the rules puts me at a disadvantage compared to big businesses. The accelerated depreciation was a no brainer, was a significant benefit.

    So I like the idea of big benefits with easy implementation. For the life of me I don't know why Democrats aren't pushing some kind of mass relief on student loans---especially at a time when bond rates are low. It seems to me that student loans must cut across the widest possible spectrum of income levels. I could be badly mistaken but I think working stiffs would be for this kind of relief, particularly if the banks took a big part of the hit.

     


    Some Democrats are pushing for school loan relief but corporate media is ignoring it.  Even worse they are pulling the money out of pell grants and giving it to Sally May ( what ever they call it these days) to shore it up.  It is going to be a big blow next year to college students. That move will not save the school loan mess from imploding. 


    I can't imagine being a kid or parent these days having to confront the loan process to go to college. I would fear and loathe it. To my mind, that is a main part of the problem. People fear and loathe accessing much of what the government offers.

    I know who to blame, the sausage-making of programs enabled by the conservative GOP, the Grover Norquist plan of drowning the government in excesses of its own making.  Doesn't matter, playing the blame game won't help fight back against it. Dems got to figure out a workaround to come up with simple and popular programs to prove government can work, can help.


    The reality is after they are finished with school, they have to start paying the loan back in a few short months.  The jobs are not there so almost 50% cannot make payments.  The paper work isn't that bad after you do it the first time. It is a system that is on the edge of complete financial failure. The grant money will be given to the financial institutions that have these loans to help service them.  It will go in some pockets of investors and keep the system from taking a hair cut. It will not go into education. Pell grant will not have anymore money after 2016.  It is not much of a fix for a trillion dollar debt that private lenders hold. What a dumb thing to do. What program will they rob next to keep this mess afloat?


    at a disadvantage compared to big businesses

    This strikes me as getting at some of the meat of the way to go. But then "third way" and DLC types went that way and nowadays it's still common for lefties to see those peeps as part of the problem. "Third way" was really about attracting the group your blog is talking about back from Reaganism. I still think it had a lot of the right answers, but I feel that I am in a minority. Most blogosphere Dems seem devoted to the "FDR-to-LBJ grow the government huge and complex" model that caused Reaganism to become popular with the working class contingent you are talking about, and very much look down on third-way-ism.

    Without those who are so passionate that they blog about it all the time, it won't work. Obamamania was interesting in that it brought a lot of young people to passionate political activity who loved the "non partisan" angle of the campaign. I think many were buying into third wayism without knowing they were doing that. But they were disappointed by Obama himself. So where does that leave us?

    The internet has changed things. For example, you have all these really smart and very passionate people advocating day after day after day for a very complex much bigger government that does things like supply guaranteed jobs and heavily regulates markets.They see third wayism as nearly evil sellouts or idiots that don't realize they are tools of the system that has ruined us all. What someone like I see, on the other hand,  when I read their kind of stuf,f is an army of social worker types employed to guide people through a life of government benefits while they are working, who will inevitably lapse into nanny state behavior. Where does that take us? Back to libertarianism as looking very attractive!

    I like this model: show me you can run a Dept. of Motor Vehicles that is as user-friendly and angst-less as buying on amazon.com, and you'll convert a hell of a lot of those "working class" voters. Just doing something as simple as that. (Comes to mind: people will say: but the government should not be run on a for profit model. And I would say:neither is Amazon.com right now! It's run on an "increase the value of the stock" model. Isn't that what we want to do with government? Increase its popularity as a service? )


    Or hey, what about these models: a local police department that is widely admired and appreciated by the community it serves? a school system where property tax payers are proud of the results and teachers and consider it a wonderful value?.... cheeky

    Always surprises me how many in the blogosphere who say they are passionately for big government in theory spend most of their time complaining about the government...and not just local. Where can one find a self-described FDR Dem "big governent" supporter who appreciates, likes and supports the people's servants at:  the Treasury Dept., or  the Federal Reserve, or the Justice Dept, or C.I.A., or the F.B.I., or the T.S.A., or the Defense Dept....? Many are actually bedfellows with the working class libertarians, they just won't admit it to themselves.


    You will have been encouraged to hear the new VA head refer to the veterans as "customers".

     

    Re: DMV's, last time I was in one in  Stockton (!)  Ca  it came close to your metric.  Appointments in advance on the web, etc..

     

    But that was ldecades ago, who knows what budget constraints have wrought since then.


    So glad you brought this up, Double A.  The EITC is especially problematic, I think.  I get that they want to reward people for filing their taxes even though their earnings are below the taxation line, and I get, even, that filing is the only way they will get their due refund, not to mention the transfer payment, but...

    A tex credit, of this sort, does not actually help people as much as it should.  When you're living paycheck to paycheck, it is nice to get a windfall in May or June, after you file, but it is not really optimal as you really need cash when you need it.

    There must be a better way.


    I take it, Oxy, that you eschew the narrowly defined 
    Working Class" as a counterpoise to Bourgeoisie in the analysis of Dialectical Materialism.

     

    In other words, we are agreeing to using it more as a marketing demographic.  In that sense, I think it is meant to extend further than simply a description of whether one draws a salary or punches a timecard.

     

    In that context, incidentally, once we exclude those on slalary who at least  have signed on to be management, even if the real owners know  better, one is still left scratching his ass wondering how it is possible that anyone who actuall gets paid by the hour can see his interests as consonant with the Repugnant program.

     

    Edit to add: P.S. Nice t'see ya.  Happy New year!


    Hey, Jolly, Happy New Year!


    Jolly, you should turn the question you ask in your last paragraph around and ask, why would any wage earner vote for the Dems especially after Obama. By definition these people work so they have an interest in seeing their employer prosper and welfare and unemployment are secondary issues at best.  It may be a selfish motivation but they have families to feed and children to educate first before considering social issues. Democrats have offered little except to vote for Republican backed free market solutions.

    The low turnout in the last election, 36% is telling in that the people who usually voted for LOTE Democrats didn't vote for Republicans but used the only tool they had, withholding their vote. This is a good sign that people are waking up and withholding their consent to be governed by our two-faced system that does not serve their needs.


    Stereotyping is the tool of the Establishment to get all the "lesser haves" fighting among each other. Manipulating the stereotypes wins elections.

    I wonder. Seems to me that it's  also possible that  stereotyping is done for no purpose as such and not by any particular segment of society,  but very broadly because its comfortable and easy to do whereas recognizing the complexity of life requires actually thinking and doesn't bring any automatic reward.

    Whatever. Happy New Year.


    Thanks, Flavius. Agree, stereotyping is a kind of crib or shorthand. I was going for the Reagan "Welfare Queen" type of thing.

    But you're much too kind. That paragraph failed every conceivable element of a good hinge---not the least one of which was logic, the nonsensical idea that one can manipulate a stereotype. In fact, every time I've tried to manipulate one it eludes my grasp like an empty chicken bucket skipping in the wind.

    Happy New Year.


    Note: "chicken bucket" may b way too whimsical. I was recalling the CNN interview with Jesse Jackson and Ralph Reed. Reed offhandedly used a phrase like, "black parishioners passed a chicken bucket" and Jackson called him out on it as a racial stereotype, a point that I thought was well taken.


    Lots wrong with lots of working class, including white wage earners.  But in terms of the inability of the Dems to appeal to these folks, check out 95 percent of what has been written at Dagblog on the NYC police over the last couple of weeks.  And ponder what all the really, really smart social liberals have to offer them and their neighbors.

    Folks are scared about the future, folks without jobs and folks with them.  But  we know so much more than them--they just won't listen.

    Here's an anecdote to consider.  Title VII of the Civil Rights Act is one of the finest pieces of legislation ever enacted in this nation.  But it contains a clause which exempts the Act's reach from collectively bargained "bona fide" seniority provisions.  That's what you call trying to bridge gaps between whites and blacks.  Most of us I submit know nothing about bridging gaps--we're too smart, we don't need to--we know it all.

    Keep trying to attract white workers by calling out their sense of entitlement (really?), by mocking their churches, by mocking their democratically elected union leaders as "bosses" (just like the right wing union busters call em), and tell them we know what's best for them.  I thought a boss was someone who didn't have the support of his or her membership and was put in office by the mob.  Who knew that it's any labor leader we "liberals" don't like?  Union bosses?  Really?  Liberals?

    Want to attract the white working class?  Humility works for starters, combined with a real emphasis on a real program that happens to need our attention -- like the nation's infrastructure.  Want to keep alienating white workers?  Keep calling them all stupid, keep calling the cops from their neighborhoods Bull Connors, and keep knowing that a platform of social issues will keep them fed.

    P.S.This is a bit overblown but I'm not going to delete it.  My point is that I don't approve of the lack of sensitivity to the myriad interests of the broad coalition that Oxy is understandably concerned about.  I share his concern.  And I think the last couple of weeks highlight that we lack that sensitivity.

     


    Bruce, thanks for commenting. We do need a broader coalition to achieve progressive goals. It takes a certain kind of leader to keep us all focused on the mission---which is to stop the continued accumulation of wealth at the top while the infrastructure crumbles and workers are continually strapped financially and educationally. I'm as culpable as anyone with the cheap stereotypes and I think it is just a bad habit which is limiting progress.


    Well as Wolraich might tell us, we might learn from the experience of William Jennings Bryan!


    Another anecdote, Harry Truman's voter 'appeal' suffered in some familiar American quarters when he didn't offer legal cover for lynching and poll taxes, so Strom Thurmond ran against him as a 3rd Party 'States Rights Democrat' and Thurmond won 4 southern states in the run for President in 1948.

    NYC cops created and are the source of their own problems. They compound the problems by blaming, or rather, attempting to intimidate the Mayor, to turn a question of equal  justice for all into a bloody political blame game.

    They choked a guy to death.  Then the justice system, in effect criticized by the NY State DA who asked for future jurisdiction in these cases, compounded the problem by running a secret trial run by the local DA Donovan to create legal immunity for all involved.  The one cop who did the choking and the other four, who were granted immediate legal immunity for 'testifying' about what they did while on the job, which was all recorded on video anyway.

    If anyone or any group should show humility and sensitivity, it's the NYC police unions. As Truman showed, a mission to appeal to voters has to stop somewhere, it should not override seeking justice for all.


    You make an excellent point regarding bridge building. There is a pleasure in belittling others that often undercuts the one who would indulge the in practice.

    On the other hand, I have seen the entitlement under discussion since I was a child. My family opposed it, not from the distance of a blog site but up close and personal in the neighborhood I grew up in. There were real consequences to choosing sides then and they continue to matter now.

    I am okay with some people seeing my politics as their enemy.


    Thanks Moat, as always, for your courteous and well thought-out reply.  I agree that sometimes when the toothpaste is out of the tube political disagreements are unavoidable.  And some, like the LaFollette Michael wrote about, can point to some success from this approach.  I think the electoral politics Oxy has raised here is a bit different though, no?  In other words, how do you build a coalition for electoral purposes?


    Yours is a big question and my mind is not very large. To get people to grudgingly agree to a plan despite sharp disagreements about other matters is usually a matter of recognizing the need for any plan as an improvement upon bickering until the life raft sinks. One thing about the FDR ideas that is often forgotten is that they were an experiment. The way they were undertaken in that spirit is important even if hindsight allows a more critical view of the success or failure of particular policies.

    In other words, the experiment wasn't promising a chicken in every pot. An electoral politics that only offers such promises is not going to achieve escape velocity from itself or my mixed metaphors.


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