The right’s wobbly electoral lifeline: How Dems can win back white working class

[Capt. Obvious]

If the Democrats lose control of the Senate in the fall elections, the Republican party will control both Houses of Congress and a majority of state legislators. Even though President Obama was re-elected in 2012, the Republicans picked up a governorship in North Carolina and added to their majority of state legislative seats—3975 to 3319 for the Democrats.

While demography may favor the Democratic coalition in presidential elections, the Republicans have been able to mobilize enough white working class support to overcome the deficit of GOP voters among blacks and the most rapidly-growing U.S. minority group, Latinos. The Democrats have lost white working class voters not only in the racially-polarized South, but in the Northern states as well.

....

Why does the Democratic party do so poorly with the white working class and middle class? One standard narrative holds that white working class voters who support Republicans vote against their own economic interests. This economic irrationality is then explained in terms of racism, or cultural conservatism, or some other factor.

But are the Democrats really offering white working class voters economic policies worth voting for?

....

The white working class has not rejected the party of pro-working-class economic progressivism, because in today’s America no such party exists. They can’t turn down a new New Deal that nobody offers them.

Salon

[Maedhros]

1. The essence of DLC/Third Way politics is to ignore the working class in favor of the investor class.

The Democrats have learned to follow the money to electoral success, leaving working Americans out in the cold.

[Capt. Obvious]

2. The downfall of money in politics

You have to do your master's bidding.