Clarence Page: Democrats must connect with working-class whites

[Omaha Steve]

Clarence Page, The Chicago Tribune


http://www.omaha.com/opinion/clarence-page-democrats-must-connect-with-working-class-whites/article_47ede3d7-8917-5d76-91e0-572e716d45a8.html

POSTED: SUNDAY, MARCH 8, 2015 1:00 AM

While talking to black and white Republicans recently about the Grand Old Party’s outreach efforts to voters of color, I wondered: What are Democrats doing to reach working-class whites?

Much has been said and written about how desperately Grand Old Party leaders seek to woo voters of color back to the GOP, the fabled “party of Lincoln” to which earlier generations of African-Americans were fondly devoted.

The surprisingly robust exodus of Hispanic, Asian, unmarried women and young voters, too, in Mitt Romney’s racially lopsided 2012 presidential election loss convinced GOP Chairman Reince Priebus and other moderate GOP leaders that, yes, maybe it’s time to spend serious time and dollars on expanding the party’s voting base.

Fast forward to now: After last year’s surprisingly large Republican victories in low-turnout midterm congressional elections, Democrats are asking themselves a similar question to the one Republicans have raised about themselves: How can Andrew Jackson’s and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fabled “party of labor” expand its outreach to its own largest bloc of demographic defectors — working-class whites?

FULL story at link.

[onecaliberal]

1. Dear Clarence,

So many of them are racist hating pigs, liberals will not convince them to stop voting against themselves. Hate is powerful and blinding.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Actually it doesn't apply so much.

They were 'defectors' because the Dem nominee was not white. So far, it's looking like the Dem nominee will be white this time around. If that's the case, most of them will be 'back'.

[onecaliberal]

3. Proves my point. Racist pigs that wouldn't vote for the African American man.

[strawberries]

6. you are probably right racist pigs wouldn't vote for an AA man or woman

but what does that have to do with the working whites?

[a kennedy]

17. And do we think that a white woman has a better chance of winning?

I'm curious about that.

[onecaliberal]

18. Good question.

Women are the lowest in the equation to these people.

[strawberries]

4. I find your post disturbing

you have no right to group white workers in such a way. They like you are trying to survive and live healthy happy lives

[onecaliberal]

7. By voting for people who take a living wage away

Cut their food (most food stamp recipients are white) take away healthcare, destroy planet. It is disturbing to me that people are so mean and ignorant lacking ability to think for themselves because they are blinded by lies and fear of "the other" that they will refuse to believe their own lying eyes or vote for a man because of skin color.

[strawberries]

9. do you hear yourself?

I don't know one white hard working person who wants their food stamps cut, or health care taken away. They truly don't' want to destroy the planet. I don't find them mean or ignorant and trust me they do think for themselves. There in lies your problem. You want them to think like you, and act like you, well they wont.

Tell me, what has the democrats done for AA voters lately, other than take them for granted.

[onecaliberal]

11. You don't know a white person who wants their food stamps cut?

Hmmm, I wonder what they hear when republicans run around constant talking about doing just that! Yes I damn well hear myself.

[strawberries]

15. what do you hear

when Obama talks in support of the TPP?

[betterdemsonly]

10. Obama agreed to cut food stamps at least two

times. Right wing dems like Obama haven't exactly defended those causes.

[hfojvt]

8. the irony is

many of us talk that way about them

and then seem puzzled that they do not join our side.

As for the racists

Kerry lost the white vote
Gore lost the white vote
Clinton lost the white vote.

So I don't buy very much "white people didn't vote for Obama because they are racists".

[onecaliberal]

12. I will give you that. Demographics have changed a lot.

I'm talking about the whites who didn't vote for Obama but will come back to the "party" when a white runs.

[CANDO]

13. This....

I just don't get it. DU either has a very short memory or some people may not know a little electoral/political history. Working class whites left the party in droves as "Reagan Democrats" and have largely stayed away since then. I'm becoming very sick and tired of the race bating/blaming/crutching attitudes that are increasingly appearing here. People need to grow the hell up and remove the "everything is racist" blinders. It is a self defeating attitude at that.

[Fumesucker]

14. Poor whites vote Republican considerably less frequently than wealthier whites do

It's really middle class whites who vote en masse against their own economic interests, not so much poor ones.

http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/03/23/voting-patterns-of-americas-whites-from-the-masses-to-the-elites/

Within any education category, richer people vote more Republican. In contrast, the pattern of education and voting is nonlinear. High school graduates are more Republican than non-HS grads, but after that, the groups with more education tend to vote more Democratic. At the very highest education level tabulated in the survey, voters with post-graduate degrees lean toward the Democrats. Except for the rich post-graduates; they are split 50-50 between the parties.

What does this say about America’s elites? If you define elites as high-income non-Hispanic whites, the elites vote strongly Republican. If you define elites as college-educated high-income whites, they vote moderately Republican.

There is no plausible way based on these data in which elites can be considered a Democratic voting bloc. To create a group of strongly Democratic-leaning elite whites using these graphs, you would need to consider only postgraduates (no simple college grads included, even if they have achieved social and financial success), and you have to go down to the below-$75,000 level of family income, which hardly seems like the American elites to me.

The patterns are consistent for all three of the past presidential elections. (The differences in the higher-income low-education category should not be taken seriously, as the estimates are based on small samples, as can be seen from the large standard errors for those subgroups.)

[betterdemsonly]

5. The Dems should stop moving the right on economic issues.

Otherwise they will have to rely on voters who consider themselves minorities. Not a good strategy when you consider hispanics increasingly self-identify white.

[LeftishBrit]

16. If it's anything like the UK...

it's probably a matter of poorer white people being more concerned about economic issues than social issues. And the answer is IMO not to move right on social issues, but to move left on economic issues.

ETA: I thought I might have been talking out of ignorance as a foreigner, but the following seems to suggest that there's something in what I said:

http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2012/11/05-america-white-working-class-jacobs