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Yes, poor white voters still matter

I simply can't get over how so many liberals want to openly reject white, working class voters. Can you imagine the reaction if they wanted to reject any other demographic?
Let's look at some headlines first.

“There’s always been something problematic about the Democratic Party’s fixation on white working-class voters,” writes Sally Kohn at the Daily Beast. “After Alabama, it’s clear that obsession isn’t just fraught with bias. It’s also dumb.”

Steve Phillips of Democracy in Color remarked in a New York Times op-ed: “The country is under conservative assault because Democrats mistakenly sought support from conservative white working-class voters susceptible to racially charged appeals. Replicating that strategy would be another catastrophic blunder.”

The Obsession With White Voters Could Cost Democrats the Virginia Governor’s Race

In my book, Brown Is the New White, I titled one of the chapters “Blinded by the White” to bring attention to the reality that “much of the progressive movement and many progressive campaigns are still dominated by White leadership, fixated on White voters.” Since the last presidential election, this pattern has continued unabated with nearly all progressive attention focused on the white working-class voters who supported Trump in large numbers.

Sanders: ‘We Don’t Need White People Leading the Democratic Party Right Now’
Why Are Democrats Pandering to White Voters?

So it's OK to pander to minorities, but not to poor whites?

The message here is clear and unmistakable: It's bad to care about the white working class.

Why?
Without openly admitting racial prejudice, why is it bad to care about the obviously struggling white working class?
I'm at a loss to come up with a reason for this prejudice that isn't based on either racism or classism.
Which makes it totally bizarre that liberals that wrap their prejudice in a sort of morality. When did prejudice become moral?
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But let's not get hung up on that right now.
I want to focus on basic math, the traditional enemy of ideologues.
Liberal Democrats are just as bad as Republicans when it comes to simple math, otherwise they would never expect to win elections while at the same time reject whites.

population.PNG

Nearly 3/4 of the population of America is white, and they think you can win elections without them? Are they insane or just stupid?
There is no realistic scenario where this works.
[note: the census doesn't separate Hispanics, which are about 16% of the population]

So if you want to know why Democrats have been destroyed at every level of government, look no further than a very vocal, openly prejudiced minority that can't do math.

Now let's look at the deplorables factor.
The assumption by many liberal democrats is that the white working class is hopeless. Besides the fact that you can't make such a broad assumption about any demographic without relying on either racism or classism, it also isn't true.
Let's go back to the math.

In 2012, Obama lost whites without a college degree nationally by 25 points. Four years later, Clinton did 6 points worse, losing these voters by 31 points, with shifts against her in Rust Belt states generally double or more the national average.

Had Clinton hit the thresholds of support within this group that Obama did, she would have carried, with robust margins, the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Iowa, as well as (with narrower margins) Florida and Ohio. In fact, if Clinton could simply have reduced the shift toward Donald Trump among these voters by one-quarter, she would have won.

To put this into fuller context: If Clinton had replicated the black turnout levels enjoyed by Obama in 2012, she still would have lost the 2016 election, because the other shifts against her were so powerful.

Put another way: No, motivating the AA-community would not have won Hillary the election.
Not rejecting white, working class voters, simply to 2012 levels, would have been enough.

The Daily Beast’s Kohn and others argue that heavy black turnout and support led to Jones’s victory — period. But Jones’s triumph was not attributable to his strong showing among black voters alone, or even a combination of black voters and white college graduates. My analysis indicates that Jones benefited from a margin swing of more than 30 points among white non-college voters, relative to the 2016 presidential race in the state.
The swing toward Jones was for sure even larger among white college graduates. But without the hefty swing among the white non-college population, particularly women, there is no way Jones would have the state, or even come close.

Alabama would have elected a pedophile to the Senate, no matter what the AA-community did, if not for a drastic swing in the white, working class vote. That's not the story you hear on TOP.

Finally, there is Chuck Shumer's famous line about how he wants to dump the white working class for Republican suburban voters. He's not good with math either.

white non-college voters remain a larger group than white college voters in almost all states — and are far larger in the Rust Belt states that gave the Democrats so much trouble in 2016: Iowa is 62 percent white non-college versus 31 percent white college; Michigan is 54 percent white non-college versus 28 percent white college; Ohio splits 55 percent to 29 percent; Pennsylvania 51 percent to 31 percent; and Wisconsin 58 percent to 32 percent.

Ohio, where Democrats’ white non-college deficit roughly doubled from 16 to 31 points in 2016, is a good example of the challenges Democrats face. Given this deficit, Democrats could completely replicate, in 2020, Obama’s high-water performance among black voters and still lose the state handily, probably by around 5 points. There is no way around it — if Democrats hope to be competitive in Ohio and similar states in 2020, they must do the hard thing: find a way to reach hearts and minds among white non-college voters.

It really isn't hard to win back a significant percentage of the white working class.
Any demographic that is obviously struggling and doesn't feel it is being represented is ripe for the taking.
Of course the Dems have to want to do it, and that is an open question.

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The Aspie Corner's picture

Get white working class folks mad at all the 'others' and watch them all kill each other. The porkies have been operating this way since colonial times. Either way the porkies stay in power and we all lose.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

I believe that more everyday. Trump and his RWNJ freaks are a feature for them, not a bug. They can virtue signal all they want and they'll remain permanently "prevented" from changing anything.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

Meteor Man's picture

Don't forget The Deplorables demographic. I suspect the demographics are intentionally misrepresented to sow confusion over DNC election strategies.

There is no single demographic voting block for Whites, Hispanics, Blacks or Asians. Age, education, income and job classification are wild cards in all of these groups.

Money quote:

It really isn't hard to win back a significant percentage of the white working class.

These would include Bernie Bros, Blue Collar laborers and minimum wage earners. My guess is that they would all be included in Hillary's Basket of Deplorables along with The Dreamers.

I don't think the DNC that has betrayed unions for decades is up to the challenge of pursuing poor and working class voters of any demographic group.

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

gulfgal98's picture

The best message to unite voters is one of economics. Voters will vote their pocketbooks first. Everyone needs to be able to put food on the table and care for their families.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@gulfgal98
don't tell any demographic "we don't want you" before the primaries even happen.
It's not too much to ask.

We should only exclude/marginalize groups with values we don't share. Not certain skin colors.

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@gulfgal98 @gulfgal98

As if money is power and money and power are the great equalizer. Civil rights are more important than food, housing, education, mansions, trips to Europe and all the things money can buy. This is why all of the successful black professionals and personalities are fighting to give away their money. Money doesn't make you happy. Civil rights that make you equal to any poor, exploited white person is the ticket.

I get so sick of the Clinton/Obama bots. A bunch of white elitist feeding off someone, something at all times. No wonder they love Bill and Barack. Role models. Dare to have an Independent thought, and they're like a swarm of hornets. It isn't the locale either. Whether it is DailyKos, Twitter, or FB, they're all the same. I think it's a genetic brain defect.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Bollox Ref's picture

of Minnesota lives in the Twin Cities, the metro dominant DFL really has no clue when it comes to dealing with people in the seeming Outback.

Upscale Kenwood (west of downtown Mpls) was the only place I saw that suggested significant support for her Herness in 2016.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

How much more divisive could a political party/political corporate media commentators get except by arguing over which-coloured group of Poors doesn't matter?

The divisive aspect seems to imply that they're all RUSSIAN!!! propagandists; on the other hand, the Russians do disgusting things like sending food and other humanitarian aid to populations starving because of sanctions and the like, rather than bombing/droning them, and (gasp) cutting back on their military budget to ensure that their people get their pensions, rather than pragmatically cutting SS and Medicare people have paid into life-long in order to further expand the military budget in order to bomb/drone more people, so it's hard to say...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.