Feel their pain

by | Nov 20, 2014 | Editor's Blog, National Politics | 23 comments

As has been noted repeatedly since the election, Democrats have a problem with white working class voters. They have been voting increasingly Republican almost continually since 1994. This year they broke for the GOP by almost 30 points and even younger voters gave Republicans an almost 20 point margin. With those numbers, even if the electorate had mirrored 2012, Democrats would have lost.

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones argues that white working class voters hate welfare. They live closer to poverty and see, up close, more people paying with food stamps or getting checks while not working. At the same time, the blue collar folks are working hard, playing by the rules and still barely making it. In their minds, the money coming out of their paychecks are going to support the layabouts they see living off of the government.

I think Drum is right on the money, but I think the problem goes deeper than just welfare and roils some of the racial tension that so doggedly plagues our society.

For workers, wages have been stagnant for more than a decade and for most of the past 30 years. For a while, easy credit gave a sense of improving lifestyles, but that illusion came crashing down in the recession. Working class families got hit the hardest and have yet to recover. They’ve also not seen much offered in assistance.

However, their neighbors, some who don’t work and some who are in the country illegally, keep getting help. They want something for themselves. Instead, they see affirmative action programs give minority families and businesses a hand up, or as they see it, an unfair advantage. They see the president offering residency and the benefits of this country to undocumented workers, while they’ve been hard-working, law-abiding citizens who aren’t sure they can offer their own children a better quality of life.

Republicans understand these reactions and have exploited them. Democrats, in contrast, make the case for why the policies are the right thing to do. In short, Republicans appeal to emotions while Democrats appeal to morality and reason. In politics, emotion wins almost every time.

Too many Democrats think the answer to their electoral success lies with a younger, more diverse electorate. But they are losing working class whites faster than they are gaining other voters. They need to continue their turnout programs and appeal to white, blue collar families.

I’m not suggesting that Democrats compromise their core values and retreat on their commitment to a more fair and just society. I’m arguing that white working class voters are being left behind and Democrats have offered them little. Democrats need to show the same type of concern for them that they’ve shown for minorities and immigrants.

Kevin Drum suggested Democrats need more populist programs like Cash for Clunkers. That may be, but I would suggest they can also offer more substantive programs like free job training and community college education. Regardless, Democrats need to offer solutions that provide quick and tangible results for working class families.

Bill Clinton could feel your pain. Republicans feel your resentment. Democrats need to figure out how to alleviate it instead of exploit it.

23 Comments

  1. Bob

    Three comments:
    1. For years now, the pundit class has told us that demographics will result in Democrat rule. I don’t buy it. Democratic messaging is a huge unresolved problem, and you can’t get elected without messaging, demographics be damned. The root of the problem is this. There is a huge opening for Democrats with an economic populist message. Clinton’s third way politics, which Obama has largely tried to mirror in terms of policy, has Democrats beholden to corporate donors. The Democrats are afraid that economic populism will alienate corporate donors, and they are largely right. Obama’s electoral strategy was to bypass corporations and elicit small donations. It worked. But once elected, Obama’s policies gave his “small donor” little to get excited about. Democrats need to figure a way out of corporate servitude and make their message about economic populism.
    2. I am an educator, but I have to be honest. Traditional job training programs for the working class is a really dumb idea. The relatively good-paying manufacturing jobs lost in the past 25 years are gone – forever. The service jobs that have replaced them, even those that require a community college education, almost invariably pay less than what these workers made in manufacturing (unless it is nursing). I have a number of cousins my age in western NC that went to community college, got a two year degree, and now make less than they ever have. A jobs program that puts people back to work immediately on infrastructure projects is a much better idea than a traditional education = jobs program. That approach just breeds cynicism.
    3. In the university in NC, even among traditionally liberal majors like social work, sociology, and psychology, students are not excited about Democrats. They stay home during off-year elections or split their tickets when they vote in presidential year elections. Increasingly, as I hear it, the prevailing political preference among the 18-30 age group is some form of libertarianism. They want the government out of their private lives, yes, but they also want the government to minimize its involvement in economic redistribution programs as well. They mirror the skepticism about government they grew up with post-Reagan. Democrats should not rest on the assumption that demographics can solve their programs.

  2. lily

    A quote from Larry: “Do you not find it an injustice when your family has has been in this country for 200 years and have fought, bled, and worked their entire lives only to awaken and find that the government wants to give your tax dollars to people who have come into this country illegally, given birth to children free of charge in our hospitals as an anchor to remain in this country, and who really don’t want to be Americans but want to take advantage of the American ‘freebies’ are embraced more than the American blue-collared worker?”

    Yes, think it is an injustice, Larry but what is more of an injustice is fighting min. wage, equal pay for women, and backing a health program that benefits insurance companies. Do you think because your family has been here 200 year that entitles you to more, or that your folks fought and bled this separates you from other folks who have done the same. I don’t think so. These folks who come to this country do so because they lived in a country of “have” and have “nots”. There is no middle class. If you look closely, the income among the rich and powerful has been on the rise. Where as, the middle class income levels have been on the decline. The rich get the tax advantages, where as the middle class pay the bills. Major oil Companies get huge chunks of your tax dollar plus rob you at the pumps. The NFL is a tax exempt operation, which maintains a small group of domestic abusers. People like Romney are able to stash their money in off shore accounts to avoid taxes. or the corporation which declares it’s self a citizen of “wherever” to avoid paying taxes on the money they earned in the USA. There is problem here Larry, but it has little to do with illegals coming to this county. It has more to do with politicians who say they represent your interests, but vote to support their major contributors. . .

  3. Troy

    There comes a time that we begin to talk much yet say very little. I believe that time has come thusly to the Democratic party. It’s time Democrats started doing. They want to talk a good game, it’s time to play a good game. Action, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for action.

    Is the environment, forests, and renewable energy all important? They are. But are they more important than the people for whom they are intended to protect or serve? Seems to me they’re rather pointless in that regard if they fail to take the people into consideration and the impact they have. Someone will posit that people is the entire reason for the legislation to begin with. Perhaps, but when the rule punishes the people it is supposed to help, who is it that’s winning?

    Are a living wage, housing, food, and being able to work to support your family issues? Not on the same scale as the environment, forests, abortion, gay marriage, and renewable energy are with Democrats apparently. How can a party that purports to be for the people ignore almost the entire bottom tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy in its quest for social justice? And that those people, for the most part, want to be paid for the work they do, paid fairly and not what the current labor market dictates ‘acceptable’, a decent place to live, and food to eat? And lest we forget, a decent education system so that their children can be afforded the chance to learn, to develop solutions for the problems of tomorrow, and at least be equal socio-economically to their parents.

    We have defined the issues, we’ve talked about them, we may have even developed a plan for them, but what are we going to do about them? Develop a message ladies and gentlemen? No, the time for talking has past, we need action. I think we see that with the action the President just took in regard to immigration.

    Right or wrong, it’s doing something.

  4. Troy

    A message. “Democrats have to stay on message, develop a message, communicate a message…that resonates. Democrats have to remain true to their core values.” Indeed.

    Democrats have to appeal to a broad spectrum of voters, not just niche issue minority (and by minority, I mean small numbers) groups who pontificate chapter and verse on a single issue. Let’s call that broad spectrum, oh I dunno, the middle and lower classes, not a thousand and one

  5. Richard Scoville

    Thomas I think you have a real insight here. The pressure over the next few years is going to intensify:
    – working class wages are not just stagnating, they are in decline. The Republican state governments are going to continue to repress unions, cut back unemployment and other benefits
    – Much of public benefits goes to working class folks: big low-wage corporations like WalMart will continue to use food stamps and other public benefits as subsidies
    – Critically, the impact of health care costs on ordinary people, insured or not, is going to rise: copays, high deductibles, ‘fees’, out-of-network provider charges will continue to zap the working class. If the supreme court nixes Obamacare in non-exchange states, the pressure will only increase faster. Personal bankruptcies will be a frequent experience in everyone’s lives.
    The Dems have to communicate clearly to working class voters that the Republicans are NOT on their side. Then, as you suggest, they have to find a populist, progressive message that is about good jobs, raising wages and workers’ rights, reducing income inequality, and providing healthcare security.

    • wafranklin

      Righttttt … And (1) getting a coherent message, which (2) Democrats can subscribe too in their coats of many colors and (3) will cost an arm and leg and three goats across five years should be a snap for our many old guard pundits and their keepers. The billions for this should be easy for our “fund raisers” who have not raised funds and why, the forty think tanks and TV programs needed will not pose any problem. GOP and their billionaire friends, in pursuit of the Powell Memo (you do remember that, do you not) build a juggernaut in communications on several very simple issues, culminating in the latest, “why is that black many in my White House” which rendered Obama the ISSUE. So keep on fuddling around with addled conjecture on human nature – they will keep the government. First time NC Dems can affect it is: 2022, if they can win significantly in 2020, and earlier – doubtful given the gerrymander. Like King Canute, keep railing at the sea.

      • Richard Scoville

        Yup. You’re right. The Republicans are busy putting up barriers to skew the vote, and have grown skilled at amplifying tiny issues to deafening levels that end up swaying many voters. But the pressure on the white working class will only get worse for reasons I outlined above (and others too – demographics, automation, etc). Sooner or later there will be backlash: it will either follow the traditional lines of racial division that the Republicans (and prior to 1963 the Democrats!) have exploited so well, or we will finally overcome the race issue and frame this situation for what it is: class-based power politics. It happened in NC in the 1890s with the Fusionists; it can happen again.

  6. Whizzer

    “Republicans appeal to emotion while Democrats appeal to morality and reason.” Aw, geez, Thomas! You’re better than this kind of moral masturbation, aren’t you?

    • Thomas Mills

      It was a slap at Democrats. I’m don’t approve of parties claiming a moral high ground, whether on immigration or abortion.

      • Whizzer

        In which case I stand corrected and properly chastised.

  7. Greg Dail

    “…Democrats appeal to morality and reason.” WOW! Talk about tunnel vision!
    Question: Does the writer think the reversal by Obama/Pelosi/Reid of Bill Clinton’s welfare reform by the Democrats (which all agreed was VERY successful) was moral or reasonable?
    I could cite countless examples of Democrat’s blatant appeals to the emotions of some very stupid and ignorant people (Detroit comes to mind, 47% illiteracy) but white working class voters WHO HAVE A JOB are stupid and/or immoral?
    The hypocrisy demonstrated here is astounding!

  8. wafranklin

    Once again pundits ignore the vast amount of propaganda dumped into the market over many years, but in the past six, to make Obama THE ISSUE. You can argue emotion vs logic, vs whatever.

    But the refusal of the Democrats to look objectively at two factors cripples them. The right wing echo chamber and their allies have spent well over $3 billion or more to make anti-Obama attacks the equivalent of societal elevator music — which research proves does affect moods. And, repetition, repetition, etc. Been proven it is effective. So, Democrats have no countervailing operation, or for that matter, coherent message. The party is fundamentally fragmented in to the Money Democrats, much more well off, and the rest, the hoi polloi. That tension has been rampant the past 5 or 6 years, with a dissident element of rich folks, led by J. B. Hunt, denying NCDP money for spurious reasons. That fracture is national, deriving from the Clintons and DLC, the recruitment of Blue Dogs into the party for 25 years. So, how can you get a coherent message when a part of the party is a social and money elite? And they both hate and are suspicious of the Progressives and any progressive programs. Now just who decides what. Kay Hagan is Blue Dog par excellent, cochair of the cursed DLC replacement, the Third Way.

    The second major problem is the leakage of Democrats to the Un-affiliated in NC, something which is now a flood – and the Party cannot unify enough to address it, even if it wanted to. It is one of the “two hard” things and requires an understanding of the various political influences ongoing. I have asked for this information for years, and none of the pundits or the alleged party leaders have said anything, flinching if it is brought up in a public space.

    So, why will you not factor these two major issues into your commentary?

  9. Larry Carter

    So much ideology, so much crap. Can you honestly say that you are not upset when a person that is physically capable of working is sitting on their ass drawing unemployment? Are you not upset when a 20-year old is having sex, having 3 kids and drawing American taxpayer support for the remainder of her life because she has an excuse not to work is fair to those blue-collar workers paying for her support? Do you not find it an injustice when your family has has been in this country for 200 years and have fought, bled, and worked their entire lives only to awaken and find that the government wants to give your tax dollars to people who have come into this country illegally, given birth to children free of charge in our hospitals as an anchor to remain in this country, and who really don’t want to be Americans but want to take advantage of the American ‘freebies’ are embraced more than the American blue-collared worker?

    This is the Democratic decree. Offer everything – give nothing. We are a friend to the poor – but we will never make you richer. We are a friend of the downtrodden but we will never lift you up. It is all a power-grab. Anything to retain power….anything to add more Democrats to the voter rolls. Amnesty for millions. No voter identification. Early voting. Voting at any precinct. We will steal what we cannot attain on our own.

    And the people who will truly suffer are those whose roots in this country and whose blood was spilled to attain the freedoms that we so cherish – the American blue-collar worker.

    • Greg Dail

      Well said!

    • Thomas Mills

      Thanks, Larry. You just proved my point.

      • Someone from Main Street NC

        Wow! Larry’s off in Moocherville – AKA Obamaville – nice diatribe about the “moochers” among us. Too bad Larry is not aware the moochers are entities like Duke Energy (as an example – we’re paying for the cleanup of the Dan River – not the highly profitable Fortune 500 company that cut costs and failed to maintain infrastructure over a period of decades, FYI. GOP plan is to privatize profit and to socialize the costs.) And too bad Larry doesn’t realize GOP leaders like Romney, etc. slashed and burned away all support for that blue collar worker – outsourcing rules the GOP universe.

        We have several issues to contend with in NC:

        1) Absolute disarray of the NC Democratic party – the state organization has no money and is irrelevant (at least in this last election.) That’s a recipe for disaster, no matter how you look at it. (Or if not a disaster, show me the benefits from having no state organization.

        2) Lack of coherent Democratic messaging (though Tillis has no messaging beyond Hagan is with Obama, which sadly was quite successful – the racism of the NC voter is pretty influential.)

        3) The adoption of progressive messaging from NCGOP while implementing exceptionally repressive policies. I can’t tell you how many people think NCGOP are serious about education, but I hear a lot of people talk about that. Voters hear sound bites loud and clear (NCGOP spending tons more on education!) and fail to realize charts compare spending to post-crash numbers (after Democrats slashed education spending) and they fail to realize that the lack of support for education is absolutely damaging to the future of NC. Our children will simply not be competitive with children who grow up in states that care about education.

        I remain depressed about the outcome of the midterms. I don’t see NC Democrats doing/saying anything to lift me out of my malaise. That’s a bummer.

    • Rob Lewis

      What people need to understand is that our economy is fundamentally broken in many ways, and a lot of those Democratic policies you decry are attempts to put Band-Aids on the breaks. As more and more people realize, those good, middle-class jobs that created our postwar prosperity aren’t coming back. The rich capitalists are taking more and more of the economic pie, leaving less and less for the rest of us. Telling an unemployed person that he or she must take any starvation-level job out there isn’t the answer.

      The Republicans have no solutions for this. Neither do today’s Democrats. Listen carefully to what Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are saying: you might find something you can agree with.

    • lily

      Larry several months ago, I was unfortunate enough to have to listen to a telephonic town hall meeting conduct by Rep Richard Hudson. Although, he screened his questions, allowing only those who paralleled his views and did not question his voting history talk, something happened. He allowed one guy to state in effect “I hate those two basket food stamp people” I am a struggling disabled vet, I get nothing”. Richard agreed with him, but failed to discuss his own voting history as to veteran affairs as it related to benefits. Truth be told Old Richard,is not an original thinking type guy, but a follower of republican cuts to veteran benefits, ( when ever and where ever possible) If that caller had done his home work, he would have known Richards position on matters that concern him. First of all the two basket welfare queen was a myth created by St. Reagan 40 years ago. She has never existed in reality. But some folks still think she dose and it gives them the excuse to hate their fellow human being. Hate in the minds of some folks works better then reason. They hate people who do not belong to the same organized religion as they, or their skin color is different or are not from around here. Hate beats thinking and questioning 10 to one. Moreover, there is less trouble with head aches. Keep up the good work North Carolina Republicans, soon you you will have all those low in information, poorly educated, under paid, with no health care or benefits for your labor, force. These mass of low information voters out there doing your (gods) work. “Nothing could be finer” Kind of reminds you of the good old days when men could own other men. What happen to the concept mentioned in the Constitution that all men are “equal” and freedom of religion. Freedom to practice or not practice a religion of your choice as long as that practice in a literal sense did not harm you or another.

      Please tell me I am wrong?
      . .

  10. Will

    I also find it odd that beltway Democrats seem to think that a titular support for marriage equality is enough to hold onto young voters. It’s not. We have grown up in the context of the Great Crash of 2008. Most young people who I speak with do not expect to have the same kind of career opportunities and stability that their parents had (I certainly don’t).

    All this is to say that I think you are spot on about why Democrats have lost the white working class but I also suspect that not only will gains from young voters not make up the difference but that the same policies and priorities that caused the Democrats to loose white working class voters could also cause young voters to look to third party options or, as happened this year, simply sit the election out because they don’t see the outcome as very impactful on their life.

  11. Frank McGuirt

    So many of the assumptions about “welfare” are dead wrong. But it’s difficult to explain because the rules/regulations are so complicated. The real money from our taxes goes to business/corporate “welfare” but, again, that’s difficult to breakdown and explain to my peers in the middle class.

    • Unaffiliated Voter

      MORE than enough goes to welfare hogs, Frank…

  12. wncguy

    Another problem that holds us back on talking with these voters is that many times progressives and liberals basically call these voters “stupid.” No we don’t explicitly use the word but we call them “uninformed” or that they “vote against their interests” and that we need to if we “educate” them they will vote our way.

    And while all that may be true, you are never going to get someone to even listen to you if the first thing out of your mouth demeans them and stay hey were smarter than you and know how you should vote and you don’t.

    We need to return to a discussion on our shared values then provide a clear vision and message that shows how supporting democratic candidate can help everyone improve their life standing..

  13. larry

    Well I am sure the Business Democrats could step up with a plan…a jobs plan…say 5 to 10 year plan like the space program. The plans would include training, education. Real job training and more importantly help with start ups. New businesses and not just those glamorous Tech start-ups that everyone gets in a sweat about. The SBA is a joke and its a banker shill. Real start up help..money, guidance, advise, marketing and advertising tips no mater what or size the business. Car repair, welding shop, handicraft business…. REAL job creation. You want white working class voters…do the work to get them. In the process I suspect you will get a whole lot of african-american and immigrants of all stripes. White working class voters need a reason to see and understand the logic of Democratic policies instead of the divisive slop the GOP is peddling. A jobs plan comparable to the space program in dollars and commitment and along the way lots of good old fashion policy teaching moments.

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