Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

What Democrats Don’t Get About Trump’s Working Class Base
The Huffington Post ^ | April 23, 2017 | Michael Boyd, Contributor

Posted on 04/23/2017 10:32:08 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

Held in the middle of one of the most tumultuous eras of American politics, the 1965 New York Mayoral Election marked an important turning point in our history. The handsome John Lindsay, a progressive Republican at a time when the party had their fair share of liberals, managed to etch out a victory against future mayor Abraham Beam, a typical Tammy Hall Democrat. Lindsay would go on to serve two terms as mayor before watching his political career falter, but he may not have become mayor at all were it not for one man: William F. Buckley. While the late conservative intellectual is now better known for his philosophical contributions to the American right, he had a brief — but significant — career as a politician.

Buckley knew that he wouldn’t win the election. That wasn’t why he was running. In reality, the only real motive for Buckley was that he didn’t want to see a liberal Republican like Lindsay do well, lest John Lindsay become a central figure in the GOP and set back the young but burgeoning conservative movement. But, while Buckley may have hoped to stop Lindsay by chipping off Republican-leaning millionaires, his strongest support actually came from ethnic whites, or what we’d now call the “white working class.” In contrast, Lindsay, an Upper-East Sider and a quintessential member of the “liberal elite,” won by driving up the score with marginalized populations that saw a champion in him....

(Excerpt) Read more at huffingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS: jobs; trump; welfare; whites
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-24 next last

1 posted on 04/23/2017 10:32:08 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet
HOGWASH!

First of all, dear old John Vleet L. did NOT position himself to be uber "progressive"/LIBTARDY when he ran.

Secondly, Buckley said that he didn't want to win, which didn't help his cause.

2 posted on 04/23/2017 10:52:55 PM PDT by nopardons
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

WTH is a Tammy Hall d’rat? Are they so ashamed they’re unable to recall the correct name of Tammany Hall?


3 posted on 04/23/2017 10:53:12 PM PDT by V K Lee (Amateurs built the ark; Professionals - the Titanic)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: V K Lee

He may have just made a simple mistake.


4 posted on 04/23/2017 11:00:16 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (You cannot invade the mainland US. There'd be a rifle behind every blade of grass.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

We won’t be silenced by ‘you’ calling us nazis, racists, sexists, bigots, homophobes, islamaphobes, transphobes, etc.


5 posted on 04/23/2017 11:01:20 PM PDT by Organic Panic (Flinging poo is not a valid argument)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

Tammany Hall. Editors?


6 posted on 04/23/2017 11:04:05 PM PDT by Gaffer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: V K Lee

They’re functional illiterates and stupid to boot.


7 posted on 04/23/2017 11:12:56 PM PDT by nopardons
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: nopardons

When offered a drink from the Fountain of Knowledge, they only gargled.


8 posted on 04/23/2017 11:16:01 PM PDT by V K Lee (Amateurs built the ark; Professionals - the Titanic)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Gaffer
"Tammany Hall. Editors?"

Abraham Beame. Editors?

9 posted on 04/23/2017 11:17:41 PM PDT by Neanderthal
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: V K Lee
LOL...good one!

I bet that whomever wrote this drivel wasn't even alive, or at the least, wasn't out of diapers, back in '65.

I was an adult AND I knew dear old John Vleet L.! I lived through this election and its aftermath. I am an eyewitness and know the facts!

10 posted on 04/23/2017 11:19:57 PM PDT by nopardons
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

Or, perhaps he had been drinking. Or too much huffing and puffing. Lack of oxygen does that to a brain.


11 posted on 04/23/2017 11:22:54 PM PDT by V K Lee (Amateurs built the ark; Professionals - the Titanic)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet
Interesting article, even if only in its misapprehensions.

But it’s also because, from a liberal perspective, the Democratic Party should be the natural home of the white working class. After all, the Democratic Party is the one that stands up to big business. The Democratic Party is the one that stands up for Medicare and other entitlement programs. The Democratic Party is the one that rejects generous tax breaks for the 1%. The Democratic Party is the one that stands up for the workingman. And yet the Democratic Party seems unable to earn the support of the very people it claims to champion.

There's no real mystery here. These are self-congratulatory Democrat stereotypes, and precisely none of them is actually true. You might start there to appreciate why the working class - I did not say "white" - has departed the Dems in droves.

The Democrat party does not "stand up to big business", its very engine runs on big business donations and cozy crony capitalism. Neither does it "stand up for the workingman" - ask the coal miners of West Virginia about that. It has, in truth, rejected their former supporters in preference to trendy, "expert"-driven utopian policies on the environment, on hiring, race preference, and job-threatening illegal immigration. They didn't leave the party, in Reagan's memorable words, the party left them.

Many liberals like to view themselves as champions for the working class, but many working class citizens from all backgrounds seem to disagree. And as someone who works in a warehouse that employs a lot of minorities, I can confirm that these views are not exclusive to the white working class. While white working class and minorities may not agree on issues like trade or police reform, they aren’t far apart on issues like trans-gender rights, abortion, military intervention, or “welfare queens” (I’ve personally heard minority members of the working class complain about how people on welfare have better lives than they do.) I’ve often wondered how large a coalition a Trump-like candidate without his racial dog whistles and conspiracy theories could form.

Discard the silly premises about dog whistles and conspiracy theories and the author will stumble on the answer: that "Trump-like candidate" is currently occupying the White House. That's how far.

This is maddening - the author has described a perfect appreciation of the problem and still he doesn't know what it is. I too have heard non-white working class members complaining bitterly about illegal immigration because they're taking their jobs, stupid! And who the hell cares about men in women's rest rooms when the government is killing their jobs? And what working class women care about vaginas in the White House when the government is killing their husbands' jobs, and they're having to break into the piggy banks to put shoes on their kids for school, where the government educators are telling their kids that their country sucks? Hell yes there's a problem with the working class, and it's that they're fed up with this crock of crap that's being passed off as pure cream butter.

What needs to happen to the Democrat party - and it won't, which is why I'm safe saying it - is to boot the activists and the acolytes and the social theorists and the grifters and find a candidate who can convince the voters first that he or she loves America, as she is, warts and all, and not as some future vision the present is going to have to be burnt to the ground to effect. There is absolutely no one, not a single soul, on the Democrat side of the house who could convincingly take that position at this time or would dare to. And that's the problem.

12 posted on 04/23/2017 11:30:08 PM PDT by Billthedrill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nopardons

1965 found me graduating high school, with much more knowledge than kids today when they cross any stage and reach for a diploma.


13 posted on 04/23/2017 11:41:11 PM PDT by V K Lee (Amateurs built the ark; Professionals - the Titanic)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: V K Lee
That's absolutely true; sadly!

I'm just a bit older than you are and there isn't a graduate student, at ANY college, today, who knows what high school kids ( from Freshmen to Seniors ) knew in the early '60s!

14 posted on 04/23/2017 11:44:57 PM PDT by nopardons
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: nopardons

Yes, and unfortunately I am acquainted with more than one of them.


15 posted on 04/23/2017 11:52:45 PM PDT by V K Lee (Amateurs built the ark; Professionals - the Titanic)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: V K Lee
Oh dear....sorry about that. :-(

Schools stink, no matter which kind one might care to talk about, most parents have abrogated their responsibilities, and our "culture" stinks on ice. The dumbing down of America has taken hold and sadly, it's the same just about everywhere else on this planet.

16 posted on 04/23/2017 11:58:40 PM PDT by nopardons
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: V K Lee

I graduated in ‘64 and it was already worse then than a generation previous. I spent elementary school in a government sponsored private school for the progeny of diplomats and military in Istanbul- it was Calvert System and by the time I got into Jr Hi in Norfolk Va, I had been exposed to more world and American History than I saw again before I graduated. My mother always said that was how it was in her grammar school in the 20s and 30s in Ohio.


17 posted on 04/24/2017 2:27:42 AM PDT by arthurus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

When democrats call Trump supporters “uneducated white males”. Do they realize that, although not a Trump supporter, Bill Gates would fall into that category.


18 posted on 04/24/2017 3:44:27 AM PDT by suekas
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

Strikes me as a spell-check kind of error.


19 posted on 04/24/2017 3:45:02 AM PDT by Tallguy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

Trump had the working class for his base, the Democrats had all of the perverts for their base. It looks like there is still more workers than perverts


20 posted on 04/24/2017 4:16:16 AM PDT by okie 54
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-24 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson