Posted on 01/09/2015 3:40:15 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Democrats for over a century were associated with the American middle class.
Working-class voters once believed that Democratic-inspired intervention into the economy – minimum-wage laws, overtime pay, Social Security, Medicare, workers’ compensation – protected their interests better than unfettered free-market capitalism.
Republicans often had trouble selling the argument that an unleashed economy and new technology would relegate poverty to a relative, not absolute, condition – something like suffering with a cheap outdated iPhone 4 while the better-off afforded an iPhone 6. Why, then, have Democrats lost the working class – especially white, lower-middle-class voters?
There are several obvious reasons.
For one, high-profile progressives are largely rich, and their relatively small numbers live in a gentrified cocoon. Politicians, academics, media personalities, celebrities and other Democratically aligned professionals had just the sort of academic brands or technological, linguistic, cultural and service skills that were well-compensated during the transition to globalism.
Their out-of-touch privilege, however, led to agendas – radical green politics, hyper-feminism, transgender advocacy, forced multiculturalism, open borders – that were not principal concerns of the struggling working classes. A techie in Silicon Valley, an actor in Hollywood, a trial lawyer in Washington or a professor at Yale had the income to afford the steeper taxes and higher housing, energy and college costs that were the natural dividends of their own political agendas.
High-speed rail, expensive graduate degrees and European-level gas prices are logical aims for elites....
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
He’s absolutely right, and eloquent as ever.
I’d go a huge step further:
I think that the GOP, too, is losing or HAS LOST much of the middle-class.
Truck-drivers, roofers, plumbers, landscapers, small farmers.
The list is very long.
It has no respect for the rule of law. It’s a virtual dictatorship. Does it even need the working class?
In all reality, NEITHER party are for the “working class”.
Both parties sold out the working class back during the early/mid-90s with trade deals that has devastated them, along with many communities throughout the country. They told all of the displaced workers to train and acquire job skills to “compete”. Many did just that, and now they are being sold out by IMPORTING foreign workers on H1B Visas.
They’re working on finishing off what’s left of the ‘lower end’ workers via open borders and amnesty. The lobbyists for the Chamber of Commerce are quite pleased.
In the end, the Chamber of Commerce gets their cheap labor, and the dems get more people dependent on .gov handouts. It’s a win-win for everyone, except US!!! (assholes)
No Victor. The Republicans didn't have trouble selling it - they were TOO AFRAID to sell it. They immediately accepted the Left's premises, and what happened was the gradual decline of American exceptionalism and the rise of envy and class politics.
True indeed. The difference between the two parties is negligible at this point.
They have become the storm-troopers of the left and gave large amount of monies to the party...
The growing Hispanic population is important to keep on the democrat plantation ...
I don't think the democrat party needs white middle class non-union working people anymore...
Now if only the GOP would figure that out...
So has the Cronyism of the GOP-E.
They don’t mind.
Liberals are busy wiping out the working class and replacing them with the dependent class.
That’s why they are doing every thing they can to reduce the size of the working class.
They kill jobs to force independent people into poverty and onto the government dole.
Who do they think will pay the taxes to fund the welfare recipients?
I suppose they think they can just continue printing money to pay the bills for the welfare state.
They can go after bigger game, squeezing “the rich” who employ people regardless of where they live or whom they vote for.
He’s getting there.
In Texas, blacks voted 88% (or more) Democrat in 2014. They are a lost cause (overall) for Republicans. There are certainly exceptions, such as a couple of them that I work with...but I’m doubting whether they will ever vote more than 20% Republican in my lifetime.
Having said that, things get more interesting when you leave that group. Whites, in Texas, voted 75% REPUBLICAN, and like it or not, they still make up a majority (by a large margin) of the voting public here (about 70%). If the whites vote as a block, which they’re coming close to doing, their candidate will be VERY DIFFICULT to defeat.
Hispanics were the BIGGEST SURPRISE in Texas (and not just Texas) in 2014. Here, they voted 45% Republican, and NONE of the Republican candidates pandered to them...at best they were neutral, and one was outright hostile to Open Borders (he got 46% of the Hispanic vote, by the way). With Hispanics virtually splitting their vote down the middle (at least in Texas and other Southern States)...they are simply out of the picture, and the battle becomes, once again, Whites versus Blacks - and guess what - there are A LOT MORE WHITES, and that is why EVERY statewide candidate in Texas, in 2014, won by 20%, and why Baby Fat now has an office on K-Street.
Things are getting a LOT MORE INTERESTING now, and not in the direction of the Democrats.
The rich can live anywhere, and will, if taxes get too high.
Same as it is now. None other than The Federal Reserve. They 'print' money, and buy our own bonds from the Treasury with currency that's loaned into existence. It's basically like a snake that's eating itself, when you get to the bottom of it. Ultimately it will lead to our destruction once interest rates rise by even a little.
Haven’t you got the memo? They can just print it...
It’s going global.
Agree; well put.
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