Free Republic

The white working class is one of the largest and most important groups in the electorate. Understanding it is key to political success for both parties. One of the most talked about groups in recent elections has been the white working class. Although the group has declined as a share of the nation since World War II, it is still very large at nearly 40 percent of the national electorate. Understanding its views and values is essential to political victory, so it isn’t surprising that politicians of all stripes are working hard to gain such an understanding. Andrew Levinson’s...

A West Virginia state senator leaves the Democratic party.In West Virginia, a fed-up Democratic state senator is changing parties — and hoping to represent his state in Congress. State senator Evan Jenkins is done with President Obama’s vision for America. “The Obama agenda has become crystal clear,” he says, pointing to the president’s support for “immigration reform that includes amnesty provisions” as well as “his limitations on our constitutional rights relating to gun ownership,” “his environmental agenda, which spells the end of coal and coal jobs,” and “the government takeover of health care.” “Those are issues and positions that I...

For all the excitement about left-leaning demographics, a real majority party needs better numbers among blue-collar whites. In the months since the 2012 elections it has become apparent that the victorious Democratic coalition Obama assembled is still not sufficiently large to overcome the unprecedented Republican obstruction and sabotage of the normal processes of American political life.Although long-term demographic trends(PDF), such as the increase in minority voters and the rise of the Millennial generation, are favorable for the Democrats, translating those trends into true political and electoral dominance will remain difficult so long as Democrats rely on simply turning out core...

excerpt: When he speaks to black or Latino communities to pump up his base, he changes his tune. Out pops the community organizer, ginning up resentment and victimhood and thereby indirectly blaming the white middle class and promoting a divisive us-against-them mentality. Speaking on the Latino station Univision: And if Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, we're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us, if they don't see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it's gonna be harder...

Unlike Obama, House Democrats will have trouble forging a majority without that demographic. Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously remarked that all politics is local. But this year, it’s the rhetoric of John Edwards that rings truer--in assessing the House race landscape, there are indeed two Americas. President Obama believes the way to win a second term is by rallying elements of the party base, but House Democrats trying to take back the majority face the added burden of winning the votes of increasingly disillusioned white working-class voters. When looking at why Republicans are likely to retain their 25-seat majority--The...

Almost no one noticed, but around George W. Bush's reelection in 2004, the nation crossed a demographic milestone.From Revolutionary days through 2004, a majority of Americans fit two criteria. They were white. And they concluded their education before obtaining a four-year college degree. In the American mosaic, that vast white working class was the largest piece, from the yeoman farmer to the welder on the assembly line. Even as late as the 1990 census, whites without a college degree represented more than three-fifths of adults.But as the country grew more diverse and better educated, the white working-class share of the...

Foreclosures, plant closings, offshored jobs, underwater mortgages, miserable rates of unemployment, stagnating incomes: Is there any end to the woes of the struggling American middle? Apparently not, because now comes news of a trend guaranteeing trouble ahead for the more than half of the nation that make up the moderately educated and moderately earning middle — even if the economy improves. That seismic shift, outlined in a new report from the National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values, is towards more divorce, more out of wedlock births and, ipso facto, fewer kids with a hopeful future. Family breakdown,...

The Obama campaign’s recent outreach effort aimed at non-college educated white voters may work because the demographic’s tepid support for President Barack Obama is partly offset by its low regard for the GOP presidential candidates. First Lady Michelle Obama will be in Florida a the Ford 400 NASCAR race making the Obama campaign pitch next week and then back to Washington for the “Country Music: In Performance at the White House.” The one-day event features a line-up of famous county music singers, including Dierks Bentley, Alison Krauss and Kris Kristofferson. Focusing on this demographic makes sense: A new CNN poll...

For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class. All pretence of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second,...

President Obama‘s choice of Scranton, Pa., to talk taxes today isn’t just coincidence: it’s a strategic backdrop for a pre-election pitch aimed largely at white working-class voters in critical swing states. In a speech at Scranton High School — a setting identical to one used last week in Manchester, N.H. — Obama will plug his plan to extend and expand a payroll tax cut for workers and impose a new payroll tax cut for small businesses. He’ll also likely underscore Republican opposition, which has included GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney. Obama’s campaign strategists say the goal is to articulate in real,...

Has Barack Obama​'s Democratic Party given up on winning the votes of the white working class? Thomas Edsall, the longtime Washington Post reporter now with The Huffington Post, thinks so. Surveying the plans of Democratic strategists, Edsall wrote in The New York Times on Nov. 28 that "all pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned." Of course, an Obama campaign spokesman issued a prompt denial. No campaign wants any groups of voters to know that it has written them off. But Edsall is plainly on to something. Obama campaign strategists have...

President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign will be the first in modern political history to abandon white working-class voters, strategists claim. For decades, Democrats have been losing more and more blue collar whites. Their alienation helped lead to the massive Republican wave in 2010, when the GOP wooed 30 percent more of them than the Democrats could. Democratic strategists say President Obama is focusing his attention, instead, on poor black and Hispanic voters and educated white professionals. 'All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The story is now across the pond, UK Daily Mail: "President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign will be the first in modern political history to abandon white working class voters, strategists claim. For decades, Democrats have been losing more and more blue collar whites. Their alienation helped lead to the massive Republican wave in 2010," the midterms, "when the GOP wooed 30 percent more of them than the Democrats could. Democratic strategists say President Obama is focusing his attention, instead, on poor black and Hispanic voters and educated white professionals." They're just recycling Thomas B. Edsall's piece...