Does Racism Lurk Behind Every Blue-Collar Vote For Hillary?

Beacon Street Journal ^ | 5/08/2008 | John Kinsellagh

[beacon street bandit]

In the wake of Obama’s struggle with securing white blue-collar voters of the Democratic Party, many left wing commentators as well as some mainstream media journalists, have found particular solace in explaining his lack of appeal to certain segments of what was once the bedrock coalition of the party, as a result of either explicit or implicit racism. We have all heard the conspiratorial and hidden message refrains: any attempt to get out and secure the blue-collar white vote is blowing the “race” dog-whistle; arguments about Obama’s “electability” are, at root, code words for the country is not ready to elect a black man president.

The New York Times John Harwood argues that part of the problem related to divisions within the party rests with the rules changes adopted by the Democratic Party itself during the McGovern candidacy:

Mr. McGovern became the Democratic standard-bearer in 1972. But the party’s new approach to the nominating process helped label Democrats as catering to their component parts rather than the broad electorate. “The idea of quotas, the concept itself which McGovern supported, was to be one of the major factors in the wrecking of his campaign,” Theodore H. White wrote in his book “The Making of the President 1972.” Mr. White saw this change as a profound ideological reordering. “The beautiful Liberal Idea of the previous half-century,” he observed, “had grown old and hardened into a Liberal Theology which terrified millions of its old clients.” That theology was dominated, in part, by what would come to be known as “identity politics.”

While this in part, explains the phenomenon of the discrete tribalism that seems to have reared its head in the recent primary contests (i.e, god and guns Democrats resistant to Obama’s latte-liberal message), it doesn’t squarely address the blue-collar white voter

[Mike Darancette]

Only the Democrat ones (Operation Chaos Excepted). This is an election where Republicans cannot be racists.