Posted on 12/02/2014 1:42:29 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
A measly 34 percent of this group backed House Democratic candidates in 2014, creating a gap that could sunder the party's 2016 hopes.
Hillary Clinton's support of deferred deportation of millions of undocumented workers might help the Democratic Party's putative presidential nominee win over Latinos in 2016. But among the voters most responsible for the Democrats' midterm wipeout this year, it could very well make things worse—and therein lies Clinton's dilemma.
Support for Democrats among white, working-class voters was especially sparse this year: A measly 34 percent of them backed Democratic House candidates, exit polls found, while they fled in almost equal measure from Senate candidates like Rep. Bruce Braley in Iowa and incumbent Mark Udall in Colorado. Democrats still performed relatively well among black and Hispanic voters, but the deficit among whites without a college degree—who constituted more than one-third of the nationwide electorate—was too much to overcome.
One of the central challenges facing a Clinton campaign will be managing to win back enough of those voters, especially in a working-class-heavy battleground like Iowa. But as her quick support of deferred deportations shows, she'll have to do so while also motivating black, young, and Latino voters who formed the core of President Obama's coalition in 2008 and 2012.
At times, the two imperatives will work against each other.
"Democrats, to win regularly, not just the presidency but other levels of government, they need to do better among ... noncollege whites than they've been doing," said Ruy Teixeira, a demographer who has written extensively about the electoral advantages inherent in the nation's changing demographics. "You can't ... just rely on the coalition of the ascendant."
Once the backbone of the Democratic Party, working-class white voters have gradually shifted into the GOP's camp since the 1970s in part because of the alienation they felt toward an increasingly urban, culturally cosmopolitan party. Democrats, meanwhile, have made up for the loss by winning over minorities and a greater share of the upscale white vote.
Clinton doesn't have to win a majority of white voters without a college education—Obama never did, after all. Even during the height of his 2008 campaign, he won just 40 percent of them. Four years later, his share slipped to 36 percent.
But in 2014, the bottom fell out, and it fell out in places where Democrats have performed relatively well with working-class white voters, even recently. The party didn't just lose the white, working-class vote in places like Arkansas and West Virginia, where it has long since stopped being competitive at a presidential level. It also lost the vote in Iowa.
Braley, the Democratic Senate nominee in Iowa, won just 41 percent of the white, working-class vote in an overwhelmingly white state, exit polls showed, on his way to a stunning 9-point defeat in an open-seat race. Precise data was unavailable for Obama's performance among the same group in Iowa in 2012, when he won the state comfortably, but he won 52 percent of voters without a college degree that year.
Other states showed a particularly weak performance among blue-collar whites: In Colorado, Udall got just 34 percent of their vote, to his opponent's 61 percent. For Democratic presidential candidates, most plausible paths to the White House run through winning both of those states.
Democrats do have some reason for optimism. For one, the share of white, working-class voters continues to shrink every presidential election by an average of about 3 percentage points, according to Teixeira, while the share of groups Democrats do better with—racial minorities and well-educated white voters—continues to grow. And Democrats hope that Clinton, as the nation's first major-party female presidential nominee, would be able win over so-called waitress moms at a greater rate than most Democratic candidates.
The most pressing need for Clinton, however, might be devising an economic agenda and message able to convince some of those voters to back Democratic candidates.
What the article doesn’t mention is Clinton’s biggest baggage is her association with the unpopular Obama and his policies.
Add to that her unimpressive resume, her undistinguished tenure as a US Senator from New York and as Secretary Of State under Obama and the fact she has no political coattails to speak of.
Every candidate she endorsed and campaigned for this year lost. And the Democrats think she has a gilded path to the White House in 2016? That’s a lot easier said than done.
Above all, her ice cold personality doesn’t exactly make people warm up to her. There’s nothing like the following Obama developed before and during his presidential campaign in 2008.
Plus, her age works against her.
Plus she is BUTT ugly both inside and out! ! ! ! !
~No~
Plus, she’s a terrible retail politician, unlike her husband and many of her potential competitors in both parties. Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio are all in their early forties, Sarah Palin just turned 50, Chris Christie is only 52 and Scott Walker is 47. That matters a lot, as a presidential campaign is a long, hard slog. I’ve worked on several and they’re rough on young people, much less the elderly.
But Hitlery? I doubt it.
what white working class?
As for her agenda, the party’s radical left is against pro job, pro growth and high wage policies.
Its only policy seems to be to displace American workers in favor of illegals. A policy she herself has endorsed.
That sets the bar very high for the Democrats to win back voters who are abandoning it in droves.
Another problem Hillary faces as a woman - is the white male problem. She is seen as unsympathetic and indifferent to the needs of white men. They see her as a feminist who hates them and few of them will vote for her and not because of her sex.
Hillary is not the kind of politician to pull off a makeover of the kind needed to win the White House in two short years.
The kind Kasich won over in OH by expanding Medicaid to cover in defiance of Republican orthodoxy.
He knew they’d never be able to afford Obamacare so he made the best of a bad situation.
That helped people see him as someone who cared about them and he won Democratic strongholds throughout the state.
In contrast, Hillary comes across looking more like Leona Helmsley. Its all about her not about people this article claims could identify with her.
I don’t see working class Americans flocking to her banner. Like the saying has it, “where’s the beef?”
Nope, gone from the racist democrats forever.
Women will flock to her like Blacks did to Obama.
They’ll pull the lever thinking “she’s a woman” just like Blacks did thinking “He’s black”.
Okay, then why did so many Democratic women lose the female vote a month ago? Examples: Wendy Davis and Sandra Fluke. Neither one is what I’d call a beauty, but they’re surely more attractive than Secretary Clinton.
I would hope that at this point - working class American has now seen the socialist policies of The Left and will never support them....even the Unions tried to shield themselves from them when Obamacare rolled out...
Then again - I’ve seen the same blind following before in history...
Blacks vote for a black candidate out of racist solidarity.
Women have never voted that way and its patronizing to think they vote automatically for a woman in the way blacks pull the lever for a black because of his skin color.
They’re smarter than men give them credit for and you sir - as are sexist as Mark Udall. He lost.
(Snort)----yeah, sure, DACA was a really BIG help to Dems historic losses in midterms.
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Mmmmmmm.....I just can't wait to see Hillary donning her serape and sombrero.....going after latino votes.
That ill-fated move will put her on a train to political Endsville faster than you can say, "I'll have the combo platter w/ extra hot sauce."
Yup.
Give women respect. They’re not that dumb and know when liberal men and women insult their intelligence by telling them men want to keep them barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.
As far stereotypes go - its an offensive and a dated one. The Democrats’ War On Women meme flopped in this election.
You are correct sir. She is one ugly and evil beyotch. Rotten to the core. One day she will stand before God, and give an account.
I wish I could believe that.
The party now represents poor cotton counties, minority majority districts and hipster and college liberal strongholds.
Now that’s an ascendant majority. Ruy Texeira needs to figure out why the coalition of the ascendant has collapsed.
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