I limited my definition of "blue collar voter" to northern Catholics because in the context of this topic that's really what is being discussed. Southern voters are largely GOP voters for cultural reasons and will likely remain so (which explains why Democratic presidential candidates barely even campaign in the South these days), but it's the urbanized northern states that have become the true swing states in recent decades -- states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and even New Jersey to a certain extent.
A lot of that demographic is single mothers who are under tremendous socio economic and cultural pressure. A national health plan would go halfway to resolving her most pressing problems.
Why stop there? A $10,000 cash payment every month would go even further toward resolving her most pressing problems, if that is what you are defining as her most pressing problem. As far as I'm concerned, a government is incapable of addressing a single mother's most pressing problem without resorting to utterly unacceptable totalitarian measures.
There was a time when charitable religious organizations were perfectly willing and able to address the needs of people like single mothers who -- for reasons completely outside their control -- found themselves in severe economic distress. It's no coincidence that "single motherhood" became more of a problem once government institutions replaced religious organizations as the primary means of dealing with this kind of problem.
And it is the reality of her life that she cannot spend as much time with her children as she would like. You may find this unusual but she has to work to support them. Her power to shelter them from the world around them, from the ceaseless economic insecurity of their lives is very limited. She can't fight Viacom for the souls of her children singlehanded. So she supports the GOP against a culture that wants to teach her children MTV values.
That's a heroic mother indeed, but you'd have to provide me with some solid evidence that this cohort of voters is actually supporting the GOP. I think it's actually the opposite, and that people like Bill Clinton and Al Gore got a lot of support from this type of voter.
Once upon a time, Southerners voted overwhelmingly Democratic on economic issues. Now they vote overwhelmingly GOP because they have correctly perceived that a core of the Democratic base viscerally hates Christianity and is committed to pushing all moral and cultural envelopes. Kerry, the Ivy League, Europe worshipping liberal, was everything they despise about the Democrats.
But then again, Clinton carried several Southern states. So don't assume that if cultural values can be neutralized (say, by a conservative Supreme Court that will not impose California values on Georgia or vice versa) as a national issue that a Southern democrat talking economic populism couldn't repeat that.
You throw around the word "totalitarian" like confetti. And yes, you do sound elitist. Libertarianism has made no electoral progress of any sort because it is the ideology of people who have it easy. People to whom national health care is "totalitarian".