Joan C. Williams: Obama and the Democrats Must Reconnect with Working-Class Voters
[Joan C. Williams, a professor at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, is the author of "Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter."]
...For two generations, the Democrats have failed to relate to white working-class voters. Black working-class voters never abandoned the party, but the percentage of working-class whites who identified as Democrats fell from 60 percent in the mid-1970s to 40 percent in the mid-1990s. George W. Bush won his two presidential elections with landslides among white working-class men, while Obama lost among white working-class voters by 18 percentage points in 2008, roughly the same margin by which Al Gore lost them in 2000....
Democrats need to understand why Republicans have been so successful at courting working-class whites -- and why Democrats have been consistently unable to do so. Let's start with the tea party's battle cry to "restore America."
Restore what, exactly? For two generations after World War II, a blue-collar man could support his family; buy a house, car and washing machine; and send his kids to good public schools. The typical blue-collar household in 1973 was more than twice as well off as the equivalent household 25 years earlier. With the economy booming, the Democrats focused on universal social programs and provided Social Security, unemployment insurance, VA and FHA mortgages, educational benefits for veterans, good public schools and universities, and Medicare.
Then the economy shifted. The wages of high-school-educated men fell by nearly a fourth in the 1980s and 1990s. Family income fell less, but only because families sent wives into the labor force. While this was happening, the Democrats' social justice concerns moved away from universal economic entitlements and toward race, gender, the environment and gay rights....
Read entire article at WaPo
...For two generations, the Democrats have failed to relate to white working-class voters. Black working-class voters never abandoned the party, but the percentage of working-class whites who identified as Democrats fell from 60 percent in the mid-1970s to 40 percent in the mid-1990s. George W. Bush won his two presidential elections with landslides among white working-class men, while Obama lost among white working-class voters by 18 percentage points in 2008, roughly the same margin by which Al Gore lost them in 2000....
Democrats need to understand why Republicans have been so successful at courting working-class whites -- and why Democrats have been consistently unable to do so. Let's start with the tea party's battle cry to "restore America."
Restore what, exactly? For two generations after World War II, a blue-collar man could support his family; buy a house, car and washing machine; and send his kids to good public schools. The typical blue-collar household in 1973 was more than twice as well off as the equivalent household 25 years earlier. With the economy booming, the Democrats focused on universal social programs and provided Social Security, unemployment insurance, VA and FHA mortgages, educational benefits for veterans, good public schools and universities, and Medicare.
Then the economy shifted. The wages of high-school-educated men fell by nearly a fourth in the 1980s and 1990s. Family income fell less, but only because families sent wives into the labor force. While this was happening, the Democrats' social justice concerns moved away from universal economic entitlements and toward race, gender, the environment and gay rights....