A February 9th op-ed piece from the Aspen Times has made it's way out of Aspen and into the inboxes of "angry white men" around the country. Apparently, the angry white man is dissatisfied with all the presidential candidates:
Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians.
There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man.
Who is he?
He might be a Republican and he might be a Democrat; he might be a Libertarian or a Green. He knows that his wife is more emotional than rational, and he guides the family in a rational manner
Why is the Angry White Man so pissed off?
When his job site becomes flooded with illegal workers who don’t pay taxes and his wages drop like a stone, he gets righteously angry. When his job gets shipped overseas, and he has to speak to some incomprehensible idiot in India for tech support, he simmers. When Al Sharpton comes on TV, leading some rally for reparations for slavery or some such nonsense, he bites his tongue and he remembers. When a child gets charged with carrying a concealed weapon for mistakenly bringing a penknife to school, he takes note of who the local idiots are in education and law enforcement.
If no one is pandering to the angry white man, it's because the angry white man is acting like an ignorant child.
The angry white man is not losing wages to illegal immigrants because the angry white man thinks too highly of himself to do the low skilled labor that many of the illegal immigrants do. In fact, the angry white man is probably the one hiring illegal immigrants to do the low skilled labor.
Instead of calling for programs to re-train workers who will inevitably lose jobs as a result of trade which is beneficial to the overall economy, the angry white man is fixated on the accent of the customer service representative trying to fix his laptop.
The angry white man claims to need a gun to protect his family, but apparently is not concerned if his child's classmates bring weapons to school.
However, is seems that the Angry White Man is softening to Obama. Perhaps the angry white man woke up sick one morning and realized he had no health insurance to pay for a doctor's visit. Perhaps the angry white man realized he cannot make his mortgage payments. Perhaps the angry white male began to question why his son was killed in Iraq. Perhaps he opened a newspaper and saw that the candidates are still pandering to him (see article: A Page from Paul Wellstone).
Perhaps the Angry White Man is realizing that his interests are not exclusive from everyone else's.