I was planning to stay out of the primary wars today, but I made the mistake of checking in and saw the disgusting, elitist, destructive diary at the top of the rec list. Here's the money quote: White working class voters are, the author claims:
People who historically can't identify their own interest? People who vote on the basis of beer, and bowling?
Don't you just love the Faux-News question marks. Yeah, okay, white working class voters are too stupid to know what's good for them.
Who are white working class voters? Although the author only pretends to want to know the answer, I'll give her one anyway.
White working class voters are too numerous and varied to describe in a single stroke. Some, relatively few, are Reagan Democrats. And they are steelworkers and coal miners and waitresses and nurses, etc. They are rust belt workers who helped Sherrod Brown win. And they are Wisconsin farmers who helped Obama win the primary there. What they have in common is that they've gotten screwed over the last 40 years by Republican dominance and the corporatization of Democratic Party.
They used to form the core of our party, when Democrats dominated. Although the demo is getting relatively smaller, they remain a critical swing group. Of course, their political value should be a secondary concern: we should help working class voters because they need help.
The author of the diary in question want to write off these voters. So do David Axelrod, and Chris Bowers--a strange sentiment coming from purported advocates of the 50-state strategy. Bowers, for his part, dreams of a coalition between the "creative class" (I hate that term) and African-Americans, Bowers seems not to realize that it already existed. It was called McGovern's campaign.
And that's what Obama's campaign will be if he listens to the elitist sentiment exemplified by the crap stinking up the rec list.