As it's now safe to say Sen. Obama will be the Democratic Party nominee for president it's time to start looking at what we need to do to win. Since the focus has been on white working class voters for the last month, I'm going to start there.
First I want to link to dairy I wrote about a year ago. It's on a story by Noam Scheiber of TNR and it's profound. Why Conservative's fake populism works. It deals with how G.W. Bush, Fred Thompson, and other wealthy republicans win over the white working class.
Liberals generally assume that what most Americans want from politics is a modest improvement in their lives: affordable health care, retirement security, good schools for their children. Under this paradigm, voters should prefer a politician whose life experience has taught him how tough it can be to get by without such staples. The fake populist is maddening because he professes to understand their concerns but has zero life experience (or at least zero recent life experience) that would make such understanding possible.
First I want you to understand what Scheiber is writing. I think this is a great question to ask yourself about your favorite candidate. In this case Sen. Obama. If I were Rich would I want to be like this person? What ever group of voters my candidate is targeting, would they want to be like this person? If I were wealthy would I want this person to be my best friend? I used to go nuts over the question: "Who would you rather invite to a barbeque" when it was asked in 2000, and 2004 Presidential elections. I thought that is no way to pick the leader of the free world. But the way this article posed it, made me reevaluate. I began to see that when I myself picked a candidate, I was doing the same thing. If I was elected what would I want to do? Maybe understanding this impulse will make our candidates better at selling themsleves. Maybe they have been selling the wrong way?
The difference between you and the first kind of rich person is a vast cultural chasm. The only difference between you and the second kind of rich person is a hefty chunk of cash. If you somehow became rich overnight, there's no way you would be accepted among the first group--and you probably wouldn't want to be. But you could easily imagine yourself fitting in with the second group. And that's more or less what Fred Thompson and George W. Bush are suggesting when they throw on the shit-kickers and turn up the drawl. Sure, they're phonies.
But, if you were rich, you'd want to be the same kind of phony--not a John Kerry kind of phony. Liberals see wealth and hominess as contradictory, but, for many working-class voters, they're complementary goods. They like their rich people homey and their homey people rich.
Not long after winning his Senate seat in 1994, Thompson got in his rented pickup and drove all the way to the entrance of the U.S. Capitol. By way of explanation, he told a reporter he had hoped to unleash the "doggonedest traffic jam that Washington, D.C., has ever seen from all those staff members trying to get out of town." It might have sounded strange to hear this from a rich Washington lobbyist who had recently owned an apartment only eight blocks from the White House. But that analysis misses the point. The kind of rich person willing to force the Washington establishment to admire the rear of his Chevy is, for many Americans, exactly the kind of rich person they want in office.
This is why I think it's such a mistake when Democrats let the "Washington Cocktail set" talk them into publishing detailed plans. Do most working class Americans have the time or inclination to read a 300+ page detailed report? When does the GOP ever have to release their 300+ page report on lets say:
- Winning in Irag? (they can't)
- How to pay off the $4,000,000,000,000 Bush borrowed? (they can't)
- How to fix Healthcare (they don't admit there is a problem)
The traditional media never ask the GOP to do this. They just go around tough guying, with the same tired lines smaller government (just enough to pay no bid contracts), war mongering, minority baiting (now it immigrants, last time it was gays, before that Blacks). What Democrats need to do is rememeber they have to have a plan, but they don't need it to be the center peice of their campaign.
If I was Sen. Obama, I would talk about shuttered steel mills in his and his wifes Chicago neighborhood. There is no need to mention shuttered steel mills on Chicago SOUTH side. A big part of John Edwards working class support in his run for the NC Senate was his "son of a mill worker" story. Sen. Obama should use the race in West Virginia to start working on this narrative. He knows what a town looks like when it's steel mills close, because he saw it first hand. RELATE, RELATE, RELATE! He needs to say he got his start in a working class neighborhood in Chicago. Let people know where he is from. Unlike LA, NYC, or Miami, Chicago still has a "real world people" image. Yes I know Chicago is a top financial center but it still has a working man mystique, Sen. Obama should use it.
But he does need some substance. Sen. Obama needs one big proposal to talk about when he meets white working class voters. I think Trade Schools are a major opening. Democrats have credibiality on the issue of education. But many working class voters don't see all their children going to college. All Democrat ever talk about is college education. We need to expand the playing field. One thing I often hear when talking to working class voter is the following. "Not everyone went to college" or "What about people who like to work with their hands?" When is the last time a democrat really talked about a NEW plan on this issue. Yes we fight unfair trade but many working class voter see these jobs bleeding away anyways so why not vote their more conservative values instead of their economic interest?
A major $30 billion dollar expansion in trade schools would help address this. The median expected salary for a typical Plumber I in the United States is "6,995. that is a good salary. For an electrician it's Electrician Journeyman it's start at $14.50 an hour (no experience) and tops at $25.00 an hour. In many areas of the country there are shortages of workers with these trade skill. These are well paying blue collar jobs.
Trade school as an issue also fit into Sen. Obama image as an aspirational candidate. Sen. Obama is doing well with middle class voters because he is seen as an aspirational candidate. I think he could do this working class voters as well. This idea would be a winner with him. He should pepper his speaches with rhetoric like "as president I can't tell you all your jobs are coming back, but we can look after your children's future. The line I remember most in "what's the matter with Kansas" is that all parents what to protect their childrens future. When working class votes feel threatened by their bleek economic situation, they feel unable to protect their children future financially. They then feel they can at least protect them from the culture. Cultural warfare work politically because it's working class parents way of feeling they are protecting their childrens future. Because they lack hope about their financial future they turn to cultural issues. Sen. Obama got in trouble by speaking this truth out loud in a pretty lousy way. Trade schools are a better way to address this situation.
My last point is that on the trade issue. Sen. Obama (or at least his surugates) needs to go after McCain. But rather than attack it as just an economic issue, he needs to make it a patriotic issue as well. One of the reason we have gotten killed with working class whites are that we as progressives are seen as wimps. The GOP has done a masterfull job painting us that way over the last 30 years. We need to make an appeal to patriotism. The GOP does this with warmongering and social issue. We can do this with trade.
TALKING POINTS
a) My opponent lets trade officials in Brussels, tell us when we can and can't charge tariffs to protect America! This even when the Chinese dump cheep good in America!
b) In the same way only Nixon could go to China due to millitary concerns, today only a democrat can sign a trade deal with China dealing with to economic concerns. The GOP signs wimpy trade deals that don't protect American jobs.
c) My opponent is willing to use American Military Power to further American interest, but he is afraid to use American Economic power to further our interest. If we stopped trading with "Country X" they would be hurt more than we would be. But my opponent lets them boss us around.
d) My opponent voted for a WIMPY free trade deal CAFTA. He let his fat cat CEO donors scare him into signing it. Is he that afraid to stand up for working American.
e) My opponent won't insist that the Chinese and Vietnamese improve their labor and environmental standard because they have intimidated him.
f) If we stopped protecting the Saudi Royal family they couldn't stay in power, yet we let them threaten us with oil if we demand they reform on human rights. If we stopped buying their oil, they would be hurting just as much.
As a Black Man who family moved from Jamaica to a white working class city I understand what Sen. Obama is up against. But I think he can do it but only if he makes some changes to the usual democratic play book. Sen. Obama needs to talk over the pundit heads whop are obsessed with working class peoples view on race, and start talking to their heads, their childrens future, and their hearts.
UPDATE:
It seems people are reading this as buying into HRC frame. I need to point out that no democrat since LBJ has won the white working class vote. That includes Carter, and Bill Clinton in 1992, and 1996. This is not an Obama problem it's a democratic party problem. I have no doubt that if Hillary was the nominee and we used are same play book, we would have lost them again. This diary is about winning them over. I am an Obama supporter.
I changed the title to add "in Novemeber".