In this USA Today article a thorough analysis of votes in the Democratic primary was conducted and shows to what extent the 99% actually entrusts the Democratic nomination for President with Hillary.
USA Today: Hillary holds her own with the 99%
The blue-collar primary vote so far belies the idea that Clinton is Wall Street's candidate.
John Stoehr 7:29 a.m. EDT April 4, 2016
Hillary Clinton is a tool of Wall Street, the lickspittle of the 1%.
That, or something like it, is what’s coming from the most ardent supporters of her opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination. Bernie Sanders, they say, is a man of the people, an economic populist who can save us all from the prevailing neoliberal order that has propped up the rich and failed the rest.
Yeah, that’s about the gist of it from Bernie supporters on DailyKos and on Facebook/Twitter.
But that could be the opposite of the truth. According to exit polling, a majority of working-class voters in battleground states prefer Clinton. Sanders' call for revolution, moreover, appears most appealing to those with the power and resources to withstand radical change — those with college degrees and good jobs.
These are people who don't need revolution to get on in life. To working-class Americans, however, a revolution might be a luxury they can't afford.
Funny, that, that the people who LEAST need a revolution, those with steady jobs, those who have not much to lose either way are the most vocal about “revolution”, the most likely to embrace Bernie’s ideas.
Consider Michigan.
Sanders' victory there was supposed to be a turning point in the nomination contest. It was supposed to signal a working-class awakening to reclaim power lost after 30 years of centrist "New Democrat" compromises.
But 61% of voters with no college and 51% earning less than $30,000 a year favored Clinton over Sanders, according to exit polling data. A similar pattern occurred in Ohio (62% and 59%, respectively), Florida (68% and 66%) and North Carolina (65% and 55%).
Race accounts for some of this. Sanders has famously struggled to win over minority voters. But Clinton has support from white voters as well as minority voters. Forty-two percent of white Michigan voters chose the former first lady. Similarly sized blocs of white voters backed Clinton in Ohio (53%), Florida (53%) and North Carolina (43%). Clinton also gets plenty of support from affluent voters, but so does Sanders. In Michigan and Ohio, they split the support of those earning over $100,000.
Hillary does exceptionally well with voters who make less than $30,000 across the board. Those are the most vulnerable, those with the most to lose. They have no appetite to experiment with someone like Bernie, they want the steady hand, the person they know has fought for them for decades. Bernie has not been able to get them on his side, and that is in turn why he struggles so much with minority voters (both African-American as well as Hispanics/Latinos), as they are most likely to be among the poor, the unemployed, the underpaid.
This poignant article then goes on to explain that Hillary has a broad coalition, especially with those who make up the 99%, encompassing voters of various economic and racial backgrounds, while Bernie’s coalition is much more narrow.
CLASS CONFLICT
Stoehr points out that the Democratic party, like the Republican party, is in the midst of a class conflict that is reshaping the party, and Bernie has jumped on that as “his" issue. That’s why Bernie turns every debate, whether on foreign policy or gun control, to an indictment of the Democratic party, the “corrupt” party, the establishment within the party, and how they allowed the rise of the rich to prey on the poor.
But the Democrats aren't the problem. Not these Democrats. Thanks to Democrats, progressives and their allies, California, the world's eighth largest economy, is about to see the minimum wage rise to $15 an hour. Other states may soon follow. Given that 42% of Americans earn less than $15 a hour, according to the National Employment Law Project, that looks like a good deal. And it didn't require a revolution that might or might not work out in the end.
Democrats are already fighting for the poor, the underpaid, the disadvantaged, and have done so for years. It is the Republicans that are holding us back, that are the PROBLEM, that are in the way of progress on so many things, especially when it comes to helping the least advantaged in society.
In the final analysis Stoehr explains that part of Hillary’s appeal can be found in her policies, sheer endurance and pragmatism, but mostly because she is a "sure bet" to those who can least afford to take a gamble on things, those who don't have much can ill afford to take chances. They know a FIGHTER when they see one. For non-whites and the poor, Democrats aren't seen as the problem, Republicans are. And they know who will fight for them (even as they see Bernie as a decent guy, a good guy.)
The problem is the Republicans. The solution is beating them.
The working class knows who its champion is.
It's not the man claiming to champion the working class.
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John Stoehr is a lecturer in political science at Yale and a contributing writer at Washington Monthly. Follow him on Twitter @johnastoehr.
John Stoehr is the 2016 Koeppel Journalism Fellow at Wesleyan University. His byline has appeared in Bookforum, CNN, Reuters, Columbia Journalism Review, the New Statesman, Salon, The Hill, The Guardian, The Week, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among many others. He blogs for Washington Monthly, and he is an editorial writer at the Hartford Courant.
At Yale, he is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science, where he teaches a course on the classics of presidential campaign reporting. He is also a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and an associate fellow of Ezra Stiles College. From 2009-2012, he was the managing editor of the New Haven Advocate. Between 2005 and 2007, he was selected three times for the Arts Journalism Institutes of the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2009, he received one of the Lilly Scholarships in Religion for Journalists. He lives with his family in Westville.