I wrote about this last night: www.dailykos.com/..., that one of the most interesting details of the NH vote was that lower income voters voted disproportionately for Bernie. Usually our most liberal candidates do best with the more educated and affluent voters, and we’re trying to convince the lower income voters that these policies would benefit them. If Sanders can change that, and get a good chunk of working class whites to vote their economic interests, rather than their social prejudices, we could have a democratic coalition that is big enough that we can actually get stuff done.
I think the economic pain has gotten so pervasive and the ‘rigging’ of the economy so thorough and obvious, that people just can’t look past it anymore. I also think this is why the democratic elite, the ‘limousine liberals’ as some call them, have largely missed the Bernie appeal. They really aren’t experiencing the uphill battle (and downhill slide) that so many others are.
Today, there is an article on MSNBC with a similar thought www.nbcnews.com/...
The Sanders Coalition: Not What We Thought it Was
by STEVE KORNACKI
Bernie Sanders' coalition may be quite different - and much bigger - than has been assumed. That is one of the takeaways from his New Hampshire primary rout, in which Sanders scored impressively with voters who had been crucial to Hillary Clinton's 2008 victory in the state.
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among voters making less than $50,000, Sanders defeated Clinton by 33 points. By contrast, Clinton won those same voters by 15 points over Obama in '08. Sanders' margin was only half as big - 17 points - with voters making more than $50,000, a group that Obama actually won by 5 points. Similarly, Sanders rolled up a 36-point spread among voters without college degrees, while winning college-educated voters by only 13 points. In '08, though, it was Clinton who won voters without college degrees by 8 points, with Obama taking college graduates by 5 points.
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Sanders' success with blue collar voters in New Hampshire carries potentially significant implications. Conventional wisdom has held that his campaign is fueled by the same liberal white voters who sided with Obama in '08 - but doomed by his inability to make inroads with black voters, who were essential to Obama's triumph.
But the New Hampshire result suggests that Sanders is winning over white voters who shunned Obama in 2008.
If he wins the nomination, keeps Obama’s coalition together, and can bring some downscale whites back into the party, that would be a big enough coalition to really get shit done. Last night provided the first real evidence of that possibility. I think he needs to recognize the good that Obama has done, and the shit sandwich that he was handed by W (its easy to forget just how big a disaster Obama was handed), as part of building that coalition.