Tweety is full of shit tonight

[upaloopa]

Saying Dems have abandoned White working class voters.

My folks were White working class Dems.

My cousins are voting for Trump.

We came from the same factory town but I am liberal and they are wing nuts.

They left us we didn't abandon them.

[PeteSelman]

1. No, he's right about that.

This party abandoned the labor movement with the advent of the DLC, "third way" Democrats. There's no disputing that.

Now, that isn't to say the Republicans picked up the mantle, they hate labor even more.

The fact is, there is no party to champion labor right now.

[upaloopa]

4. I disagree about the DLC

Dems were headed in the same direction as repubs are today.

Reagan took Dem votes because White working class voters were not progressives.

The DLC got some of them back.

It is wrong to think we lost back then because we were not progressive enough.

[Blue Idaho]

16. The DLC showed up about the same time as "New Labor" in the U.K.

Both pushed their parties to champion more conservative policies and positions. If it makes anyone feel better - call them more centerist policies. If that makes anyone feel worse call the policies less progressive. It all really means the same thing. The DLC took the party to the middle. I'm not going to make a judgement here about the effect on wwc voters but it it's hard to see the direction the parties took any other way.

[radius777]

8. Revisionist history from the anti-Clinton left.

The white working class (wwc) started abandoning Dems during the 60's and 70's over social liberalism (civil rights, women's rights, abortion, gay rights, non-white immmigration, etc) issues, and fled en masse in 1980/84 into the arms of the union-busting free-trading Reagan, turning up their noses at the very pro-union/pro-labor Mondale and Dukakis tickets, leading to landslide losses and electoral ruin for the Democratic Party.

The wwc abandoned the Dem party, which then had to move on to try to appeal to other blocs of voters.

Enter the DLC, which was able to build a majority coalition between social liberals, pro-business moderates, minorities and women - which it did successfully with the 1992 Clinton/Gore ticket, a coalition that has won 5 of the past 6 presidential election popular votes (and lost narrowly in 2004).

Parties change and realign over contentious issues, which is exactly what happened over the past 50 or so years.

[BlueMTexpat]

9. Thanks for setting the record

straight! As a 70+ voter who watched with dismay as much of that happened, I can confirm. That is how I remember those events too.

Some here on DU are still either unfamiliar with this history or wish to remain in willful ignorance.

[jcgoldie]

13. exactly

To the extent white workers have left the democratic party it has been in spite of support for labor not because of a lack thereof. The power of unions has declined primarily due to the actions of conservatives and most of all Ronald Reagan, who white working classes supported. How can you lay this on the Clintons when "Reagan Democrats" voting a dozen years earlier crossed party lines en masse to support a guy who was as anti-labor as any president in history? White workers have followed race baiting and religion inspired dog whistles for decades to vote against their own economic interests. Skilled union workers are still overwhelmingly democrats but there are many less of them than there used to be. Blaming moderate democrats because uneducated workers votes are inspired by religion or racism is just ignoring the facts because someone has an axe to grind with HRC.

[radius777]

20. and the wwc Trumpers now weirdly demonize the Clintons

for 'globalism' and free trade, when at best they were/are centrists on those issues, like Obama, who recognize the realities of the global economy and try to formulate deals that strike a balance between the business community and workers.

As I outlined above, it is the wwc that has been voting for far-right free (unfair) trade Reaganite Republicans for decades - yet now wants to portray the Clintons as the 'eeevil globalists'.

Bill Clinton's 90's economy worked great for everyone. America was utterly bankrupted during the Bush years (housing bubble, Iraq war, 2008 economic meltdown), and Obama did the best he could to try to dig us out of it, which will have to continue under a Hillary presidency.

[JRLeft]

11. They've abandoned all working class Americans. The corporate side is

holding up the meritocracy.

[Wounded Bear]

2. No offense...

but you need to be able to step back from your personal experience and look to what is happening on the macro scale.

You are quoting anecdotal evidence from your life, and I don't doubt that you are telling the truth. But in the larger sense, he is right. The party has lost it's strong union base, largely because they haven't supported unions as well as they could have. There has been an emphasis on the large donors and corporations that, while not as corrosive as the Repub entanglement, has shifted priorities quite a bit away from the typical blue collar voters.

Much of the erosion, while maybe not directly the fault of Dems and Dem policies, have happened during recent Dem administrations. Unfortunately, because of how our gov't works and how the media reports, Repub congresses have undermined many of the progressive (many would argue progressive-light with good reason) policies that Dem presidents have tried to implement.

I won't argue that voter dissolution from Dems is unfounded. But a lot of it happened on "our" watch.

[katmondoo]

3. I still lay it at the feet of the Republicans

The Democrats have to get smarter at putting more Democrats from State to State in all area's of Government top to bottom.

[heaven05]

5. this guy

is hot, cold, angry and just plain crazy talking the Dems. What is the deal? I have never trusted Matthews and, NEVER will.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

6. I'm slightly too young to know, and I'm curious...

... if unions started falling apart around the same time that civil rights laws were passed in the 60's?

I was reading the other day how "skilled trades" and unions tended to favor white males in the past, at least among some of them.

Oh, here's another article about it:
http://www.shmoop.com/history-labor-unions/race.html

Because the idea of a labor union is based on solidarity among workers, you might expect the labor movement to be at the forefront in America's long struggle toward racial harmony, right? Well, it's not so simple as that. Unions have been on both sides of the racial question, sometimes enforcing discrimination, other times welcoming minorities into their ranks...

Racial divisions among workers were often used to break strikes and undermine solidarity.

[upaloopa]

14. In 1968 the electrical workers would not allow AAs to join.

You had to be sponcered by a union member to join. My neighbor offered to sponcer me then.

They did not sponcer Blacks

[DLCWIdem]

18. I actually studied labor history in my history classes

Labor unions came into 2 types the more progressive type that were common in the early 1900's and a type of business labor union for skilled workers which was more common from the 40's on. The latter more progressive labor unions have just started to get more mainstream in the last 20 years again. But you are correct those pro business labor unions were not inclusive. The labor unions started to lose their strength after Reagan broke their back in The early 80's after the Hormel strike.

[BigDemVoter]

7. Tweety CANNOT be trusted.

IMHO, Tweety is a secret Republican, obsessed with religion, who tried to cover Michelle Bachman's sorry, lying ass with excuses that he didn't condone "religious persecution" or some such shit. . . . What a tired, boring, stupid excuse for a "journalist" or whatever the FUCK he calls himself: entertainer? News reader? Shitty referee? Self-described 'politico'?(my ass as he doesn't know shit from shoe shine). Yeah, he is a DUMB shit.

[BSdetect]

10. Agree with your thoughts on that dumbshit

He makes me vomit if I linger too long on his stupid pseudo "interviews" where he barks out questions like some Gestapo interrogator. Forces guests to listen to his rantings as he tries to formulate a "question" while giving the answer he expects.

Go retire idiot and try to get your wife elected. Ha.

[Fast Walker 52]

12. Tweety is often full of shit... and "abandoned" is a ridiculous word

as you say, they abandoned us. I think they abandoned reasonable society.