The Seminal Work On Why We Lost And What We Can Do To Win

[DemocratSinceBirth]

http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com/donkeyrising/


a snippet

3. The need for white working class support. The last three elections (2000, 2002, 2004) have all had strong ‘culture war’ components that have severely depressed white working class support for Democrats. Recall that Bill Clinton actually carried the white working class (whites without a four year college degree) by a point in both his election bids. But in 2000, Al Gore lost these voters by 17 points; in 2002, Democratic congressional candidates lost this group by 18 points and this year, the situation appears to have worsened further. That is implied (though not proved) by the finding, cited above, that Democrats lost whites as a whole by 5 points more than 2000 and another exit poll finding that Democrats’ slippage by education group was concentrated entirely among the non-college educated. (Kerry split the college-educated evenly with Bush, just as Gore did in 2000, but, where Gore lost the non-college educated by just 2 (49-47), Kerry lost them by 6 (53-47).)

The fact of the matter is that Democrats cannot win when they do so badly among this very large constituency. John Judis and I always believed that the trends we described in The Emerging Democratic Majority could underpin a majority coalition given reasonable (not majoritarian, but competitive) performance among white working class voters. Alas, this does not qualify as reasonable performance.

Democrats’ difficulties with this group surely have a great deal to do with these voters’ sense of cultural alienation from the national Democratic party and its relatively cosmopolitan values around religion, family, guns and other social institutions/practices. Even the war on terror has increasingly become more a cultural issue linked to patriotism than a true foreign policy issue for many of these voters.

Given this sense of cultural alienation, it must be questioned whether candidates like Gore or Kerry can ever really be viable with these voters. Democrats may have to choose candidates in the future who do not so easily evoke this sense of cultural alienation and who can connect in a genuine fashion with these voters. I come to this conclusion reluctantly because I had hoped that an effective campaign could overcome this obstacle by, in effect, using wedge Democratic issues like health care or jobs to build support among this group. But the messenger appears to matter a great deal, just as having a message does (see point number two, above). The Democrats in the future will have to pay attention to both, I think.

[davepc]

1. 100% dead on

[DemocratSinceBirth]

3. like clinton...

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. what's a shame

that folks buy Shrub's everyman shtick...

[lynintenn]

5. someone who grew up on welfare

and became a millionaire, GWB proves you don't have to be intelligent to be president but you need is a team of theifs and liars and always look like you above this.

[lynintenn]

6. He could't even deliver NM

[DemocratSinceBirth]

7. we lost NM cuz we lost our edge with hispanics..

if we let pugs coopt Hispanics we are screwed...

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. we won Hispanics by nine fricken points...

what's up with that....


In 08 I say we put Bill Richardson on the bottom of the ticket with a southerner or midwesterner...


Bill Richardson is Hispanic enough to get his fellow Hispanics to vote for him and and not Hispanic enough to alienate the bigots in the south...


We can not let the Pugs coopt this vital growing non majority...