|
Edited on Sun Apr-13-08 01:16 PM by Drunken Irishman
When Ronald Reagan ran for president in 1980 and then again in 1984, he tried to convince average Americans everything was fine in America. It was the cornerstone of his Morning in America message and it was a message that slowly undid the working-class. It was the moment Republicans assumed the belief that it was only the lazy, uninspired people who were angry and bitter. And if they were angry and bitter, it was no one's fault but their own. These people were Welfare Queens, lazy minorities and men and women whose lone struggle was not because the jobs were gone, but because they were too lazy to actually go out and look for a replacement job. Forget that those replacement jobs meant less money and more hours, if they couldn't find something to be happy about in Reagan's Grand American Society, it was their own damn fault. And out of that spawned the Republican economic ideology that did in the working-class. Which makes Hillary Clinton's adoption of it that much more shocking. For someone who railed against Obama and his comments a few months ago on Reagan, she is surely doing her best Reagan impression throughout this primary season.
For far too long, Republicans have told the working-class that everything is fine. They heard it in the 1980s over economic concerns and we're hearing it today. Too many times this year we've heard and come to expect many on the right downplay the economic struggles of many working-class Americans. I just thought I'd never see the day when a major candidate for the Democratic nomination was doing the same thing.
|