Obama misses how Dems abandoned working class in 1970s

Posted on: Mon, 12/21/2015 - 21:12 By: Tom Swiss

What Obama, and the Democrats in general, seem to be missing here is that there is a reason that these working class folks (mostly white) have such anxiety and even resentment towards the Democrats. Once upon a time the Dems were the party of the "working man" but they abandoned that to play identity politics starting around the 1970s.

And it's a shame, because of course the oppression of the working class is of a piece with racism, sexism, and homophobia; but the patrician "limousine liberals" who fund the Democratic machine aren't disposed to look too deeply into economic inequality or to question capitalism. Thus the party's rightward drift on matters of economics even as it pulls for minority rights (usually properly, but sometimes falling into the trap if authoritarian progressivism: "hate speech" laws, political correctness, and the like). And so the white working class is ripe pickings for a flim-flam by the owning class -- i.e., the Republican Party as we know it today.

Obama Accuses Trump of Exploiting Working-Class Fears (www.nytimes.com)

President Obama said in a radio interview that began airing on Monday that Donald J. Trump, a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, was exploiting the resentment and anxieties of working-class men to boost his campaign. Mr. Obama also argued that some of the scorn directed at him personally stemmed from the fact that he is the first African-American to hold the White House.

Demographic changes and economic stresses, including “flat-lining” wages and incomes, have meant that “particularly blue-collar men have had a lot of trouble in this new economy, where they are no longer getting the same bargain that they got when they were going to a factory and able to support their families on a single paycheck,” Mr. Obama said in the interview with National Public Radio.