Friday, April 18, 2008

Angry White Men

The full measure of Barack's San Fran blunder will be taken in the general election, where the fight over the "average American," the middle class white folk without college educations, will decide who becomes President. The importance of working class voters is nicely laid out in a Time Magazine analysis:
In 2000 Al Gore lost them to George W. Bush by 17 percentage points; four years later, John Kerry lost them by 23 points. By contrast, Democratic candidates in the 2006 midterm elections ran 10 percentage points behind Republicans among working-class whites--and managed to win back the House and the Senate as well as six governorships and nine state legislatures.
If you've been wondering why Hillary pounced on Barack's blunder so relentlessly, ignoring her own skyrocketing negatives, this is the answer:
For decades, the Democratic Party has been slowly losing white working-class voters. In 2004, President Bush beat John Kerry by 34 electoral votes, clinching the key battleground in Ohio. Even a tiny shift among white working-class voters could have changed the outcome.

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