Its almost sad to see these self-deluded polemics declaring "Emerging Democratic Majorities" when the trends are so obviously in the opposite direction.

We have a Republican House, a Republican Senate (with the President's party picking up seats in an off-year election - which in US history is exceedingly rare.

There are Republican governors in our two largest, most liberal states. New York City has had nearly 12 years of Republican mayoral leadership.

Add that to the fact that the South and mid-west has almost been completely consolidated into a Republican voting bloc, due to the enforced secularism, anti-war and tax policies of the Democratic side.

What Texeria's thesis fails to recognize is the increasing moderation of the Republican party on social issues - allowing for a much bigger tent than Democrats who insist on a litmus test on Affirmative Action, Abortion and Gay Rights.

To say nothing of the increasing calls by Democratic activists to put more pressure to bear on Israel, and Jews, a historically reliable and influential group in Democratic coalitions are leaving the party in droves.

As long as you support the War on Terror and the President's tax policy, you can be a Republican in today's America.

To suggest that a Democratic, liberal majority will emerge out of White Working Class voters not only ignores current political trends, but also the reality of the values these "red state" voters hold.

Democrats need to stop deluding themselves that people will buy the same policies they've been advancing for 25 years, if only they could get their message out better.

The White Working Class has heard their calls for higher taxes, retreat from the war on terror and uncompromising positions on social issues and found it distasteful.

Perhaps they would be better served by coming up with new ideas and responsible leadership on foreign policy, if they would like to one day regain power

Beautiful. I wish I could have been there for that presentation. Doug makes all my points for me. America has trended "liberal" on social issues, but conservative when it comes to governmental issues (in the abstract sense at any rate). After all, Bush is spending bigger than any Democrat.
This is just all part of that Democratic cocoon that is going to lead to continued defeats. Basically, they're standing there with a blindfold on and their fingers in their ears yelling LALALALALALALALALA!

Man, I run into the same thing, especially now that I'm in the "Honors Program" and my professors leave no room even for that kind of debate. You have to accept certain premises to even be allowed to talk about it. The assumption is that if you were to go through it yourself, you'd end up thinking just like the professor. This is not usually true in my case... hence I FAR prefer to think for myself.

Big kudos for standing up for yourself and challenging the arguments. It doesn't get as good of a grade as parroting back the information, as I've learned, but it's a much better intellectual exercise AND you learn so much more from it. And with the state of higher education now, we've got to take it where we can get it.

Awesome, K.

"The chapter goes on to explain who these people are. They tend to have an Associates Degree or some college. They tend to live in the suburbs. They are mostly low level white collar workers. The median income is $42,000 with two-thirds having household incomes between $15,000 and $75,000. About one-seventh are below that range, about one-fifth above it. Immediately, I feel a little lost. It is a book about the working class yet 20% of the people they consider in this demographic make more than $75,000. Maybe I'm just particularly poor but to me, that is not working class. That is in fact, quite rich."

1st point. More than $75000 is for household income not individual income. That's not rich if it's 2 or more incomes combined.

2nd point. I assume that "working class" includes blue collar jobs and public service jobs. Construction workers, auto mechanics, police officers can make over $75000. But it is unlikely that low level white collar workers would make that much (but the book doesn't claim that anyway, see point 1.

Question 1.
Do you think this "forgotten majority" exists? Do you disagree with the books analysis of the "forgotten majority" or if one exists at all?

Class in society means that a person has no chance of improving their lives because they were born into a certain class. That is certainly not true in America but it is increasingly true in the EU.

The left believes that selling their Marxist class outlook on life to Normal Americans is a key to them staying in power. There are finding out that most Americans disagree with that view of the world. Thus the left is losing elections.

Most people believe that their lives will improve in the future and that their children’s lives will be better than theirs.

Jake,
I agree but only if you are referring to "the left" as the extreme left, ya know the communists.
It's not what a run of the mill democrat believes.

.....I feel a point is lost, she stood up against the odds and said what she feels...I wish I could have done that in some of my GEC classes but now that I'm in the core I don't have to put up with the rhetoric....but I wish I would have not feared a lesser grade and stood up.
Great Job K.

Paul:

Every Democrat I have ever speak within the last ten years falls into Marxist Class Warfare Speak within 5 minutes of grabbing the microphone. They continually try to divide America into haves and have-nots. They use hate speech to egg on the have-nots. Normal Americans do not buy into those tactics.

$75,000 may not be rich in NY but it sure is rich when the Democrats talk about whom they will raise taxes on. Then, $50,000 is rich.

I would agree with Jake about class in Europe being more of an issue, but not sure if it is "increasingly so". There is one major reason why class politics never took off in the U.S. in the first half of the twentieth century. Namely the fact that the black population were at the bottom of the heap, and kept there by law. Certainly nothing to get smug about.

Emerging Democratic Majorities ? If the guy is citing the "white working class" as the major reason this will happen, then he certainly is deluded. In the 1983 UK election, two thirds of what the pollsters classify as "working class" voted for a right wing Conservative government. Why ? Because the opposing Labour party had lurched to the left and was run by the type of deluded middle class (different connatation over here) twats who talk about the "working class" without any real knowledge of the people that they purported to represent. Hope that the Democrats aren't falling into the same trap.

"Namely the fact that the black population were at the bottom of the heap, and kept there by law"

Do you have any proof to back your latest idiotism? Show us where it was unlawful for blacks to have jobs or own property anytime last century. Put your money where your mouth/ass is.

Weiner.

Yo, Bobby, I'm about as white as they come (give or take a smidgen of Amerind thrown in for flavor) and I can assure you there have been and are working class people who are white. One of my grandfathers was a sharecropper well into the 1950s. Mom got taken to school in a horse drawn buggy, because that's what they had.

I'm not going to dig for the stats, but my guess is the "working poor" in the first half of the 20th century were predominantly white. Why? Because blacks haven't been that large a percentage of the total population. Were blacks disproportionatly represented? Hell yes. But don't blame the failure of class politics on racism. To coin a phrase, it's not a black and white issue.

Here's another personal anectdote that I think illustrates why class struggle has been a non-starter here. My grandfather on the other side was a meter reader for the gas company, and the woman he married had three brothers, one a doctor, one a lawyer, and one who ran poker games out of a country store.

Dude, our classes mixed. That's the significant difference between our society and the traditional European thang.

I kinda see your point bobby, it does look like the Democrats may be "overshooting" their constituency.

A huge inflow of immigrants has the prospect of shifting America towards the Democrats. This may not be a popular idea among Wall Street Journal Republicans who think that more immigration is great, but the data tend to support it.

Also, though the "War on Terror" is popular, the Patriot Act and the occupation of Iraq are less so. The Democrats can do well by playing up their differences with Republicans on those issues.

Redneck:

What about the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931? That was designed to make it more difficult to hire black workers.

Dan

Actually, Bobby, I'm sorry for going off on you like that. The conflation of class and race is a common oversimplification, and it never fails to irk me.

So I didn't notice that we agreed about a key point, which is that the "class struggle" paradigm doesn't work well in the States, even if we may not agree about the reason it doesn't.

I agree with Paul that the intellectual basis (what there is of it) for current Democratic Party strategy is based on the principle of class cohesion. The book that started this discussion explicitly accepts the validity of a class-centered approach to politics in the title. And the authors use the remainder of the book trying to figure out why this approach has led to such disappointing results (for the Dems, anyway.)

Seems to me some "political scientists" are having trouble recognizing that observed facts are not in accordance with their hypothesis.

The core problem is all those working-class whites the Dems want to court consider themselves middle class, and not particularly oppressed by The Man. The target market for the Dems message doesn't think the message is addressed to them.

Kashei, you did an excellent job of highlighting logical inconsistencies between the premise of the book and the details of the authors' analyses. Keep at it, good luck, and don't let the instructor's biases piss you off.

Thank you Dan.
Mark, it sounds like your family were from the country - not sure how much mixing there was in the industrialised regions (where much of the politicisation happened in Europe). Still, can see what you are getting at.
RR - are you telling me that there was equal opportunity throughout the last century, or was that just a lame excuse for a bit of your oh so witty abuse ?

No apology required. It's not as if I was treated to mindless abuse.
Have a good weekend.

No, I'm still waiting for you to cite the laws that prohibited them from working or having any money. Specifically laws that would hold Constitutional water and override the 13th and 14th amendments from, oh say, 1868.

I guess I, in the belly of the beast, would know far less than you typing from thousands of miles away in your mom's basement.

Radical:

The Davis-Bacon Act was written to protect white labor from competing with black labor. I think that is a pretty good example of racist laws to keep blacks from earning decent wages.

America doesn't have a rigged "class structure", this is America, the land of opportunity for everyone. That's why the books definition of "working class" is something they made up. America's class system is based on money but you can move up and down in your class, you are not stuck in the class you are born into.

Kashei, if you had to make up a definition of "working class" what would it be? I tend to think that blue collar jobs are working class even if they make $75000 dollars. Is there such thing as a rich working class man or women? Or has class snobbery made that illogical?

I think the books "forgotten majority" of the working class is equally as likely to vote republican.