The biggest myth in politics is that the Democrats are the party of the working man and the Republicans are the party of the rich. In reality, the Democratic party consists of welfare cases who live off the state and white millionaires who inherited their wealth or live off trading political favors. They have no middle. And lest you doubt they are the party of the corrupt rich, check out these statistics:
● According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in 2007, the fifty biggest companies in the country gave 60% of their political donations to Democrats.And this is direct contributions only, it does not count independent spending or PACs, where the real money gets spent. Moreover, the Democrats are awash in influence peddling scandals and they regularly move between government, K Street and Wall Street. Yet, we’re supposed to believe the Democrats are the party of middle-class America. . . of workers? Hardly.
● According to opensecrets.org, in 2008, Obama raised $145.7 million from corporate America. Of this, $42 million was from Wall Street and $46 million was from lawyers and lobbyists (K Street).
● The Democratic Party took in another $166.7 million from corporate America, of which $44.4 million came directly from Wall Street banks and $35 million came from K-Street lobbyists.
Anyway, things are about to change.
According to Democratic analysts Stanley Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira, for decades now, the Democratic Party has been bleeding white, working class voters. This trend started in the 1960s, accelerated in the 1980s and continues today despite the Democrats’ best efforts to woo these voters. How bad has it gotten? In 2004, John Kerry lost the white working vote by 58% to 41%. Obama improved slightly to 55% to 43%, but in 2010 this gap reached an all time high of 63% to 33%.
So how do the Democrats plan to respond. Apparently, the Democrats have decided they can’t win white working voters, so they’re giving up on trying! Verily. In 2012, they intend to treat these honkus-escapuses as “unobtainable.” Instead, they plan to cobble together a coalition of over-educated whites (professors, lawyers, artists, social workers, teachers, therapists, human resources manager, journalists and librarians), single women, blacks, Jews, Hispanics and Millennials.
Now let me make a few observations about this:
● First, this strategy relies on groups who historically don’t turn out for elections. Good luck with that. Moreover, this strategy depends on Hispanics out-breeding whites. As I’ve mentioned before, that’s not going to happen.The Democrats are about to hand the Republicans an historical opportunity here to rebrand the party and truly become the party of middle class America. The Republicans need to seize this moment and expose the Democrats for the frauds they are.
● Secondly, this strategy depends on the gap in the white vote not growing worse -- anything above 17% is fatal for Democrats. But it will grow worse. Once the Democrats embrace being the party of snooty-whites and minorities, they will lose all the rest of the working class whites. That’s how it’s always worked. This is how the South became Republican and this is how places like Ohio and Michigan will follow.
Also, the idea of a race-based party of rich and poor simply will not play well with most Americans. Americans ALL like to think of themselves as non-racial, middle-class, working types. . . exactly the opposite of what the Democrats will be. This should lead to middle-class flight to the Republican Party, leaving only the angry left for the Democrats.
● Third, this is going to kill them with their union friends, who are the source of their ground game and a good portion of their financial strength. And ironically, they have chosen to do this now just as manufacturing is about to rebound in this country because the comparative advantage Asia has is ending. Whoops.
● Fourth, the biggest flaw in this plan is the idea that Hispanics will mimic blacks. If the Republicans can win even 40-45% of the Hispanic vote, the Democrats will be doomed. And here the Democrats have given the Republicans the perfect way to do that -- Hispanics, like everyone else, want to become middle class Americans. It’s time for the Republicans to offer them that chance.
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