The Democrats are the party of the “working man.” They represent that core of America that builds things, which makes things, which toils in the dirt, which keeps America running. These are the hardworking people of this great land who looked to FDR to save them. Yep. That’s the Democrats. . . right? Well, no. Those people vote Republican now, and the Democrats are about to concede that.
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.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Up Your’s, Honkeys!
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41 comments:
Well I wonder if the teachers will bolt on him?
Second, If Newt becomes the nominee, that would pretty much ruin the hispanic portion of the strategy since he recently pandered to them nakedly and with political avarice.
If in fact we are looking at a choice between George and Newt, it might be worth a good discussion of who is better able to capitalize and whip the Democrats in 2012.
"just as manufacturing is about to rebound in this country because the comparative advantage Asia has is ending. Whoops."
Andrew I would be interested in you elaborating a bit on this if possible. I would very much like this to be the case but the only way I see this happening is if there are either tariffs on China or the dollar has finally weakened to a point that the slave labor in china is no longer an advantage.
I am assuming that there is an education that I am needing to understand this.
I can't imagine this working. But I guess the democrats have no other choice since they've driven away working class voters.
Democrats are victims of their own success. These dumb bastards have over-promised, over-spent, and they’ve over-reached. This amalgamation that they are trying to coalesce behind their Barry, will make herding cats seem like a breeze. My fear is our team. We have an opportunity to crush the left, and I fear it will be frittered away in trying to reach across the aisle in typical weak kneed Republicans horse crap. Along with the presidency, we must sweep conservatives in power from dogcatcher, up, ala 2010 - - so even if we don’t get the perfect president, we can surround him with sensible real Americans who will bring some common sense back into the entire process. This will take time.
Jed, George(?) and Newt?
The problem with the Hispanic aspect of this is that they are assuming (1) continued growth in Hispanic numbers, which isn't true -- see prior article, and (2) that they will remain a separate people called "Hispanics" just like blacks remain separate today. Except, Hispanics have shown they integrate and become "white" (i.e. no racial distinction) within a generation -- about 53% already classify themselves that way. So it's a pipe dream that they will get 70/80% of Hispanics. All the GOP needs to do is to recognize this and start trying to pull in those Hispanics who don't want to play racial identity politics.
Andrew: Your analysis is right on. The radicals (of which I was one) began to take over the party in the 60s, and over the years since has simply pushed out the working class. When a Democrat says "working class" today, he actually means the welfare, social engineering and entitlement classes. And now we can include the corporate welfare class. The very rich and the perpetually poor depend on government handouts, and nobody does that better than the Democrats.
Indi, I keep meaning to write about this but never get around to it. Forget the image most Americans have of China. China has a lot of problems right now.
1. Their government is unstable, they are terrified of their people who are demanding more economic progress and a cleaner environment. They are also fed up with corruption which really blew up in the recent crash of a bullet train. All of this means more money is now being spent to buy the public off. This is also putting the halt to the ease with which they've been able to do things like build dams in the past.
2. They have a gender imbalance which is causing problems and making everything worse.
3. They have an age imbalance (much worse than Europe) which is on the verge of bankrupting them.
4. They are going broke paying for the commodities they need, which is causing inflation to spike.
5. Most importantly, for many years now, Chinese labor has been demanding more and more concessions and greater wages. This has resulted in massive wage increases on the order of 18% per year for a few years.
The increase in the wage rates had brought costs in China to the point that it now costs the same (comparatively speaking) to build a factory in the US or in China.
(The other Asian countries are having similar problems and India lacks the infrastructure to become the new China.)
As a result, most NEW factories are being built here rather than there. And as Western currencies have fallen, people have started closing existing factories over there. This has resulted in a surge in manufacturing in the West and a halt in manufacturing growth in China/Asia.
Essentially, like the other Asian Tigers, China's moment in the sun has passed and now it's lost its comparative advantage -- just like Japan and Korean and the rest. In fact, they are finding that even locally, they can no longer compete with Bangladesh when it comes to labor.
So manufacturing has begun to rebound here and it will continue, even if we do nothing.
Ed, That's the problem. They either need to give up on white voters or abandon the leftist/racist identity politics. They don't want to do that, so they are basically giving up the people who have kept them somewhat in the center. In effect, they are evolving into a far left party.
P.S. Indi, on the "slave labor" point, that's vastly overstated. China does use some slave labor (just as we use prison labor), but it's an insignificant percentage of what China produces. Where China has caused America problems is not in Chinese industry, but in American industry opening factories in China. That's come to a halt and is now reversing.
Stan, I think the Democrats are committing political suicide here. They are building a coalition around people who don't turn out in large numbers, who are demanding and distinctly ungrateful, and who expect the government spigots never to stop flowing in exchange for their support. The Democrats can't deliver on that, and they can't do it without alienating everyone else in the country.
Plus, they're going to have to get highly racial to keep their coalition alive and that won't play well.
The problem, as you put your finger on it, is that the Republicans don't know how to handle this. They are still stuck in the politics of 20 years ago and don't see the opportunity, nor do they know how to seize it.
Let's hope the new conservatives we send to Congress get this... I think they will because the Tea Party is exactly what the new party should look like to attract these people -- a collection of small business owners and middle class workers who want the government to stop trying to control everything, stop handing out goodies to everyone, and get out of the way of the American dream.
Lawhawk, I think that's true, and in fact these guys noted that working class white began to flee the party in the 1960s. I think at this point all the love for "the working man" is nothing but cynical rhetoric. And if these guys are right and this is the new strategy (and it does seem to be), I think they'll abandon even that because their new clients (snooty rich and minorities) don't want to hear that kind of talk.
That will be the biggest mistake the Democrats have ever made because that will truly drive away the rest of working class white votes and will also drive away people who like to think they are moderates.
Wow! This will totally turn off most people. This is a really bad idea and I would be upset if I was a Democrat. Fortunately, I'm not.
Andrew, That's interesting about China. Where did you read that? Was it just a guess or did they have real numbers?
Here I go getting retrospective again, but this is less of a surprise to me and more of an "aha!" It's been about a decade that the Democrats have been declaring the GOP to be becoming a far-right, small-tent party. This flies in the face of reality as the Republican tent has always been spacious enough to hold everything from Libertarians to Rockefellers. It's become especially erroneous in the last three years with the rise of the populist Tea Party movement.
As I've said before, the way to discern the truth about liberals is to examine the lies they tell about conservatives. Your analysis does a good job of putting all the puzzle pieces in place. It's clear now that the Democrats are the radical shrinking party, but they've been advertising it for some time. The biggest irony of this strategy is that the Dems have been telling us for far longer that they are racists and sexists (through their accusations against Reps) and now they putting about half their money in the minority bank!
You've also got a fresh take here on the Democrat obsession with "gaps" of all sorts (rich v. poor, white v. minority, male v. female, etc.) We've long understood that these are their political bread-n-butter. Now they've doubled-down and made it their entire base! I would like to propose a new moniker for the Democrat Party: the "Gap Party"
Hmm, that would make it GOP vs. GAP. Too confusing? Maybe there should be a contest to decided what G.A.P. should stand for. First prize: my perpetual esteem. LOL!
Crispy, I'd be pretty upset too, but then I can't see a world in which I would have been a Democrat in the first place? Their beliefs are simply diametrically opposed to everything I know to be right, true and decent.
Ed, I've seen quite a few article on it in business journals. They are actual numbers behind and several studies combined with anecdotal evidence of big businesses starting plans for new factories in the US because it's cheaper and even planning to close factories in China.
In fact, there was a consulting study which is being passed around between businesses which tells companies that they should build new factories here. It was done by one of the big consulting firms -- can't think of the name though.
tryanmax, I actually thought about your comment when I wrote this. I think this is a classic example of the Democrats telling us the truth by projecting onto Republicans. In Democrat land, the Republicans are:
1. A shrinking, small-tent party.
2. Racist.
3. The party of the evil rich.
4. Fascists who want to use the government to control people.
But the reality is that this is the exact description of the Democrats, not the Republicans. And this "admission" I'm writing about is absolute proof of that. They have decided they can't be a broad-based popular party, so they are trying to cobble together a coalition based on race and wealth and entitlement.
On GAPS, what I find interesting about that is that the media assumes that where there is a gap, it's the fault of bad Republican policies (e.g. the "gender gap" where women favor Democrats because Republicans are evil) or the fault of some defect in the population (e.g. the "white male gap" where stupid white men favor Republicans because they hate women and minorities). It's never the fault of Democratic policies driving people away. Interesting, isn't it?
tryanmax, On your first point, it's always been the same thing with the great Republican Civil War which the media obsesses about when the real civil war is in the Democratic ranks... even though the MSM always portrays the Democrats as happy friends with nothing but love for each other -- a thoroughly untrue portrayal.
Here's an article I wrote on that: (LINK)
Interesting article Andrew. Do we know if this will be official policy for the Democrats or are these guys just saying what they think will happen? This would be a huge mistake for them.
Tryanmax, I like your point that the Democrats give themselves away in how they attack Republicans. I see that all the time where they attack conservatives for exactly what the Democrats are themselves.
If the GOP Civil War were actually what the (wishful) pundits make it out to be, there would be no Republican Party today. Isn't it the Democrats who love to proclaim that their strength comes from their diversity? But they don't understand diversity of ideas, only diversity of appearance.
DUQ, we conservatives ought to derive our confidence from the attacks coming from liberals. With every swipe, they expose themselves. I think that is a concept that is found both in swordsmanship and in scripture. Interesting.
DUQ, It's apparently official policy. At least, this is the game plan the Democrats are planning to use for 2012 and they think it will result in a permanent "majority" for them by 2020 once all those Hispanics start having 5-6 kids each. Indeed, they're expecting Hispanics will become 2% bigger per year as a percentage of the population from now on... won't happen.
Yes, the Dems do project alot, don't they? But you can't tell them that because that makes you a [fill in the blank with a 4-letter bad word] Republican. Wasn't it just in 2009 that the Dems were crowing about the demise of the Republican Party?
It would be interesting to see where any new factories are opening in the US. I bet that it will be in those evil Right-to-Work States...
tryanmax, You're right, if there had been a civil war like they claim, the Republican Party would have split into two parts by now... but it hasn't.
All they are doing is latching onto any disagreement or anyone who is upset with the party and turning that into an all-out war, as if the Republicans can't have any disagreement without it coming to blows.
As the same time, they've ignored a rather bloody civil war within Democratic ranks where each of the different tribes or interest groups have been fighting nasty battles over who controls the agenda and have been basically forcing moderates out.
I think the idea is to discourage moderates from wanting to join the Republicans by making the Republicans sound like a nasty, violent group that are ripping each other apart. At the same time, they sell the idea that the Democrats are like a huge family of best friends. It's pure marketing by the MSM designed to smear the right and pimp the left.
DUQ and tryanmax, I absolutely agree with tryanmax that the Democrats are all about projection. I find it stunning how often they wrongly accuse their opponents of doing the very things the Democrats themselves have done. I don't know if they're THAT cynical or if they are just that blind?
It also explains why the Democrats have such anger for the right -- because we represent a standard they can't achieve. And at the same time, it explains their paranoia, because if they are doing it, then they assume everyone else must be doing it too.
Andrew
Thanks for the perspective. I had always assumed that the problems you mentioned were not as important in China since the government is essetially a dictatorship dressed up as a communist utopia.
With regards to the points in your article I would like to point you to a movie called "New in Town" 2009 starring Renee Zellweger. It is a good movie as far as these go but I noted the attempt was to show the big city educated leftist college woman butting heads with the christian backward union guy from Minnesota only to find their sociliast roots and fight for Union jobs in America.
I think this woukld be a good review for you on commentarama films.
Bev, It was indeed 2009 when the Democrats and the MSM were sure the Republicans were finished forever. In fact, even before the 2010 elections they were still predicting they would win. Instead, they took an historic loss.
And you're right, if you try to tell them they are projecting, they just get nasty(er).
In terms of the factories, my understanding is that there is a new car plant being built in Ohio, but other than that everything I've seen has been in the right-to-work South. Imagine that.
Andrew, I doubt that it is cynicism. I think it is good old-fashioned plank-in-the-eye-ism. Their firsthand knowledge of what they accuse of is so abiding that they come to see it even where it is not, and yet, like an eye that cannot see itself, they cannot turn that gaze on themselves.
Indi, China is an interesting place. Politically, it is a dictatorship with all that entails including a command economy. But that's actually only a small portion of the country. The rest is much closer to anarchy, where companies are free to do whatever they want so long as they don't become "conspicuous" about their wealth. And apparently, they've largely lost control of many of their cities and provinces.
It's kind of like a dictatorship that only controls the upper deck of a ship and has little or no control over anything going on below.
And what is going on below is that tens of millions of businesses and workers are engaged in full-on capitalism. But their costs (wages, resources and utilities) have shot through the roof and now they are no longer competitive. And that is causing major problems.
It's actually a very similar story to what happened throughout Asia -- big boom as they shifted from rural economy to modern economy followed by suddenly hitting a wall when economic reality caught up with them. Now they are doomed to rising costs and slowing growth... which will bring major political changes.
I hadn't heard about that film, but that's interesting. I will have to check it out because it sounds like a pretty desperate attempt to hold the Democratic Party together. Thanks! :)
tryanmax, I suspect some of the leadership (e.g. Pelosi) is just being cynical. But I think you're right about average Democrats. I know quite a few and they are the most racist, sexist and nastiest people I know. Yet, they genuinely think none of those things are true about themselves AND they assume that they are true of everyone else despite a total lack of evidence. The hypocrisy of it is actually quite stunning.
This was a joke when it first started. The only working class hero is the working class.
ACG, For a moment, I thought you meant the Democrats were a joke when they first started. . . surprisingly, that made a lot of sense! :)
Definitely the leadership is cynical, but somehow I have trouble with Pelosi as the example. She has always struck me as completely sincere in her lunacy. She seems like the deeply loyal lackey who is rewarded with nominal authority.
Now Reid, Obama, and leaders like Soros are definite cynics, no doubt about it. But the rank-and-file, the legacy media talking heads and most of the lower leadership/organizers are mainly blind as far as I can tell.
tryanmax, I agree, except I suspect Pelosi is actually much more cynical than people realize. I base that on the fact that while she sounds completely insane, she does repeatedly get caught doing things like influence peddling like in the 60 Minutes story. It's very possible she's both insane and cynical, I can't rule that out.
The other guys are better examples though. I don't think Reid or Obama believe anything they say -- they are truly cynical and they see lying as something that is just part of maintaining power.
Andrew - l.o.l. showing my age and talking about Mitt's dad.
Jed, Ah! I should have remember his father. :)
I'm actually going to compare Gingrich and Romney next week and I'll definitely touch upon the immigration issue.
Here I am in radio-junkie mode:
Rather belatedly, all of the radio talkers, Savage and Levin last night and Beck and Limbaugh today, are admonishing their audiences to stop fretting about "electability" and appearances and to get focused on the right man for the job.
Levin was saying focus on the big picture, not just the election. He also rejected the "executive experience" criteria.
Savage's also took on the executive experience angle, adding that Cain may be idealistic but has a history of fixing struggling organizations.
Beck wants us to vote for Santorum (pthhzzz!)
And Limbaugh is basically saying don't make the perfect the enemy of the good.
Too bad they weren't talking this way a month ago.
BTW, no such sense from Ingram: she's still on the track that Republicans should hurry up and get behind Romney.
tryanmax, Bunker living has made Beck insane. ;)
I'm glad they are getting smart... but it's a little too late now that we're basically down to two choice. Ron Paul said today that the candidates just represent more of the same and he's right -- I'm not seeing much difference between Romney and Gingrich.
Ingraham doesn't surprise me. She's been in the tank for a while for Romney (since at least the beginning of the summer) so she's just pushing what she wants rather than what's good for the party. That's how conservatives keep getting into trouble because they don't stick to principles when they want something. It's frustrating.
To honor Mark Twain's birthday I will reply with one of my favorite quotes.
"There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."
MARK TWAIN, Following the Equator
ACG, Excellent Twain quote! :)
And sadly, more true than ever.
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