W Post: A deserted feeling in working-class America

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/31/AR2010083104880.html

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Of all the groups in the Democratic orbit, it is labor that has assumed the most demanding role in this year's midterm elections: keeping the white working class from flooding into the Republican column.

"When our canvassers call on our members on their doorsteps, they hear Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly in the background," says Dan Heck, who heads a massive union-sponsored program in Ohio devoted to persuading its members to vote this November for candidates who would mightily displease Beck and O'Reilly.

Heck's organization, Working America, was created by the national AFL-CIO in 2004 to reach out to white, working-class voters in key swing states such as Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. "Right now, we talk to 25,000 people every week," says Karen Nussbaum, the program's national director, "and we'll knock on a million doors in the next two months. The people we talk to are the volatile 40 percent in the middle of the electorate. They're angry, and they're not sure who to blame or what to do about it."

"A number of these folks are evangelicals, some are conservatives," says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. "We still manage to find common ground with them, talking about ending tax breaks for the rich and penalizing companies that offshore jobs." Poll after poll makes clear that it is working-class whites who have most decisively turned away from President Obama. With only 7 percent of the private sector unionized, the AFL-CIO now reaches out beyond its members to preach the gospel of economic progressivism -- public investment in infrastructure, reviving manufacturing, clipping Wall Street's wings -- to swing voters who, 30 or 40 years ago, would have been card-carrying union members.

Working America can claim some notable successes over the past six years. Its members, recruited on their doorsteps by the group's canvassers, voted heavily for Obama in 2008 -- one reason he handily won Ohio and Pennsylvania, the two states with the most Working America members. But the Great Recession has made labor's task decidedly more difficult this year.

FULL story at link.

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[Kat45]

1. Good article.

This group is doing some important work. And yes, Obama has to make more of an effort with working people. Too many of them are listening to Beck et al these days.

[Better Believe It]

2. They have a right to be angry and yes they have been deserted.

"The question is whether congressional Democrats and Obama in particular actually measure up to progressive-populist claims that labor makes for them."

Congress and President Obama are not seen, should not be seen and don't want to be seen as populists.

"Nor has Obama done what Trumka and his organization's canvassers do on a daily basis: validate Main Street America's anger. That doesn't mean that Obama needs to sound angry himself, God (and David Axelrod) forbid. But labor is on to something that seems to have eluded the White House: If Obama and the Democrats are to have a fighting chance against Beck, O'Reilly and the Republicans, they need to acknowledge how our power elites have betrayed Main Street America, and how Main Street America is right to be enraged. Nearly 80 years ago, Franklin Roosevelt did just that -- railing at the "money changers" of Wall Street who had defiled the nation, even as he crafted programs that created jobs and regulated finance."

Well, President Obama certainly won't lower himself to the level of FDR with attacks on Wall Street and corporate America, that's for sure. He's a Harvard man ya know.

[Cali_Democrat]

3. If they're listening to Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, they're a bunch of idiots

Perhaps it's best not to have these people within the Democratic Party anyways.

[sendero]

5. Don't worry..

... they'll be leaving.

What you don't get is how ANGRY many Americans are at the BLATANT INJUSTICE of what is going on right now, and with the Democrats in power doing essentially NOTHING to rein in Wall Street they have every right to be angry.

The fact that the Republicans are no better is moot. People do not vote rationally, if they did a drooling moron like George Bush could have never gotten elected.

I keep seeing poll after contradictory poll about Nov. I'm pretty sure Obama simply doesn't have the stones to do what is needed and I'm pretty sure he will lose the house decisively this Nov. Then at least he will have cover for doing nothing.

[scarletwoman]

8. Spoken like a genuine elitist liberal.

Scorn the working class voters, they'll be happy to pay you back in kind.

[w4rma]

12. A true DLC corporatist. (nt)

[Cali_Democrat]

16. I'm sorry to hear that you want Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly listeners to be part of the Dem party

I sure as hell don't.

[scarletwoman]

17. Of course you don't. 'Those people' are beneath you. Low class boors.

Better to leave them to the tender mercies of the right wing than attempt to address their concerns and offer them a better narrative to explain why they feel so fucked over.

The poor deluded unwashed masses are obviously unworthy of ever gaining admittance to your bright shiny party of the well-educated managerial class.

sw

[RainDog]

15. Beck and O'Reilly demonstrate the power of lies

in a population that is willing to believe the most incredibly ridiculous things - and not just in the political arena.

[Omaha Steve]

4. Kick

[xchrom]

6. If there had been a serious Main Street/Jobs Bill passed

This story would have been written very differently.

Neo liberal economic policies
Aren't friendly to the vast majority of
Working people. Regardless of colour.
They aren't intended to be.

[Fumesucker]

7. K&R for the truth..

[Toots]

9. Obama coined the phrase "Main Street, not Wall Street" and then

doled out billions to Wall Street and zip to Main Street..Why would ordinary workers be angry about that?

[MadHound]

10. Great analysis,

The Dems wouldn't have to be worrying about the midterms if they had focused on jobs early and often. Instead they passed a weak stimulus bill that consisted of forty percent tax cuts, leaving people to rot without jobs.

It is all about jobs in this country right now, and the Dems have let the people languish and suffer.

[deutsey]

11. As someone from the working class/working poor

who is watching what little middle class advancement I had attained vanish, I've felt deserted for quite sometime now. I can't understand why anyone would turn to O'Reilly or Beck, though. I guess it gives the illusion that someone's out there expressing what we feel...unfortunately, people don't seem to get that they're also exploiting what we feel.

[HughBeaumont]

13. A tax cut is no substitute for a living wage job. PERIOD.

That's what are leaders are trying to sell us on to avoid telling us that Corporate America (who is currently holding America hostage) no longer factors the American worker in their hiring plans, short or long term. They don't CARE that they're killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, since their Asian slave states are their geese now . . . and, well, they got theirs. So we really don't matter any more.

Tax cuts are really all they have. It's another carrot on a stick to keep puttin' Republicans in office. It's not like ANYone knows how to create jobs or the demand those jobs require . . . well, they KNOW, but that would require them to hire workers HERE at a living wage, which they just don't want to do because it will cut into their wealth and it would be win/win, another thing the corporatists hate.

You can't force rich white old men sitting on piles of cash to start hiring people, because they'll just flip you off. Why wouldn't they? There are no repercussions to them. There's no risk to them. The people aren't going to parade their heads on pikes, because half of those people think they're going to BE a CEO someday. Tax cut money to them is gravy. They could put it back into their businesses in the form of jobs, but they don't HAVE to, or really, WANT to. It's far more valuable to them to just sit on it.

Corporatists want separation, as much as humanly possible. So if some people of the working classes of this country aren't going to remove their heads from their asses and realize tax cuts are no substitutes for living wage jobs, and go watch their stupid carnival barker Glenn Fucking Beck, then they deserve whatever comes to them. Enjoy spending 15 MORE years with no net new jobs, idiots.

[RainDog]

14. Democrats seem to think they can win by alienating labor, teachers, women, gays

...and we chided Republicans for their claims that they were no longer part of the reality-based community.

The truth is a bit more complicated, tho, it seems to me.

Even with the bailout, banks have been sitting on capital.

Corporations that have produced profits via layoffs are in no hurry to hire workers.

The resulting financial problems created by the refusal to fund small business and the lay offs in corporations have fed the poor economy and massive unemployment.

...what better way to alienate people and drive them to a protest vote for the party that is not in power.

...what better way to create a Republican-controlled Congress.

Of course, Americans voted to put Democrats in the majority in both 2006 and 2008 and the conservdems have performed this same function by obstructing the will of the voter by their insistence on policies and provisions that demonstrate their hatred for women, gays, workers - and Obama continues this legacy with his attack on teachers - and now social security.

imo, this nation is broken because those in positions of power are so corrupt they cannot be compelled to do the right thing.

even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are destroying lives in order to pacify their fuck buddies in board rooms across the nation.

they can all go to hell, as far as I'm concerned. both parties betray the American people time and again.

[CBR]

18. I love how "white working class" morphs into "working class"

in the article. Typical.

[Curmudgeoness]

19. When did Populism become a dirty word? Why are all the

politicians afraid to do too much for the masses? I just don't get it. The Dems should have been doing a lot more for working people.