E. J. Dionne: A Demographic the Democrats Can't Forget

[question everything]

washingtonpost.com

A Demographic the Democrats Can't Forget

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, January 18, 2008; A19

This is a good time to put in a word for the white working class.

(snip)

"Working class" seems an antique term, but the people it describes still exist, more now in the service industries than in manufacturing. Demographers often use education levels as a surrogate for class position, and the past three decades have not been kind to Americans who are not college graduates.

For white male high school grads, average wages stood at $18.44 an hour (in constant 2006 dollars) in 1979. They dropped to $16.06 an hour in 1995. There was then a brief upturn -- wages for such men hit $17.49 in 2002 -- but by 2006, their hourly earnings had fallen to $17.31. White female high school graduates have gained ground, but their wages have recently stagnated too. In 1979, such women earned $11.75 an hour. Their wages peaked at $13.42 in 2003, but dropped to $13.08 in 2006. Similar patterns, at somewhat higher wage levels, are visible over the years for men and women who attended college but didn't graduate. Family incomes fared a bit better than these numbers would suggest, but for a reason. "To the extent that white working-class incomes went up, it was because women were working more weeks per year and more hours per week," said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute who helped me assemble all of these figures.

The need to boost household incomes through more work by both men and women adds stress on families whose breadwinners enjoy little job flexibility. When Bernstein spoke with me yesterday, he was working at home, anticipating that he might have to pick his children up from school early because of a snowstorm. It's not a freedom all workers have. "If I were a cashier at a department store, I probably couldn't do that," he said. Both Clinton and Obama know all this. So does John Edwards, who deserves credit for pushing his competitors to address class issues and whose policies -- and "son of a millworker" speeches -- are aimed directly at working-class voters.

(snip)

But these themes have been garbled, obscured and distorted by the recent distractions. "We're not going to win on identity politics," said Rep. Artur Davis, an African American Democrat from Alabama whose words should be chiseled on the walls of both campaigns' headquarters. "The Republican Party is sitting there salivating at the prospects of a battle between white females and blacks." And the white working class, male and female alike, will wonder what stake they have in the fight. Dr. King, who said that black and white workers were "equally oppressed," and had "mutual aspirations for a fairer share," would not have it this way.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/17/AR2008011702241.html?sub=AR

[gateley]

1. A woman at a local convenience store told me she makes $6.50/hr. and that's

not all that unusual.

[angrycarpenter]

2. You're telling me?

I have not had a real raise in pay for 7 years and now it looks like it may start going the other way. NO ONE seems to care about the working person any more on either side. Thank-you Wal-Mart for betraying us all. Thank-you GOP for letting them.