Blue-collar Democrats culturally alienated

[flashl]

Like Casey (after the late Robert P. Casey, governor of Pennsylvania from 1987 to 1995), these voters -- blue- collar and religious, often Catholic -- are liberal on economic issues but conservative on cultural ones.

Sunday, May 25, 2008
BY MARK STRICHERZ

Irmo Antonacci used to vote for Democratic presidential candidates. A son of Italian immigrants, the 80-year-old retiree lives in Jeannette, a down-at-the-heels smokestack town southeast of Pittsburgh.

After dropping out of college in 1950, he got a job installing telephones and joined a union. He registered as a Democrat and became a John F. Kennedy fan. A decade ago, he was the Democratic committeeman from the town's 5th ward.

But Antonacci no longer automatically pulls the lever for the candidate with (D) beside his or her name.

...

Like Casey, these voters -- blue-collar and religious, often Catholic -- are liberal on economic issues but conservative on cultural ones. Where they once looked to union leaders and their fellow union members for political guidance, they now look to their religious leaders and fellow churchgoers.

In the last decade, to the dismay of Democratic strategists, they've been voting for Republican presidential candidates. According to Democratic pollster and strategist Stan Greenberg, they made up the 10 percent of white Catholics who identify with the Democrats but didn't vote for Sen. John F. Kerry for president in 2004. If Sen. Barack Obama can't do better with the Casey Democrats, his presidential bid may fare no better than Kerry's.

...

Casey Democrats. "Democrats' difficulties with this group surely have a great deal to do with these voters' sense of cultural alienation from the national Democratic Party and its relatively cosmopolitan values around religion, family, guns and other social institutions/practices," blogged Democratic strategist Ruy Teixeira after the 2004 election.

Penn Live

[Glorfindel]

1. I don't understand how anyone can be so foolish

Vote your country down the economic toilet, support monsters who invade a foreign country without provocation and based on deliberate lies (thereby murdering hundreds of thousands of totally innocent civilians), sacrifice your sons, daughters, and civil liberties, in exchange for what? Preventing women from controlling what happens to their own bodies? Keeping GLBT people from enjoying all the benefits of citizenship? Maybe this country just isn't WORTH saving. :puke: :puke: :puke:

[Berry Cool]

3. Here's how some of them (anyway) can be that foolish:

1. Many of them distrust all politicians and believe they will all say or do anything to get elected. It's hard to even get them to vote. They don't think their lives will change for the better no matter who is in office. They gave up on that idea long ago. "The rich get richer, and we get the same old thing."

2. When they do vote, their choice may be based on only the vaguest of media images they have received regarding what the candidates are like. They're busy people. They work long hours. They don't have time to study these people and do lots of research beforehand. They vote for who "seems" or "looks" like they might do the least amount of harm. (Not the most good, the least amount of harm.)

3. They aren't necessarily going to be attracted to a candidate based on how smart he or she is. A lot of them had to either give up the idea of college or were never college material in the first place. There's a certain amount of class resentment against anyone who actually went to college and had opportunities they didn't. They automatically may think of such a person as elitist, even if that person had to borrow money or get scholarships to do it. In their minds, "college graduate" still = "rich." The only way for a candidate to win over people like this is to downplay his intelligence and education and make himself over, like Bush did, into "just plain folks"--the guy you'd want to have a beer with back at his frat house while visiting his campus.

4. The white ones are angry because, the way they see it, the black ones have affirmative action to help them. Them? They got nothing to help them. No one does them any favors, they think, not even if they're poor or the children or grandchildren of immigrants and have never had it easy. They see themselves as having had to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and don't see why others can't do the same. They can't stand the sight of a black person benefiting from any sort of social program, and they hate and resent those who look like gangstas. Their parents didn't bring them up to live that way. They think blacks are using slavery, which ended more than a century ago, as an excuse to be bums and crooks, whereas they themselves are sticking to the pure and honest road and it's getting them nowhere (and besides, many of them had nothing to do with slavery because they're the descendants of poor European peasants who immigrated here in the early 20th century or have always lived in the North). If you put a black candidate in front of them, they're skeptical as hell that he is not what he seems--no matter how clean, smart and decent he looks. They think he is running a scam.

5. They believe military service is good and noble, whether the war one is being asked to fight in makes sense or not. They don't much care about people in some other country getting killed. As far as they're concerned, those people have the wrong religion (not Christian) and would kill US so much as look at us, so why shouldn't we kill them first? And what's more, they're sitting on oil, and if we could get the damn oil without having to deal with them, gas wouldn't BE $4 a gallon!

6. They believe civil liberties are overrated. They have already surrendered all the privacy they have to marketers, and they're just fine with it, because they get rewards from their favorite stores for doing it. Their keychain is fat with courtesy/loyalty cards from every place they shop. They get "discounts" for using these cards (actually, they just don't have to pay the surcharge tacked onto the price of the items for those who refuse to get the cards) and save a lot of money. In return, the stores know about everything they have ever bought. If the president wants to listen in on their phone conversations...so? If it'll catch a terrorist, well, fine. Anything we must do to prevent another 9/11 is fine. The only people who disagree are the same whiners who will be crying and wailing if another 9/11 happens that we didn't do what we needed to do to prevent it.

7. They're not intense about "woman's right to choose." If Betty Lou forgets her birth pill and gets knocked up in junior year, well then, too bad for dumb Betty Lou. She should have that baby and deal with it. If Johnny was dumb enough to trust her when she said she was safe, well, too bad for dumb Johnny, too. If he wants to escape the whole mess, let him go to Iraq.

8. They're not hot on gays either. I mean, THEY DON'T KNOW ANY. Because everyone they know is straight as an arrow. Well, there's that one guy they knew in high school who was always in all the plays, and that teacher who always wore her hair short and never got married and was always seen around town with that other woman who worked at the library. But I mean, come on.

That's how I would explain it. Mind you, this isn't everybody--this is how I would describe my personal experience based on some of the people I have grown up knowing and seen around me.

[Forrest Greene]

5. My Experience With These Folks

...also indicates that they are:

9. Bereft of imagination.

10. Filled with hate & self-pity, based on fear.

11. Unable to let go of grudges.

12. Supreme hypocrites.


For what it's worth.

[virginia mountainman]

6. IMHO...

Your experience is wrong....

[Berry Cool]

10. How can someone's experience be wrong?

It's my experience. It is just as valid as yours, even if it is different. Different experiences can all be valid, or contain grains of truth.

I don't claim to speak for everyone. Just for what I have seen and heard.

[etherealtruth]

7. That'll convince 'em ...

... that voting Dem is a good idea.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

8. Excellent analisys!

As a Progressive, Semi Socialist, Blue collar, Gun owning, Sheet Metal worker, I find many of the attitudes you describe to be common sentiment among my construction working brothers. Trying to help them understand that they are not working in their own best interest is a frustrating process as they generally feel that they are going to get screwed "no matter what".

[nichomachus]

14. I'll take issue with one thing

They don't have time to study these people and do lots of research beforehand.

The do have the time, but they choose to use it in other ways -- it's called setting priorities. They sit in front of the idiot box for hours watching American Idol, or worse still, Faux News.

My sister, who would tell you she "doesn't have the time" because she works hard, snaps on Faux News the minute she steps out of bed. In her house, it's a steady diet of Faux, O'Reilly, Rush, interrupted only by the time it takes to read the NY Post. Then, for a break, they go to the casino and dump money into slot machines, while they bitch about having to pay taxes to support roads, schools, veterans, public health, etc. They have the time. They just use it poorly. They are willfully ignorant.

[flashl]

15. Re: #4 Wonder what they thought the southern whites and the dogs during civil rights movement

were about if they felt blacks were free after slavery?

[virginia mountainman]

2. Very true...Here is a copy of my first post here on DU back in '04

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=95394&mesg_id=95510

This shows just how far the disconnect on many issue is, and what it has done, and continues to do to the Party.

I have been “lurking” here for quite sometime, and I would like for some of ya’ll to meet an “alienated” rural Democrat.

First a little background about me…..

My family has STRONG Democratic roots, Both my parents where union organizers in some textile mills in southwest Virginia back in the 1970’s I was the “Democratic poster child” in parades back in the 70’s, we was also featured on the nightly news for a period of time, with my mother's work with bringing the union into town, (ultimately unsuccessful) My mother was also a delegate, from the state of Virginia, for Mondale, at the democratic convention

My wife’s family has just as strong roots. Her father has just retired from the coalmines. Her grandfather has served in local government on the democratic ticket for many years, and is also a union man.

My “alienation” began around 1993, when gun control started being a loudly contested issue. My WHOLE FAMILY owns guns, we ALL where raised around them.

Guns where NOT an issue, everyone had them. I was raised in a small house, my father’s long guns where stored in a rack over the headboard of my bed, his handguns where kept in his bed-side bureau and yes, he kept a .45 1911 pistol, loaded, in the open, on top of his dresser, no big deal, it was ALWAYS THERE, right beside his tie-tack box.

It was ready to defend everything my father held dear in his life at a moments notice.

To us kids, it was nothing special, they was ALWAYS their, very much like the butcher knives in the kitchen, they are both deadly, but they both are just “their”.

Nothing special about them

Now I know some of you are thinking my father was a “gun nut” he was NOT, I don’t ever remember him buying any guns, he did not shoot them often, maybe a box of shells a year, right before hunting season. All the guns he had, he had BEFORE he had me.

I had uncles and cousins that “traded in guns” allot. It is a hobby to them and they are law abiding folks, each and everyone. They enjoy the hobby of collecting and shooting as do I

I remember, me and my (then hardcore democratic uncle) was watching the news about the Brady bill, he got very silent about it, but was still supportive to the Democrats. Then the AW ban came, I remember seeing Feinstein on the news, holding up a semi auto AK up saying that ONLY CRIMINALS would have one. (Between all of us, we had 4 of those rifles) in the next election my uncles and cousins went republican, I did too

I PROUDLY voted for Bill Clinton over Bush SR, he took my vote and betrayed me and my family.

We saw the party that we supported faithfully for generations literally turn on us overnight it seemed. Gun Control was all over the news and if you disagreed, you where “outside the mainstream” or a “gun nut”

Some will say we are just bigots, religious zealots, and “simpletons” and we don’t matter.

But the truth is I could not careless about gay marriage, I am supportive of abortion rights, I detest what is happened in Iraq, I BELIEVE IN ALL OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS.

And I am an outcast from the democrats, because I believe in the 2nd amendment

It is about MORE than guns, it is about personal responsibility, I was taught at a VERY EARLY age, that it is MY number 1 responsibility to protect myself and family from “folks that have bad intentions” Guns are the BEST means of that, the police are ONLY CALLED AFTER there is a crime committed, if you cannot defend yourself effectively, or rely on OTHERS to protect your family, you have FAILED as a parent/husband.

All these gun control laws effect is how effectively I can protect my wife and kids, or my wife protecting herself and kids when I am not here, THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE!!


Let me point out the damage that gun control has done to the democrats; my family has swung to the right. All my uncles and cousins proudly sport “Bush 2004” and “W” stickers on their cars. My father-in-law does not vote anymore, he cannot vote for the “gun banners” but he can’t bring himself to vote for the republicans neither. ONLY MY WIFE’S GRANDFATHER STILL OPENLY SUPPORTS DEMOCRATS. My wife has swung to the right, she is STILL gloating about the election.

My parents no longer vote/supports democrats neither.

See the “gun issue” is about much more than guns to my family. My family would be willing to support the democratic agenda (some may be too far gone now) but I think most would. The Democrats lost us with all the “Hillbilly”, “redneck”, and ”gun nut” talk

It's not the 90 million U.S. gun owners or their guns that are the problem. It's the criminals, and the 20,000 gun laws have never deterred them.

Lines like “Mr. and Miss America turn them ALL IN” don’t help you at all in these parts.

And stop talking about “hunters” the INSTANT folks here, hear that, they KNOW that you’re a “gun banner”

Kerry’s “canned” goose hunt was a joke; his 100% voting record against gun right was NOT a joke.

I have read “post after post” about how the NRA is a shill for the Republicans, they ARE NOT, they DO Support TRULY Pro-Gun democrats, like my congress critter, Rep Boucher (D) VA 9th district.(and YES I do vote for him proudly)

And the talk of NRA money, PLEAZZZZ, it is the 4 million members that vote religiously that give the NRA its power


I made this post (MY first) because I WANT to see the Democrats come back, I am truly scared that soon if the party don’t learn, they will find themselves completely out of power. The Republicans being in complete control scares the crap out of me. I am new to forums so pardon if I have broken any un-written rules, PLEASE give me a canadate I can support whole-heartedly.

[nichomachus]

13. A couple of points

Controlling guns is not "banning" guns.

The fact that your family owns guns and uses them responsibly is admirable. However, there are more people who abuse guns than use them responsibly. So, it makes sense to try to bring the slaughter under control.

I have friends who grew up on farms. They started driving motor vehicles -- unlicensed, unregistered, and uninsured -- when they were nine years old. They never had any accidents or any problems. However, that doesn't mean we should require people to have driver's licenses, auto registrations, and insurance and to set a minimum age for someone to get behind the wheel of a car on a public road.

[virginia mountainman]

16. Please prove this statement..

..there are more people who abuse guns than use them responsibly..

Nearly ALL, of the people I KNOW... Use them responsibly...The ones whom abuse the RIGHT, are definitely in the minority.

Almost 90,000,0000 gun owners did NOTHING, yesterday, nor the day before...or even the YEARS before..

[nichomachus]

17. Well

If all of these 90,000,000 gun owners are responsible, they should have no problem with registering guns and ther is screening in place, making sure all the other gun owners are competent to own them. It's in their self-interest.

[virginia mountainman]

20. NO...Registration has always led to ..

Confiscation....And that is out of the question...

I have no trouble with background checks, but past that..HELL NO...

[OffWithTheirHeads]

22. Right! And YOU should have no problem with National I.D.

so you can show "your papers" every time you leave your city, county, state, etc.

[Asgaya Dihi]

18. I'd agree with virginia mountainman to a point

An assault weapons ban is a ban, not a registration or training plan, and most gun owners do handle them responsibly. I don't own one myself at the moment since my wife and I weren't comfortable with that and small kids but with my youngest at 14 years old now we've considered getting one again. If I was anyone other than who I am I might have had one now, but I'm fairly comfortable with my hands and can improvise well, and I'll leave it at that. Figured I could do better than most without one.

Misconceptions I think play a huge roll on both sides. An "assault weapon" such as we've had banned often isn't anything more or less deadly than your average 22 rifle, it just has a more scary look to those who are more interested in appearance than functionality. Functionally it made no sense to ban some and leave others, accomplished little past us not seeing so many scary *looking* weapons. For those who did understand the weapons banned it looked like a first step toward something more ugly, or at best like we just didn't know what we were doing.

The other side has confusions too. They worry about crime yet violent crime in particular is a fraction of what it was in the 1980s and crime in other areas mostly is down as well, though not as much as with violent crime. Watching the news though you'd think we were living in an increasingly dangerous and violent nation rather than one which is improving in those terms. They are afraid of things that happen less and less often these days rather than more like the news would have us believe.

Same with the idea of black privilege or preference. They did in some small numbers get preferences but they've also been the largest group feeding an always growing prison system, often not through greater crimes but through safe school zones having greater impact in crowded areas so they face more mandatory sentences for equivalent crimes and through the basic problems associated with fighting any charge from the perspective of poverty. The elephant in the room we all want to ignore is the prison system. Almost 1 young black man in 8 between 25 and 29 years of age is behind bars right now, today, and we wonder why we've got everything from so many single mother homes, so many low education and achievement households, and so much homelessness and gangs in some neighborhoods? It's because too many young men are spending formative years in prison instead of at home then trying to face life after that with a record. Too many notice the occasional preference they are offered and resent that but they never notice that much we blame on them we helped to build ourselves through flawed laws and enforcement. If we'd fix one maybe we wouldn't need the other so much.

Too many misconceptions about what we're dealing with on all sides, we need a working press again and an honest conversation about a lot of things.

[Coyote_Bandit]

4. It's easy to rationalize all the reasons

this particular demographic group should vote for Dems. But those rationalizations are a complete waste unless those within the group are motivated and convinced to vote for Dems. So the real issue is how to motivate that group to vote Dem. Talk is cheap. Results sometimes are not.

[bronxiteforever]

9. Can't disagree with this guy more-Western Pa economically and demographically doing well? Not true

Two bogus points by the author-
One-
"The old industrial order in Westmoreland County is declining. It's not that the economy has withered; its structure has simply changed. Instead of mines and smokestacks, the county now has malls and industrial parks. For every town in economic decline such as Jeannette, there are one or two on the economic upswing."

and two-western PA population is increasing-
"Next door is Blessed Sacrament Cathedral; at the packed Sunday Mass I attended, seniors stood elbow to elbow with young married couples, most with small children."

Excuse me-Malls produce jobs equal to union jobs? How can anyone take this clown seriously?
Industrial parks in western pa are TRUCKING centers-energy crisis? Hello? This very statement that malls equal a changed economy and not withered is refuted overwhelmingly by population data-

This author completely misses the economic basket case that is western pa-the sheer numbers of articles from scholars in PA demonstrate his complete lack of understanding WHY Western PA does not hold the fate of the state in November-Western PA is in the midst of massive long term population decline BECAUSE jobs are low paying and there is no future.

My point is that Pennsylvania is ruled by the large 4 counties around Philadelphia-suburban independents-

Sample these articles-
this one from University of Pittsburgh
http://www.gspia.pitt.edu/GSPIA_News/URA.htm

"The loss of urban population to suburban and rural areas exacerbates the problems of business loss, job loss, a shrinking tax base, and a concentration of nonprofit entities within the urban area. "Fewer people remain to support the community's core. Costs increase, and consequently the community becomes unsustainable," said Graziani.

"More people are moving out of the state than moving in. From 1990 to 2000, Pennsylvania ranked 48th among the 50 states in population growth. Of those leaving Pittsburgh (western Pennsylvania 's most populous city), a staggering number are young working-age adults: Pittsburgh lost 36,000 25-to-34 year-olds, a "massive loss of young people," according to GSPIA Assistant Professor Aaron Swoboda, one of the speakers at the forum. The trend continued in 2004: Pittsburgh lost 1.5 percent of its population, placing it 25th in population growth among 25 metropolitan regions."

Check out this New York Times article from 2007-


“In addition,” Dr. Frey said, “a series of Midwest, western Pennsylvania and upstate New York metros continue to bleed migrants, led by better employment prospects and amenities, to the South and West. Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toledo, Dayton and Detroit show accelerating population declines.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/05census.html?fta=y


http://www.nercrd.psu.edu/publications/rdppapers/rdp39.pdf

"Western Pennsylvania includes the only significant cluster of metro counties losing population."

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Amberwaves/April05/findings/PopulationLoss.htm

[Berry Cool]

11. This author definitely got it wrong about the service sector being able to pick up the job slack

and about churches all being "packed"--not every church, Catholic or not, is like that one in areas like this, and the new service jobs don't pay nearly as much as the old manufacturing jobs did that are now gone. That is part of the problem.

[starroute]

12. And when the kids move out of the area ...

The older folk left behind often get more conservative, because they no longer have active ties to a younger generation with changing values. Instead, they may see the outside world as alien, threatening, as something that has driven a wedge between them and their children and grandchildren.

Beyond that, the human brain is hard-wired in certain ways that have proven to be evolutionarily productive. When you're doing well, you feel expansive, you're more willing to take risks because you think anything new you try has a better than even chance of paying off, you have more tolerance for change and difference in others.

But when you're doing badly, you tend to hunker down, cling to what you know, and figure that any change will only be for the worse. That's not a matter of bitterness or being "low information" -- it's just deep evolutionary wisdom. Unfortunately, it's being exploited by politicians who talk guns and family values but don't really give a shit about these people.

[Doctor_J]

19. THey're brainwashed by 24/7 lies, hate, and propaganda on the radio & cable TV

once Big Media is burned to the ground, the Dems will resurge.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. The Dems are partly to blame

They blew some major chances in the 1980s and later, when they still had a majority in both houses of Congress:

1. Not standing up for the Air Traffic Controllers' Union when Reagan fired all of them en masse

2. Not coming up with a way to save farms in the Midwest when farmers were hit with the double whammy of rising interest rates and falling prices for their products. A program of low-interest refinancing would have turned the rural areas blue forever.

3. Letting Dan Rostenkowski (D-Crook) and Bob Packwood (Bob Packwood!) "fix" the tax code. They removed benefits for middle-class and working-class tax payers to pay for tax cuts for the rich and for the corporations.

4. Letting Reagan cut federal aid to college students. When I was in college in the early 1970s, students could get loans at 2% (2%!) interest, and these loans were forgiven 20% for each year the graduate spent in the military, the Peace Corps, VISTA, or teaching in a designated poverty area. By the time I began teaching in the 1980s, the only substantial federal grant funding for students (Pell Grants are pretty small) was ROTC scholarships. The main effect of ROTC seemed to be to turn the students into Junior Neocons.

5. Letting Reagan build up the military past any conceivable need. Sad to say, the DLC was right with him on this, as they were with him on everything except abortion and affirmative action.

While a few Dems (most notably, the late, under-appreciated Henry Gonzales of Texas) tried to fight for the economic interests of the ordinary person, the 1980s were the first time I noticed large numbers of Dems just letting the Republicans ruin the country's economy and distort its foreign policy.

So here's the executive summary: The Dems fought insufficiently hard for working class and rural interests and allowed themselves to be portrayed solely as liberal on social issues, precisely the ones designed to rub socially conservative voters the wrong way.

If the Dems had been forthright and steadfast in fighting for the economic interests of the little person, the public would have been less inclined to hold social issues against them. But between rolling over for Reagan and then supporting NAFTA, welfare "reform," and deregulation of everything, and allowing media consolidation, the Dems have given the working class very little reason to vote for them.

Oh, and the attitudes about "white trash" that I've seen on this board over the years may not be known directly to working class voters, but if Dem candidates are uncomfortable with that demographic, that demographic is going to notice.