The Future of the Obama Coalition

Interesting opinion piece in the NY Times http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/the-future-of-the-obama-coalition/

For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.

All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.

It is instructive to trace the evolution of a political strategy based on securing this coalition in the writings and comments, over time, of such Democratic analysts as Stanley Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira. Both men were initially determined to win back the white working-class majority, but both currently advocate a revised Democratic alliance in which whites without college degrees are effectively replaced by well-educated socially liberal whites in alliance with the growing ranks of less affluent minority voters, especially Hispanics.

The 2012 approach treats white voters without college degrees as an unattainable cohort. The Democratic goal with these voters is to keep Republican winning margins to manageable levels, in the 12 to 15 percent range, as opposed to the 30-point margin of 2010 — a level at which even solid wins among minorities and other constituencies are not enough to produce Democratic victories.

“It’s certainly true that if you compare how things were in the early ’90s to the way they are now, there has been a significant shift in the role of the working class. You see it across all advanced industrial countries,” Teixeira, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said in an interview.

In the United States, Teixeira noted, “the Republican Party has become the party of the white working class,” while in Europe, many working-class voters who had been the core of Social Democratic parties have moved over to far right parties, especially those with anti-immigration platforms.

Teixeira, writing with John Halpin, argues in “The Path to 270: Demographics versus Economics in the 2012 Presidential Election,” that in order to be re-elected, President Obama must keep his losses among white college graduates to the 4-point margin of 2008 (47-51). Why? Otherwise he will not be able to survive a repetition of 2010, when white working-class voters supported Republican House candidates by a record-setting margin of 63-33.

The following passage from “The Path to 270” illustrates the degree to which whites without college degrees are currently cast as irrevocably lost to the Republican Party. “Heading into 2012,” Teixeira and Halpin write, one of the primary strategic questions will be:

Will the president hold sufficient support among communities of color, educated whites, Millennials, single women, and seculars and avoid a catastrophic meltdown among white working-class voters?

For his part, Greenberg, a Democratic pollster and strategist and a key adviser to Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, wrote a memorandum earlier this month, together with James Carville, that makes no mention of the white working class. “Seizing the New Progressive Common Ground” describes instead a “new progressive coalition” made up of “young people, Hispanics, unmarried women, and affluent suburbanites.”

In an interview, Greenberg, speaking of white working class voters, said that in the period from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, “we battled to get them back. They were sizable in number and central to the base of the Democratic Party.” At the time, he added, “we didn’t know that we would never get them back, that they were alienated and dislodged.”

In his work exploring how to build a viable progressive coalition, Greenberg noted, he has become “much more interested in the affluent suburban voters than the former Reagan Democrats.” At the same time, however, he argues that Republican winning margins among white working-class voters are highly volatile and that Democrats have to push hard to minimize losses, which will not be easy. “Right now,” he cautioned, “I don’t see any signs they are moveable.”

There are plenty of critics of the tactical idea of dispensing with low-income whites, both among elected officials and party strategists. But Cliff Zukin, a professor of political science at Rutgers, puts the situation plainly. “My sense is that if the Democrats stopped fishing there, it is because there are no fish.”

Originally posted by utherpendragon
[b] Interesting opinion piece in the NY Times http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/the-future-of-the-obama-coalition/

For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the ...[text shortened]... , it is because there are no fish.”

Agree or disagree with this strategy ?[/b]

Originally posted by utherpendragon
[b] Interesting opinion piece in the NY Times http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/the-future-of-the-obama-coalition/

For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the ...[text shortened]... , it is because there are no fish.”

Agree or disagree with this strategy ?[/b]

I don't see a lot of evidence for the assertions made in the opinion piece. Why should I take this writer's opinion seriously?

It smells like right wing propaganda to me.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
I don't see a lot of evidence for the assertions made in the opinion piece. Why should I take this writer's opinion seriously?

Why should I take this writer's opinion seriously?It smells like right wing propaganda to me.-AThousandYoung

This is the author of the opinion piece.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edsall

I'll need to think about this some more.

Originally posted by utherpendragon

Why should I take this writer's opinion seriously?It smells like right wing propaganda to me.-AThousandYoung

This is no conservative propaganda piece.The NYTimes is a notorious left wing rag. And the people quoted in here are not right but left. Such as Greenberg, a Democratic pollster and strategist and a key adviser to Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign.Teixeira and Halpin, etc all left.

Who owns the NYTimes?

Splitting any vote base to aim at certain groups is an old trick, it's convincing the groups of voters that you are aiming for to believe that THEY will benifit from voting you in and in doing so raising their standing/ income within the community.

Will such tactics unite the white vote? will there be an emigration of whites from The U.S? Will White minority power rule the roost?

Obama lost the White, non-college grad vote by 18 points in 2008 yet still won handily. A strategy of trying to mobilize constituencies where he did very well in rather than in using large amounts of resources to try to obtain what is probably unobtainable i.e. a majority of WNC votes makes sense politically.

Originally posted by skipper2666
[b]When the voting demographic changes then you must change with it!! or never have the chance of being elected again.

Originally posted by whodey
In that case I've decided to run as a democrat against Obama. I'll offer a free bottle of tequila to all citizens and let the noncitizens become citizens overnight if they so chose. However, if they find that being a citizen is not as lucrative as being a noncitizen then they will have that option as well.

I'll just write me an Executive Order and its done!! 😵