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.
I quote from today's Washington Post. E. J. Dionne wrote A Demographic the Democrats Can't Forget. As I read it, I thought about the past candidates able to appeal to this demographic, most clearly Bobby Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.
Dionne's next paragraph reads as follows:
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.
Dionne points out that all the candidates recognize the need to appeal to this group. He points at the refrain from Edwards of "the son of a millworker." He comments on a little discussed part of of Clinton's stupm speech where she rightly points out that not enough attention is given to those Americans who will not attend college, a group which includes the demographic discussed in the Dionne piece"
"More young people do not go to college than do," she says. "In fact, it's close to 60 percent that do not. What are we doing for those 60 percent hardworking, motivated young Americans? I don't think we're paying enough attention to them."
As Dionne immediately notes
She's got that right.
Similarly, Obama has addressed the issue in his latest book, having
long preached that social reform transcends race and ethnicity. "These days, what ails working-class and middle-class blacks and Latinos is not fundamentally different from what ails their white counterparts," he wrote in "The Audacity of Hope," his 2006 book. "And what would help minority workers are the same things that would help white workers."
Dionne uses the words of Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama that the Democrats cannot win on identity politics, and that the Republicans must be salivating at the possibility of a split between blacks and women.
Whoever is the Democratic candidate must be able to appeal to both Blacks and Women, as well as Hispanics. It is possible that if McCain is the candidate there will be serious outreach to Jews by the Republicans whether or not Lieberman is on the ticket: Holy Joe will be trying to tell Jewish voters, particularly in states where they may hold the balance of power (Florida and possibly even Ohio) why McCain and the Republicans are better for Israel (and hence for Jews) because of their position on Iraq and Iran ("bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran").
I said that the presidential candidates who were most able to reach the demographic of working class whites were Reagan and Kennedy. Many of the so-called Reagan Democrats were white working-class voters with a strong and visceral loyalty to the military, which is why the perception of military strength was important to them. Also in 1980 they had been suffering during the stagflation of the late 1970's, fueled (sorry for the pun) largely by the increase in prices for petroleum and the impact that had on the American economy and thus both their current standards of living and their hopes for a better future.
By contrast, in 1968 the nation was beginning to tilt away from Vietnam, and many in the white working class were beginning to realize that they were paying a far higher cost in suffering for that war than were those better off economically. And somehow RFK was able to speak to their condition, at the same time as he could reach out to the African-American community, most notably when he was able to keep Indianapolis from burning after the assassination of King, speaking to his own experience of loss.
The Democratic nomination represents a real opportunity for major change. Whoever will be our nominee will have the chance to move the country in a major way, if s/he can run on the basis of a comprehensive vision that includes many across normal divides of race and class. But that will only happen if we do not in the attempt to achieve that nomination so divide ourselves up that we wind up with alienated voters who do not turn out in large numbers in November. We need to remember that we not only need the presidency, as important as that is, but also significant increases in our margins in both the House and especially the Senate in order to have a governing majority, one that can accomplish the big dreams and not merely incremental change.
Dionne ends with a serious caution. Let me begin where he quotes Artur Davis, and then add his final lines:
"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.
A fairer share. That message is one that can resonate across the divides of race and class. It is a message that will be attacked as class warfare, because Republicans know no other way of answering it. We have to be prepared for those attacks. But we also need not to be dissuaded from the honesty of the message, which is that America does best when we include all in our prosperity, when all share in the costs (which we do not see in whatever benefits are developed by our current economy or in the price paid in jobs and wages to achieve it).
As I seek to make up my mind about whom I will support in Virginia on February 12, this is an issue that will weigh heavily in my decision making - how the candidate will address reaching out to all. Perhaps it is because I know that some of the students who pass through my care will not go on to college, perhaps not even community college, but will work in trades and the like, or go directly into the military. And I worry about their future and our concern for them. That is why this column by Dionne so resonated with me.
How about you?
Peace.