I just want to quickly knock down what I think is a load of bull being peddled by the Dem establishment types:
“Slowly and steadily since 1968, culture has trumped economics with voting and the white working class,” said Kenneth Baer, a former Obama administration official who has written a book on modern liberalism.
“It’s become the great white whale for a shipful of Democratic strategists. Obama proved that while we cannot get wiped out with that demographic, the future of the coalition is among growing parts of the electorate which are neither white nor working class.”
The question of which voters to pursue captures the party’s broader debate about its agenda. Centrist Democrats have chalked up the party’s losses to an insufficient performance among moderate and middle-class voters. “We talk about policies helping the middle-class, but the ones we promote the most are ones that don’t speak to the middle-class, like raising the minimum wage,” said Al From, who founded the moderate Democratic Leadership Council in the 1980s to counter the party’s move to the left and helped propel Bill Clinton to the White House in 1992.
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Oh, someone wrote a book about Gen X and Y and someone who wrote the book on Dem strategy 30 or 40 years ago has an opinion about how me and my generation sees the minimum wage.
I grew up in these generations and demographic that these guys write about and let me tell you — they're wrong.
They are wrong how white males perceive "the other" - minorities, sexual orientation, gender and class. Period. End. Of. Story.
I am sick and tired of being told and having it suggested by political parties that my friends and family who are different than I am are "crazy!" or "weird" or "dangerous" or just "different" all so that I can be persuaded to vote one way or the other.
And that goes both ways - from Dem to GOP and GOP to Dem.
Stop raining down the propaganda that gins us up to "hate" a lot of our family and friends.
I am college educated, but just barely. Most of my friends growing up were middle class. Most went to college. We all have friends and family who did not - and we love them. We care for their well being and future. We all have family from past generations who WERE the working and middle classes - who worked on our behalf and sacrificed so that WE can lead a better life.
We don't forget that. In fact, we want to honor it. We want more people to have the chance that our families had to work hard to drive a rising tide that lifts all boats - that lifted MY boat.
When I think of my friends, I don't slice them up into demographics and political persuasions - we are different, and that makes for a really funny conversation at times and a window to see things from a different perspective.
The minimum wage doesn't help the middle class?
My ass - a rising tide lifts all boats in the harbor, doesn't it? That's what we hear the so-called Voo Doo Trickle Down system does - it works its magic and we all are better for it.
Really? Is that the takeaway from the past 30-40 years?
Well what is good for the goose is good for the sauce, as Mitt would put it - a minimum wage also lifts us all up, it also is a rising tide.
It's just that this tide is generated by actually making more "water" (let's call it a wave machine) to drive people out of poverty and up the economic ladder and to lift the entire economy rather than trusting the Wall Street Bubble Blowing Machine to blow a bubble and take us for a ride.
I'll take my chances making waves before I jump on to another Wall Street blown bubble.
I'll take my chances riding a rising tide with a broad coalition of all the "weirdos" than with the stiffs in suits who want to take me to their Bubble World.
2:43 PM PT: This guy has a point, too:
https://www.youtube.com/...