Fuck the white working class

[YoungDemCA]

165. A majority of working class whites still voted Democratic for most (or even all) offices for decades

"We haven't had them in the Dem Party to any great extent since Nixon, when he used racist code to get their support."

No. Those were affluent, middle-to-upper-middle class suburban white voters who voted for Nixon. You know, those more "educated" and "tolerant" voters. In 1968, Hubert Humphrey won a significant majority of working class white voters outside the Deep South (where George Wallace, of course, got a lot of white support). Research the election results if you don't want to take my word for it. In 1972, Nixon obviously won in a massive landslide, and yes, he won a lot of working class white voters - but remember that Jimmy Carter won back a lot of those Southern working class whites who had defected to Wallace. And in both 1972 and especially 1976, the Republican presidential nominee did significantly better among wealthier voters (most of whom were/are white, of course). As is tradition.

And no, most working class white dudes did not vote for Reagan. Well, OK, a lot of them did in 1984 - in a 49-state, 59%-41% landslide. And once again, the wealthier whites did a lot better. The "Reagan Democrats" (a painfully overused and pretty much irrelevant term - most of those people are dead, and they either became loyal Republican voters or returned to the Democratic Party) tended to be more affluent suburban white voters. But again, take a look at the election results for 1984. Walter Mondale actually beat Reagan not just in his home state of Minnesota, but in many working-class white locales and counties in much of the Rust Belt - again, in an election in which much of the rest of the country, and wealthier voters in particular, voted for Reagan. You know, those same working-class white areas that Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump this year by scandalously large margins.. Same is even more true for 1988 (take a look at the electoral map that year in Iowa, for example - a state which Trump won this year by several points.

And remember....most of these places sent Democrats to Congress up until the "Republican Revolution" of the 1990s (and many of them even after that - especially outside the South). Which coincidentally, happened in the wake of NAFTA and the rise of "Third Way" Democratic politics with Bill Clinton and co. deciding that the future of the Democratic Party lied in pandering to those same affluent, suburban middle class white voters on everything from crime and taxes to "fiscal conservatism" and corporate deregulation. And all of this, of course, was done at the expense of working class voters of ALL demographic backgrounds - not just white men. And yet, a significant number of working class white men outside the South continued to vote for Democrats at most levels of government - and yes, many at the presidential level as well. And even as the Democratic Party was starting to decrease in strength among this group, a lot of working class whites outside the South (including white men) still voted for Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, and yes, Barack Obama. Hell, a lot of them voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential primaries. And yet, as we are all now painfully aware, there's substantial overlap between these voters (well, the ones who are still alive) and Trump voters - especially in the states which proved to be decisive for Trump's Electoral College win. Which, as far as I know, is still how a candidate wins the Presidency of the United States.

All of this is a long way of saying: You're wrong.

PS: Red-baiting doesn't really do you any favors in a political argument. Especially since there aren't many Reds left to bait, even among Bernie voters (of whom I wasn't one, for the record).