It's a good rant, but I don't think it answers the most basic question - which is why the blue collar demographic is willing to vote for people who are desperate to screw them over.

It's obvious with the fundies, but the draw from the right seems to be low taxes (a lie) and racism.

The only difference between the middle class condescension of the Dems and the pseudo-aristocratic condescension of the Reps is that the Dems believe their shtick about making everyone middle class, while the Rs are utterly cynical about it.

Making a difference doesn't just mean reaching out, but removing the dog whistle talking points.

As long as anyone can use 'Socialism' and 'Tax and Spend' as a way to end an argument, the Dems are going to have problems.

It's not like it has to be hard. Obama's recent emphasis on J.O.B.S. should start to make a difference.

Seed the meme that the GOP steals jobs while the Dems look after them, and the GOP is toast.

It's about respect, and the problem is that there is virtually no respect among the people who are shaping the Democratic message for the idea that blue collar work is not some kind of badge of dishonor.

Its all good and well to say that you are for the working man (and there's a considerable body of evidence that suggests that Obama is an even bigger sham on this than McCain) but when you refuse to include a place for their lives and lifestyle in your plans for the future, they aren't going to vote for you.

And Obama has been seriously fucking milquetoast when it comes to addressing the possibility that the problem with the American economy isn't that working people are retards who didn't get a degree, but the victims of an economic system that fundamentally doesn't believe in shared prosperity.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

This is the problem I have with these arguments from people like Sirota: This notion that Democrats have somehow denigrated the working class.  Sirota, who constantly has his panties in a twist over stupid shit, such as Obama mentioning Reagan's effectiveness on an ideological level (thus committing the sin of telling the truth and somehow revealing himself a traitor to the David Sirotas of the world), is happy to give in to Republican horseshit when it suits his goofball faux-populism.

It betrays a hopelessly misguided view of history that portrays the mythical working class -- one that Dems apparently don't win, even though they, you know, do every time -- as being treated as beneath Democrats when, in truth, this small group of working-class voters who switched sides did so because for many reasons.  Some economic, sure, but this amounts to a convenient excuse for many whites -- and let's be clear that this small group within the working class is entirely white -- not being happy about Democrats becoming the party of crazy kids and emboldened blacks and broads.

"Blowjobs, more important than job-jobs," as I've put it.

This idea that pointing out the fact that Sarah Palin isn't qualified to run the McDonald's down the road from me, let alone serve as vice president, somehow implies that I'm talking down to small-town America is nonsense, and it says a lot more about small-town America than it does about those of us who point these things out.  Wasilla is a small town in the middle of nowhere, and her contributions to it were banning books, firing people she didn't like, and turning it into the largest crystal meth supplier in the state.

This is somehow insulting to people in small towns -- how, exactly?

People in small towns are pandered to on matters of culture constantly in our idiotic discourse.  As Sirota enjoys palling around with uber-xenophobe Lou Dobbs, one of the chief architects of this garbage, I would've thought he'd get that.  We're constantly under the barrage of The Heartland^TM, that wonderful place where simple people -- they's jess folk -- live out good and decent lives with family and Main Street and Jesus and Dorothy and Toto and the theme from Cheers always playing, without the degenerates from the cities around to fuck it up.

Or something.

But it does serve to illustrate a key similarity that Sirota and others have inadvertently picked up on: That there's always another bogeyman for the Right to capitalize on.  If it isn't the blacks rising up against them with the end of slavery, then it's women bringing their emotions into the voting booth, or blacks on welfare, or Latinos stealing jobs, or kids hating the troops, or drugs and sex and Rock And Roll corrupting us all, or Democrats being too much of a bunch of pussies for whatever it is they're too much of a bunch of pussies for this week, or Democrats not grovelling sufficiently in front of the Dumb Hick demographic.

There's always another bogeyman.  Always another excuse for stupidity.  It can't be the segment of voters who are stupid, can it?  No, it's gotta be the party and its supporters.  And God help us if someone ever finally has the balls to stand up and point out that the real welfare queens in America are in places like Alaska and Iowa, not New York and "Taxachusetts" (as they oh-so-cleverly call it out there).

A not-insignificant chunk of small-town America believes Barack Obama is a Muslim who will raise their taxes, while John McCain is a Christian who will lower them.  A not-insignificant chunk of small-town America believes Jimmy Carter was a disaster while Ronald Reagan was one of the nation's greatest presidents.  A not-insignificant chunk of small-town America believed John Kerry was a traitor while George W Bush was an American hero.  A not-insignificant chunk of small-town America believes the Rapture will come in its lifetime.  A not-insignificant chunk of small-town America believes John McCain would make a better Commander-in-Chief purely because of the fact that he speaks seriously about killing brown people in faraway places without rational decision-making.

But then a not-insignificant chunk of small-town America believes we found the weapons of mass destruction.

Oh.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

There's never been successful Socialist or Labor Party in the US.  Very different from the European political history.  Thus there has never been that strong influence on national debate and national policy such a party gives.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

Here's Barry implying Joe must be lying, because no plumber could possibly make "a quarter million dollars." And you falling for it because afterall the IRS has a $1200 lien on Joe's checking account and "ninety-five percent" of small businesses (read: DBAs?*) earn less than "a quarter million dollars."

Very funny, Frank: "effete intellectual white collar urban middle class which McCain is trying to paint Obama as representing."

McCain is wasting his time trying to suck up to what passes for "hard working white Americans" as opposed to "hard working Americans" and "intellectual white collar" Dilberts.

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* "Figure 1 and Table 1 show data from the Internal Revenue Service's Statistics of Income ("SOI") regarding the number of tax returns filed by different forms of business organizations from 1978 to 2005 ...Throughout the period 1978 to 2005, nonfarm proprietorships made up the vast majority of businesses. The S corporation is the second most numerous business form. In 2005, S corporations constituted 11.6 percent of all business entities."

fn. 16 "The numbers reported for nofarm sole proprietorships and for farm returns are based upon the number of taxpayers who filed a business return as a sole proprietor (Schedule C to From 1040) and who filed a farm income return (Schedule F to form 1040).[Sixty-seven percent] One taxpayer may report more than one business organized as a sole proprietorship; in that circumstance, the data reported here count only one sole proprietorship."
--"Technical Explanation Of Title III (Tax Provisions) Of Division A Of H.R. 1424, The "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act Of 2008" Scheduled For Consideration By The Senate On October 1, 2008" Joint Committe on Taxation, pp6-10 (pdf)

If Barry and Michelle filed a Schedule C, (and he did; I read the pdfs of the returns released to the public.) does he count his family among the sole proprietors (self-employed, salaried employee reporting "Other Income") or a small business employer?

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.