Working class white people don't like President Obama much. According to the latest Gallup poll, only 27% approve of him. That's 21 percentage points down since he took office in 2009.
A standard talking-point is that these voters don't like Obama because they're racist. But that assumes that the key word in "white working class" is "white." In fact, the key word is "working." After all, Obama isn't any blacker than he was in 2009.
A few Democratic pundits seem to get this. Writing in Mother Jones, Kevin Drum observes: "So who does the WWC take out its anger on? Largely, the answer is the poor. In particular, the undeserving poor. Liberals may hate this distinction, but it doesn't matter if we hate it. Lots of ordinary people make this distinction as a matter of simple common sense, and the WWC makes it more than any. That's because they're closer to it. For them, the poor aren't merely a set of statistics or a cause to be championed. They're the folks next door who don't do a lick of work but somehow keep getting government checks paid for by their tax dollars."
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Given the availability of government benefits, most working-class people of any race could be on welfare if they chose. That they're not drawing government checks means that they value work. As Slate's Jamelle Bouie notes, government programs like Social Security and Medicare are differently received, because they aren't seen as rewarding people for not working. When your neighbor gets welfare, it makes you feel like a sucker for going to work. Medicare, not so much.
So if Democrats want to win back the white working class — and they kind of need to, if they want to win elections, because it's an enormous demographic — maybe they need to start thinking about honoring and encouraging work, rather than talking about race or class....Read the rest of the story HERE.
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