No. of Recommendations: 2
When I said Whites, I was meaning working-class and poor Whites.
I know. Those are the groups that Democrats used to do well with. Now they don't.
Not saying Dems don't have a hand in this income/wealth inequality, but they seem to try to at least try to help the working class.
They try to help the working class in a very specific way. But working-class and poor whites are also very well aware that they are not very highly valued parts of the current Democratic coalition. Especially white men, and absolutely not white men who have cultural or social ideas that depart from what the "elite" part of the party wants.
IOW, they want to interact with working-class and poor Whites almost entirely as economic actors, with leave to disregard any other interests, opinions or beliefs about any other aspect of society.
Which is certainly a choice....but it sends a very clear signal to working-class and poor Whites that they don't really have much of a place in the party. That leadership opportunities are, of course, not in the cards. Intersectionality, and all that - if one group is oppressed all are oppressed, so you can't be important in the Democratic party if you disagree with the party line on any single issue. But not only will they be iced out of leadeship roles, but also that no one in the party will care much about what they think about any issues other than a very limited subset of economic ones. We'll talk to you about union regulation, but we don't care what any of your union members think about climate change or immigration or the like.
Democrats want these folks to self-identify almost entirely, perhaps even exclusively, on the basis of their class. They do not, and will not. So we need to figure out how to find a place for working class White men (and latino and black men) who hold more conservative views on things.
