Here’s a particularly disappointing piece from Thomas B. Edsall published in the Sunday, November 27th edition of the New York Times. Edsall reports that the Democratic Party is officially abandoning the white working class.
The most tasteless quote of the piece comes from Rutgers political science professor Cliff Zukin, who says of the Party’s decision to abandon low income whites, ” My sense is that if the Democrats stopped fishing there, it is because there are no fish.” Really? Okay, I’ll get beyond the questionable fish metaphor and play along.
First of all, what does an academic from Rutgers know about fishing? Rutgers is in New Brunswick, New Jersey, just across the border from the New York City area. The place isn’t exactly known for its fishing.
Secondly, the Democrats fish from the same damn hole every election cycle. Sometimes they’re biting and sometimes they’re not. In the 2010 midterms we came home with an empty stringer. Might be time to try a new fishin’ hole?
Lastly, what have the Dems been using for bait? At the state level in Wisconsin, for example, smoking bans and race based mascot laws mean little to most blue collar people. They sometimes don’t mean much to the people most effected.
Yet 215,000 Wisconsinites are going to be effected by cuts to the Badgercare and Medicaid programs in the years to come. A lot of those people are low income, white voters. And the DPW doesn’t care? We aren’t going fishing there? Do they agree with the national strategy?
I hope not. If so I think it’s less likely that we’re going to land the big one.
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