Author: pete richards

Yesterday I had the occasion to drive from Milwaukee to Chicago and back. A two and one half hour...

Research indicates that Democrats need to regain significant voting shares of both males and the middle class in order to regain national political competitiveness.

The American male in particular, has had a difficult time adjusting to the changes in the American economy during the past two decades, which is roughly though perhaps not coincidentally, the period of time during which the Republicans have pretty much chased the Democrats out of DC, politically speaking.

First, the formerly well paying blue collar, unionized industries have either disappeared from our shores or their work forces taken over by hard working immigrants who require less money and are not in position to join the union.

Second, the new industries, based around service and technology, require college educated workers. The public education system in the US has not educated boys (or girls) to be scientists or engineers, so that leaves service based jobs like Sales, Marketing, Customer Service. etc. as the main source of employment.

Women are now entering and graduating college at higher rates than men and it could be argued that women are better suited for the “high touch” jobs being created in the US globalized economy these days.

The nature of today’s global business is that production is handled offshore, while management, sales and marketing positions are filled domestically.

In fact, sales and marketing jobs, once the nearly exclusive domain of males, are being filled ever more successfully by females across a wide swath of the service sector.

What can Democrats do to address the dislocation of the American male in the marketplace, and thus recapture his vote?

Eliot Spitzer is runnng for governor of New York. He is the state’s attorney general. In an article in todays NYT Magazine there appears a profile on his chances and a larger discussion of how his chances impact the efforts of Democrats to woo middle class voters back into the big tent, which lately they have exited in droves and pretty much taken the tent poles with them.

In 1996, the average income at which a middle class voter defected from the Democrats and voted Republican was $45,900.*

In 2004, that figure dropped by nearly half to $23,300. *

Al Gore lost the middle class vote in 2000 by 15 points. John Kerry lost the middle class vote in 2004 by 22 points.*

Yet since 1992, another phenomenon has developed: 22 Democratic former prosecutors and attorneys general have been elected either Governor or to the Senate from around the country.*

The theory is that to the great American Middle, Democrats are soft on just about everything which voters fear: crime, white collar crime in particular which damages middle class stock portfolios, terrorism, you name it.

And yet Spitzer leads this former AG charge, which includes the likes of Sen. Salazar from red state Colorado and Gov. Napolitano from deep red state Arizona, from a different place than, say, Hillary or John Edwards: he has an actual record of busting crime, and not just putting away individual perps.

No, what maddens the likes of the Wall Street Journal, who stridently despise (meaning they fear)Spitzer, is his ability to take entire industry segments and force them to clean up or he shuts them down. Investors sleep safer at night thanks to Spitzer, and so the article posits, they will respond to that perception and vote for him.

According to polls cited in the article, men in NY favor Spitzer in much larger numbers than they do Hillary or Shumer.

Men hold one of the keys to the Democrats regaining their national electoral strength. Take away the significant middle class and male votes from the Republican side and you have Democratic landslide victories in 2000 and 2004.

The prosecutor/attorney general angle plays well for Democrats with the Great Middle and for males who respond to strong figures of authority looking out for their interests which they can count. As in their money.

Will the Kossacks here at BMT back a Spitzer presidential candidacy? Take the poll.

* cited in NYT Magazine 10/02/05

I read RenaRF’s reply to Senator Obama’s diary.

Her diary clarified for me one of the problems I have dealt with in trying to reconcile my liberal views with reality.

What does Ms. RF want the Senate to do with the SCOTUS noiminations? Stonewall them all until the day the Democrats regain the White House and Senate majority?

Her tears aside, and the tears of frustration at another loss are understandable, the Senate Democrats had no choice but to confirm Roberts. In the absence of any skeletons found hanging in Mr. Roberts walk in closet, a rejection of his candidacy by Senate Democrats would only serve to alienate a voting majority of this nation (republicans and centrist independents)at a time when the future of progressive politics clearly seems to be trending to the positive.

Since Mr. Obama is a politician by trade and not a blogger, his post should be read in that context. The disappointment and the tears by the blogging left over yet another Republican political victory are a supreme waste of emotion for no gain in reality.

I am a Democrat. I see the signs of coming change in the nation’s perception of its conservative led government. Basically, the people know the conservatives are failed and failing in most areas under their responsibility.

The hurricanes are the powerful metaphors of this failure. So is Iraq. So is Delay. So is Rove.

John Roberts is not a metaphor of failure.

Bush himself has been a failed leader, time and again throughout his vacuous life. Clearly, he could not successfully run a small oil company, even with the “genetic” advantages he inherited from his aristocrastic family. His Texas Rangers are forever mired in the second division (and he didnt really run them anyway)and his Dept of Homeland Security the biggest bungled example of government bureaucracy since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

John Roberts is not a metaphor of Bush’s failure.

John Roberts is a metaphor of the failure of progressive Democrats in this country to win the White House and a Senate majority often enough to pack the Supreme Court with a majority of progressive jurists.

My advice to Ms. RF and others like her: hang the tears out to dry and join with Senator Obama to change the future.

One of the problematic issues regarding blogs, both liberal and conservative, is the blurred line...