Martha Coakley can now be placed on the scrapheap of Democrats who wore out the phrase “working families” while running unsuccessfully for Governor in Massachusetts. She joins Scott Harshbarger, Shannon O’Brien, Tom Birmingham and Tom Reilly, among others. I’ve yet to see a breakdown of where the votes came from in this election, but I would mildly surprised if Baker didn’t win the blue collar vote.
Others have made excellent points in other threads about how Coakley failed to push policies that truly would have resonated with struggling blue collar families, and that questions 1 and 2 touched upon sticker shock issues people are facing in trying to keep pace with the cost of living. So there was a breakdown between rhetoric and policy.
Yet I’d like toss out a larger question: why do Dems keep chasing working families that routinely vote Republican? These are the folks who feed the beast of daytime propaganda radio. I’m not saying the party should radically change policies or abandon principles like progressive taxation. I’m just pointing out that college-educated, socially liberal cubicle dwellers would seem to be the much more fertile voter pool for Dems in this state to target.
Talk about kitchen table, family issues. Sing the praises of a big tent society. Talk about how younger adults can buy a home in this state and how middle class kids can get a high quality, affordable college education. Instead of chasing a segment mildly fearful of change, convince a larger segment that we need to make positive changes. Win over those suburban voters who routinely vote Democrat in every race except for Governor.
Anyway, I’m curious what other think. Is it time for Dems to stop wearing out the “working families” trope?
I’m not sure I agree with all of it. I wonder why something like earned sick time didn’t get us more votes. Labor also routinely still endorses our candidates, so why the disconnect? Even if you are not a union member, their interests are largely yours too.
The term itself may be somewhat overused, but I think you misconstrue its meaning. Given the ever-shrinking “middle class,” the term “working families” unifies the classically identified “working class” with middle-class folks who work hard every day and depend on earned income for their economic security, whether they are “college-educated socially liberal cubicle dwellers,” nurses, school teachers, college professors, or they are people with less formal education and more OTJ training who work in factories or building trades–and whether they are young or older or whether they work for minimum wage or a low-six-figure salary. Personally, I am a college-educated person who spent many years dwelling in cubicles and now work for myself, from home. I certainly identify with this term.
The common thread among this group of people is that the balance of power (structured by our political economy) between employers and employed, between the rich and the rest, between the individual and the large corporations, between the privileged and the less privileged (whether based on color, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or some other factor) has great import in our daily lives and is the stuff of our politics.
Some working people may come to believe that others don’t work as hard, that the people getting a free ride are the problem, or that taxes and overregulation and big government are the chief problem. They may also believe that the knowledge-rich in our society (scientists, college professors, the media) are a privileged group of people who conspire against them, look down on them, and need to be put in their place. This set of beliefs makes that group of people ripe for influence by the powers that be (i.e. large corporations and wealthy people who are far away from the reliance on a paycheck) who have an agenda of their own — having greater control over their own wealth and the power to sustain the sources of that wealth and its growth — who then succeed in getting working people, and especially the less-informed working people, to think and vote against their own best interests. (That is necessary because we still vote in this country.) You note the effect — that many traditionally working-class people tend to vote Republican — but you seem to see it as an inevitable result of working families’ circumstances while I see it as happening in spite of their circumstances, and in need of correction through better information.
In the center of the table is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO grabs eleven of the cookies, then turns to the worker and says, “Look out for the bureaucrat – he wants a piece of your cookie.” I’ve also heard this with “Tea Partier” and union member in the second and third slots respectively.
One of the current crop of Democrats, watching the scene, says:
“Cookies are bad for your health”.
I saw it passing around Facebook and couldn’t help retelling it.
Coakley was a politician who aligned herself up on all the right issues to keep getting ahead. People see through that-and they know it’s bull. Risk averse to a fault, just like this President. They want someone with fire and passion. There is a reason Warren was welcomed in coal country, welcomed in the Deep South and the Great Plains states-because people can tell she cares about them and she isn’t afraid to call bullshit on the political-finance complex choking our domestic economy so that not the top few can move up.
Bill Clinton can still do this too , even if he governed closer to Robert Rubin instead of Robert Reich. It’s about having solidarity with the working class and being unafraid to say you won’t walk across a picket line and you won’t tell the Republicans they can take their Laffer Curve and shove it.
I first met Denise Provost on a picket line blocking a busy Davis Square sidewalk in front of a restaurant that was illegally exploiting its workers.
Can ANYONE imagine meeting Martha Coakley that way? I can’t.