The Media Myth of the Working-Class Reagan Democrats

And here is something else Bartels discovered. Nearly all the Democratic decline among low-income white voters without college degrees came in the South: 10.3 percent. Outside the South, the Democratic percentages actually increased (11.2 percent) for an overall national increase of 4.5 percent. Again, that is just among whites. The inescapable conclusion: All those blue collar workers who are supposed to have left the Democratic Party for Reagan and then stayed in the GOP, or who might soon be leaving for Trump, didn’t in the first case, and aren’t likely to do so in the second. I suppose there is a reason why the MSM doesn’t feel comfortable broadcasting those numbers. Doing so would force them to label Republicans for what they are: the party of white, rich, disproportionately Southern folks, as opposed to the Democrats, who are a diverse party racially and economically. When put that way, it inevitably sounds like the media are taking sides, even though it would only be fact-providing. This isn’t to say that in 1980, when it came to union households, Reagan didn’t cut seriously into the lead Carter had over Ford in 1976. And he made some inroads into the working class as defined by income as well. But the real story of the so-called post-Reagan Republican tilt is that white Southerners, who had long been departing the Democratic Party, until one of their own, Carter, stanched the flow in 1976, were the primary defectors. And presumably they were leaving not over economics but over race. That’s another story neither the MSM nor the Republicans are eager to tell because it makes the GOP out to be overly dependent on racist troglodytes. For the MSM to tell the truth this way would, again, seem to be picking on Republican salt-of-the-earth rank and file, and the MSM won’t risk doing that. Picking on allegedly Democratic elitists? That’s OK. None of this is to say that Trump won’t attract lots of angry, white working-class voters. It is to say that it’s highly unlikely he will draw many working-class voters away from the Democrats, in large part because there probably aren’t a whole lot of white Democratic votes left in the South to take away, and because most blue-collar workers still identify with the Democratic Party. So get ready to hear about all those angry, blue-collar white guys who love Trump and might hand him the election. But when you do, remember this: Democrats drink beer too, even though the MSM has you thinking they’re all sipping chablis as they munch their arugula. Your support matters…

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