NY Times: Democrats Not Interested in Voters Who Work, Target Losers Instead
November 28, 2011
There is a fascinating story in the New York Times by Thomas Edsall: "The Future of the Obama Coalition." Let me read this first paragraph to you. "The Future of the Obama Coalition -- For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class." The Democrat Party is just abandoning white working class voters. The Democrat Party is punting. The Democrat Party is saying, "Sayonara, we don't care." They are going after the welfare state full-fledged. They are going after the entitlement mentality people in this country full-fledged. They're not making any pretenses.
Here's a pull quote. "A top priority of the less affluent wing of today’s left alliance is the strengthening of the safety net, including health care, food stamps, infant nutrition and unemployment compensation. These voters generally take the brunt of recessions and are most in need of government assistance to survive. According to recent data from the Department of Agriculture, 45.8 million people, nearly 15 percent of the population, depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to meet their needs for food."
And yet these same people's kids are fed three meals a day at school.
"All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment -- professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists -- and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic." So the Democrat Party, according to the Obama coalition, according to the New York Times, is going after the entitlement class, the welfare dependent class and the elite in academia, art, human resource management, lawyers, librarians, and social workers and so forth. What a coalition, the backbone of America. And that's who they're going after. They're ceding it, c-e-d-i-n-g. They are ceding working class voters. They've already ceded Republican voters. They have ceded conservative voters.
The New York Times is admitting that the Democrat Party and the Obama coalition is saying, "If you work, we don't want you. If you work, we know you don't want us. If you work, you're the targets. If you work, you are the people we are gunning for. If you work, we are coming after you to make sure that the other elements of our constituency are able to eat." That's what the Obama coalition is saying. Can you imagine if there were a story in the New York Times, "Republican Party to White Workers: Screw You." Can you imagine the charges of racism and what have you that would be flowing from this? And then the
New York Times: this is a brilliant, brilliant piece of political strategy.
"It's instructive," says the New York Times, "to trace the evolution of a political strategy based on securing this coalition in the writings and comments, over time, of such Democratic analysts as Stanley Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira. Both men were initially determined to win back the white working-class majority, but both currently advocate a revised Democratic alliance in which whites without college degrees are effectively replaced by well-educated socially liberal whites in alliance with the growing ranks of less affluent minority voters, especially Hispanics." It's purposeful. Here you have the sitting president plotting his reelection, and in order to win reelection, what do you need more than your opponent? You need more votes than the other guy gets. In order to do that, you jettison people who work.
Now, think of that. You throw people who work who are white overboard, and instead your coalition includes the eggheads who have taught all these people the entitlement mentality and the entitlement mentality recipients, the people who think that they're owed something simply because they are Americans or because they are in America. And here's Obama and the Democrat Party saying, "You are who we're looking for. You who don't work; you who need welfare; you who need unemployment compensation extension; you who need food stamps, that's who we want. You are our people." Well, how do you get those people? You promise 'em more. You don't challenge them. You don't tell 'em that they're gonna have to improve themselves. You don't tell 'em that they're gonna have to go out and find work. No. You excuse them. We understand. We understand you're where you are because of people like these conservative Republicans who hate you. Well, we're here to take care of you.
I am not surprised that this is their coalition. I'm just stunned that they're so publicly admitting it. I think it's a big deal. It's not a big deal in the sense that it's always been the case. Well, not always, but I mean in recent years this has been the Democrat coalition. But to come out here and have it admitted to in the New York Times is almost a matter of pride and brilliant strategy. What this means is the white working class is the Tea Party. The white working class has abandoned the Democrat Party, is what this means. This is the old Reagan Democrat coalition in part. White working class people had decided that they're voting Republican. That's who voted in the 2010 midterms.
Now, I should point out also that these voters, these white working-class voters, there are some in the Republican establishment who are very embarrassed by them. They're not college educated. They're a group of people wandering around out there aimlessly, and not everybody wants 'em. We here are happy. We're happy to have 'em as part of the audience. I mean they're the backbone of America, working people, for crying out loud. I don't mean union people. This is not what they're talking about when they talk about working people. Normally when the Democrats use that term "working people" they mean unions. They don't mean it in this case.
"Obama’s alternative path to victory, according to Teixeira and Halpin, would be to keep his losses among all white voters at the same level John Kerry did in 2004, when he lost them by 17 points, 58-41. This would be a step backwards for Obama, who lost among all whites in 2008 by only 12 points (55-43). Obama can afford to drop to Kerry’s white margins because, between 2008 and 2012, the pro-Democratic minority share of the electorate is expected to grow by two percentage points and the white share to decline by the same amount, reflecting the changing composition of the national electorate."
And again, "A top priority of the less affluent wing of today’s left alliance is the strengthening of the safety net, including health care, food stamps, infant nutrition and unemployment compensation. These voters generally take the brunt of recessions and are most in need of government assistance to survive. According to recent data from the Department of Agriculture, 45.8 million people, nearly 15 percent of the population, depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to meet their needs for food."
So the Democrat Party and Obama are making it official. We're going after life's losers, and we're going to empower them. We're gonna make them the reason we win. Now, everybody, you should know this, this should not be a surprise. This is what the Democrat Party's been doing for years, they're admitting it now. They're admitting it. They are saying they're not interested in voters who work.
We've known for a long time Obama and the Democrats are pinning their hopes on the underclass and the very rich, the elites. That's who the Democrat Party hopes to coalesce. And the reason for it is these super rich elites feel guilty as hell about all these poor, nonworking minorities. And they'll give all kinds of money to Obama and the Democrats to help these people.
There's this egotistical narcissism that runs rampant throughout this group of elites, such as academia, administrators, the professors, the human resource experts, and so forth. But both of those groups of people, if you'll note, the elites at universities and so forth, and the nonworking, the entitlement class, they're all dependent on government. So it's now official. Obama is running on the Occupy Wall Street ticket. Whatever happened to Obama bringing us all together? Whatever happened to all that wonderful hope and change back in 2007 and 2008? And now they make no bones about the fact that they are out to divide this country. They are out to divide the people of this country, and they're doing it along class lines. It's no longer something left to ascertain. It's no longer something to conclude. It's no longer an opinion to be posited.
The regime, via its House organ, the New York Times, has announced it. And this is why Obama has expanded government from 20% of GDP now to 25% of GDP. This is why Obama has increased our national debt from 40% of our GDP to 70%, to buy these voters. And today in the New York Times they admit it. This is also why Obama wants to continue the bad economy. This is so hideous. This admission in the New York Times is everything. Obama is admitting why he grew government, why he's growing government as a percentage of GDP, why he is increasing the national debt, and most of all, why he wants a continually poor performing economy, because he needs more dependent people; he needs even more people in pain; he needs more people on the receiving end of government goodies; he needs more votes to buy. All this is being admitted to.
This is a fundamental transformation of the country that we've all been talking about, that we've been warning about, that some people do not want to admit is taking place, 'cause that's a call to arms. I can't tell you the number of people I've talked to -- and I've mentioned this before -- who are at most apolitical. No, not true. At most, they're involved in politics because they have to be. They run businesses that are regulated so whoever is in power they have to pay them respect. But ideological they haven't been. They don't want to go there. And I can't tell you the number of people that are approaching me, some of them in near tears, worried for the first time in their lives about the future of the country.
If you find Barack Obama as a singular problem, then you are missing something crucial. He has a party. He's no different than anybody else in that party. If you think Barack Obama is a problem, if you think this country can't survive Barack Obama, you must, I'm telling you, you must logically, then, agree that this country can't survive the Democrat Party. They are one and the same. There's not a difference. Obama couldn't do what he's doing without the Democrat Party and verse vice-a. When Barack Obama goes to the New York Times and basically says, "To hell with the white working voters," the Democrat party is saying to hell with white working voters. Obama's not running in a vacuum. But it's amazing the number of people who can't make that leap, people who are not as steeped in politics as you and I. Those people are the ones I hear from who want to compromise. They think the answer here is compromise, is getting along. And they're sincere. If both sides would just tone it down, we could come together and we could agree on some things. And I tell them, in my view, that I don't know what I've got to agree with the Democrat Party about.
I ask them, "What do you agree with Obama about?" "No, no, nothing." Then there's nothing in the Democrat Party to agree with, either. But making that leap, for people who are apolitical, for people who are only involved in it on the edges and as little as they have to be, people that don't like it, but there are a lot of those people. They have to be told the truth. The truth somehow has to penetrate. It's tough. 'Cause this is a truth a lot of people don't want to face, that there's an actual political party that has now transformed itself in such a way that its enemy is constitutional government. When you, as a party, head to the New York Times and admit that you can't win with working white voters, that you're willing to abandon 'em in exchange for people who don't, what are you saying you want the country to be? See, you and I in this audience, folks, have known for how many decades this is where the Democrat Party's headed, this is who they are because they're liberals and they're socialists. And now with the evidence right in front of everybody in the New York Times, you would think it would facilitate the conversion of a lot more people to this understanding. And maybe it will.
"Barack Obama suffers from an inherent policy contradiction, especially in foreign affairs," but it's true in domestic policy as well as. "On the one hand, as a leftist," as a Democrat, "he despises the United States and sees it as a force for ill in the world." So you see, ladies and gentlemen, it's not just me believes this. This is Daniel Pipes. And a lot of people understand this. A lot of people are also very afraid of it but have not yet got the guts to admit it. But as a leftist, Obama despises the United States and sees it as a force for ill in the world. And I'm just gonna repeat, particularly here in the area of foreign policy, that's why running around the world apologizing for America, we're not exceptional, we're not a superpower, we only exist because we stole all these things from all these other people and countries, it's about time that we found out what it's like to live the way we've made all these other poor people around the country and the world live.
But there's a problem. It's a problem of logic. "Obama and the Democrats cannot reconcile the contradiction of these two imperatives," because, "On the one hand, as a leftist he despises the country, but on the other, as president, is judged by how well the country fares during his tenure." Sad to say, folks, that a very large percentage of Americans do not see Barack Obama as someone who despises the United States. They just see him as wrong, policies are bad, wrong, 'cause people don't want to look at their president that way. People don't want to think that a man who despises the country has actually been elected president of it. But people who have the courage and the guts to admit reality, you and I, know full well, Mr. Pipes here, know full well that, as a leftist, as a Democrat, Obama despises the country, but he's president. And he's judged by how well the country fares during his tenure.
This is the dichotomy between did he fail or succeed. Now, I wanted him to fail, meaning I didn't want socialism to succeed. I did not want him to succeed in doing what he's done. In my view, Obama has succeeded. He didn't fail. A lot of other people, though, who are not nearly as into this as you and I look at Obama and think he has failed. His policies to create jobs haven't created jobs, when in fact his policies never were to create jobs. The economy hasn't grown, all of his efforts to grow the economy haven't worked. It's a shame. He doesn't have one policy that's designed to grow the economy. Every policy he has is designed to grow government and shrink the economy. And yet he's gotta get reelected. What does he do?
Okay, what he's done is cast aside the other hand. He's got this dilemma or conundrum. On the one hand he hates the country. On the other hand to get reelected he's gotta make people think he's trying to improve it. That's what he's thrown away now. That's what this New York Times story is about. He's not gonna run for reelection on the premise that his policies, if given more time, will improve the country, that his policies will create jobs, he's gonna go out and say so. But what they're admitting now with this New York Times story and what Patrick from Charleston, West Virginia, is saying the tipping point, what they're admitting now is that they're gonna be elected, Obama wants to be reelected by people who capitalize on the country failing, because when the country fails the government succeeds. That's the only way it can happen.
The country fails, the government grows. Government grows and gives away to people that don't work. That's who Obama's going out trying to make his winning coalition, that and his super-educated elites. But working white voters are no longer wanted, working white voters are no longer targeted? That means that he's not gonna make much pretense at all of trying to be reelected on the basis that his policies will make it better for working people. 'Cause what do working people want to improve? They want more jobs; they want raises; they want greater economic activity. Obama's essentially saying, that's not what you're gonna get from me. What you're gonna get from me is slower economy, smaller economy, bigger government, more entitlement, more giveaways, so forth and so on. Occupy Wall Street. That's my constituency group.
This is really is a hell of a conundrum to have. In your heart you despise the country. But as president you're judged on whether or not you're doing any good for it. Okay, so they're throwing that out. They're not even gonna make any pretense that what they're doing is good for the country. Well, I take it back. They are gonna make an effort to define this being a great country by how many people it provides for who will choose on their own not to work. That's gonna be the new definition of national greatness. How compassionate is the government; how big is the government; how many people can the government take care of. That's the transformation.
Obama let it slip last week that he ran for president for the Occupy Wall Street crowd. He's admitting this over and over again. And he's not concerned about the judgment of history. He's concerned about the judgment of his liberal peers, future liberal historians. That's his audience. That's who he hopes to receive accolades from. The Democrats know that people who believe government will give them everything from food and shelter to cars, health care, televisions, can always be trusted to vote for even more government. It's what the Democrats know, it's what they've been angling for, that's where they think they've arrived. Democrats, Obama obviously think they can win reelection with that coalition of people. We shall see.
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