CWCS Conference #2

Liberal-moderate pundit Ruy Texeira gave a talk, "Whither the White Working Class," (hereafter "wwc") this afternoon. Texeira spoke of the important role that the wwc plays in presidential electoral politics. Through much of the baby boom years democrats owned the wwc vote, but 1968 and 1972 saw the first backlash, when only 35% of the wwc vote went to the dems--that's a twenty point drop from the previous presidential election of '64. The second backlash came in '80 and '84 when, once again, only 35% of the wwc voted with the democrats. The democrats, Texeira says, never recovered from the two Reagan victories in terms of the wwc. Clinton won the wwc by a slight margin; Gore/Lieberman and Kerry/Edwards lost them by big margins.

Kind of interesting.

Texeira saw this as evidence of a need for the dems to move to the center--although I suspect he'd disagree with that characterization. At several points he conflated "good" and "moderate," making clear that he equates the two concepts (e.g., In terms of her voting record, Hillary Clinton is a good senator, very moderate.). He said the dems need to articulate their vision with niftier, shorter soundbites that appeal to the middle of the road. He urged the crowd to push the dems away from so-called polarizing liberals (again, a Hillary Clinton example: she "comes to bat with two strikes against her") so that they can re-capture the tens of thousands of votes that the GOP took from them, a demographic typified by the wwc.

I couldn't disagree more. Texeira wants the democrats to out-republican the republicans and that strategy DOESN'T WORK. Why should the left pander to regressives who can't handle a strong woman on the ballot? Why should the left imitate the values-laden rhetoric of the right? Why should we try to nickel and dime a victory by getting those pro-Bush wwc moderates? Why not tap the millions of white, black, and brown members of the working class and working poor who are disenfranchised from the entire process?

Texeira framed the issues in an interesting fashion but I suspect that many in the room, like myself, were lefties who gritted their teeth and fought for Kerry despite his less-than-progressive stances on Iraq and healthcare. And I get the sense that he knew he was losing the crowd, since his answers to critical queries grew shorter as the session progressed.
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Later in the afternoon, Tony Esposito and Tony Peyronel did a session on Springsteen-as-icon. I walked away connecting in my head two great ironic-iconic images: Nixon and Elvis at the White house in the 70s and Springsteen and John Kerry on the campaign trail in '04.

Clearly it's the "Post Election Debacle of 2004" conference. Yee-ha!