The narrative of the racist southern and/or working class white voter serves disappointed liberals by giving them a way to cope with rejection, and it serves Republicans by reassuring them that people can still be easily manipulated by racial bias.
A. Serwer, The American Prospect

Hopefully Obama (if he wins the nomination) is as smart as they say and he can confront the deficiencies of the Ivy-Masschusian-Bigwiggery in the party.

If you are weak in Appalachia, you are going to have a weakness in Michigan.

It was Bill's ability to be perceived as a strong yet understanding man which made him such a popular President with Clinton Dems.

Obama, OTOH, has consistently shown himself to be both lacking in confidence, and completely insensitive to his own weaknesses as a candidate and their effect on the voters of America.

For example, 75% of WV voters said that Obama agreed with Wright's views to some degree. It is crazy to think that didn't influence their votes, isn't it? Obama did not have this big a problem with Clinton Dems before Wright, did he? Look at North Carolina's results. She keeps cutting into his demographics. Why? Yes, she's a great candidate, but Obama himself has lost a lot of his luster.

I predict that his campaign will learn nothing from this resounding defeat, and will go on to proclaim, in their usual tone-deaf and jaw-droppingly stupid manner, that Obama has won on May 20th.

You look at Clinton's career - she gets out of law school and  does that internship at Yale Children's Center. She becomes staff attorney to the Children's Defense Fund. She moves to Arkansas and she opens a legal aid clinic. She's appointed to the board of Legal Services Corporation, and she expands the budget by several million dollars during the Reagan years. She finds out the rural Arkansans have limited access to healthcare because there are no healthcare facilities so she's out rounding up federal funds to build the facilities. She sees a limited number of slots for kids in Head Start, so she puts together a home schooling program for those kids. She's got lots of stuff like that in her background - places where she used her education and her access to make life better for ordinary and under-privileged people.

It's a Democratic year if there ever was one. Obama would be a non-starter any other year, but this is a clear anomaly.

Now, it could be that the problem manifests itself more prominently in states like West Virginia because of the educational demographics of those states, but that doesn't make it a regional problem.  It's still a class problem.  It's the same problem that candidates like Kerry and Dukakis had, and I can't imagine how people look at a problem that manifested itself four short years ago with a white nominee and blame it on racism.

And please don't blame all people who make their livings through intellectual or cultural work.
I assure you: many people with advanced academic degrees do support Senator Clinton. If members of the so-called "creative class" would use their usually critical minds to analyze policies and arguments instead of simply jump on bandwagons and monitor so-called trends, then we would all be in better shape.  

As difficult as it is to talk about race in a calm and intelligent fashion in this campaign, so is it almost impossible to talk about class in this country.  

The beauty of traditional New Deal liberalism was that people of different classes, religions, ethnicities, and cultural orientations could unite around the common principles of fairness, opportunity, and economic justice.  I would argue that people of various class and economic positions all have a common stake in a fairer system; an all-out capitalist system not reined in by government regulation in the interests of the vast middle ultimately fails this country and cannot sustain itself.  I know a lot has changed demographically over the past few decades, but isn't it wiser to try to bridge gaps between urban and rural voters, industrial workers and intellectuals, women and men, and so forth, rather than exacerbate them?  I think Senator Clinton gets that on a fundamental level.  I see Senator Obama's supporters fanning the flames of division in so many ways.  Despite all his talk of "unity," I just don't see that in him.  

Many of us did share with the cloth-coat Republicans an affinity for fiscal responsibility and a love of God and Country. We still do. We just didn't think it ought to be shoved down any-one's throat.

Now that the Obama style Creative Class Democrats have made it abundantly clear that they have nothing but disdain for us it will be hard for Democrats to keep the base anesthetized with drivel long enough to get them to the polls for him.

We may not be as well educated or as well informed but we aren't stupid. And we don't like be talked down to and treated as if we were so stupid that we didn't understand just what "condescension" is and what it tastes, feels and sounds like.

There are some genuinely foolish people that will always vote for anyone that has a "D" after his/her name. I ought to know, I was that stupid for 40 years. Perhaps much of the disdain was hidden or else I wasn't paying as close attention as I should have been or maybe I just didn't want to see.

I see now. And I loathe what I see. I feel incredibly stupid and naive. There are very few Democrats for whom I have any respect these days. Bill and Hillary Clinton top that list. Obama and his surrogates, and supporters are at the bottom.  

As my working class neighbor recently told a customer at his small garage; "Don't talk down to me bub, I may not be able to afford that fancy Prius you drive, but I'm the only one in this town that knows how to fix the damn thing. Think about that before you talk down to me again." He was still visibly angry at the end of a long work day when he told me about it.

BTD: BTW, it is not about God, guns and gays. It is about standard of living. It is about respecting these voters.

I'm from Alabama, and I'm a Democrat, raised by FDR, Appalachian Dems. I've been a Democrat since I began voting 32 years ago. I've always been frustrated because a lot of working-class people vote against their own economic interests by going along with the GOP. That, to me, has always seemed suicidal. But I've never before really looked at the Democratic party through their eyes before this election.

Now I understand. By god, they're right. The "Liberal elites" are about as arrogant and alienating as the insufferable, holier-than-thou religious right. The members of the "creative class" really do think they're morally and intellectually superior to the working class. And that comes through loud and  clear to me now. They approach the working class much like Obama does: an other to be pitied for their ignorance and their "bitterness."

No wonder the Democrats have such a hard time winning elections. I "get it" now. And no wonder they probably won't win in November.

The GOP is far, far better at treating the working class with respect. It's a phony, superficial, manipulative respect, but it's at least better than being openly looked down on by people who are telling you you're inferior to them not just economically but in every other way. At that point, your honor ad self-respect is at stake.

The GOP at least respects the working class enough to pander to them. Democrats will pander to AAs, excusing Reverend Wright lest they offend, but they really do find the working class kind of repellent--a bunch of "ruffians" that MoDo wrinkles her nose about in today's column.

The Democrats have, since FDR, positioned themselves as the party of economic equal opportunity. But now, ironically, they pretend to be the champions of the very people they actually hold in such personal disregard, and those "ruffians" sniffed it out--long before I did. But I truly understand now why the working class has such difficulty voting with the party that proposes to address its economic concerns.

I get it. Finally.

I ask because the NYTimes led with an article focusing on racism--even doing the selective data presentation where they said "8 of 10 that voted based on race voted for Clinton" without saying what percentage that was.  It looked like a short-sighted talking point from a think tank or a campaign with a slant.  Another network discussed it as a newer/stronger "problem" of race (as did the times if i recall).  Was this an Obama memo/plan that let him ignore WV without taking a press hit?

I am not a blogger, I'm not part of the netroots.  I'm here because I can barely stomach the nytimes anymore.  I'm not even a Hillary "supporter"--I'm an idiotic believer in democracy.  And the risk isn't just that Clinton supporters will be po'd the risk is that they and others will tune out/turn off for quite a while.  If I didn't have this blog, I wouldn't be involved at all...and i'm a policy wonk with an MPA.  

Ninety percent of black Democrats support Barack Obama. So that might leave an observer wondering: What the hell is up with that other 10 percent? Are they stupid? Do they hate their own race? Do they not understand the historical import of the moment?

I can shed some insight on this demographic anomaly. In gatherings of black people, I'm invariably the only one for the Dragon Lady. I'll do my best to explain how those of us in the ever-shrinking minority of a minority came to our position.

But, before going any further, let me fully disclose my predispositions. I disliked Obama almost instantly. I never believed the central premises of his autobiography or his campaign. He is fueled by precisely the same brand of personal ambition as Bill Clinton. But, where Clinton is damned as "Slick Willie," Obama is hailed as a post-racial Messiah. Do I believe that Obama had this whole yes-we-can deal planned from age 16? No, I would respond. He began plotting it at age 22. This predisposition, of course, doesn't help me in making the case against Obama, especially not with black people. But, believe me, there's a strong case to be made that he isn't such a virtuous mediator of race. And it's this skepticism about Obama's racial posturing that has led us, the 10 percent, into dissent.

HE GOT CREAMED... She also won the support of most voters under age 30, a group that has typically voted heavily for Mr. Obama throughout this election. She also edged out Mr. Obama among college graduates and higher-income voters, also groups Mr. Obama has relied on...  Read More

It eloquently addresses all of the topics that have been discussed here recently, and I think you all will appreciate it's breadth and comprehensiveness on what is going with Clinton's voters - especially the part about the Clinton base fighting back against the media.

Additionally, Clinton made it a main campaign point this past week that "No Democrat has won the White House without carrying West Virginia since 1916" Well, as Matt Yglesias pointed out yesterday, no Democrat has won the White House wihout winning Minnesota since 1912. And Obama won Minnesota convincingly.

Again, my point is not to be argumentative, but, rather, to inject some sense of proportionality to the discussion.

Clinton's victory last evening was huge. But no more than several of Obama's victories.

At the risk of being banned, I'd like some members of this board to be more intellectually honest. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. And the fact is that Working Class Whites are not just an Obama problem in a General Election, but a DEMOCRATIC problem, going back over 40 years.

Thanks

This is gone from an Obama bashing site, to now obama bashing and feeding a sense of being wronged using almost nothing but straw men.

Its funny that Clinton blogs accuse obama supporters of attacking them.  Yet its always at Clinton blogs that Obama supporters are insulted, and have been the entire time.

His black supporters practice "white racism," whatever that means, his young supporters are delusional, his whites supporters, are out of touch "egg heads" "latte liberals."

So quit the nonsense. The working class whites are voting for Hillary Clinton because they like her better, period. What do you want Obama to do, drop out because some people refuse to vote for him, and that he needs to stand aside and go back to relying on a white person to represent and advocate for blacks? What message would that send to blacks? (Keep in mind that plenty of women are making precisely the same argument regarding Hillary Clinton's not only staying in the race, but refusing a VP offer ... I have yet to hear any feminist state that Obama should refuse, say, an offer to be attorney general for that same reason, that it would be going back to needing a white person to put him in a position to help other blacks ... I say that if Hillary wins the nomination she should not choose a black VP or appoint blacks to high level cabinet posts, after all Bill Clinton never appointed a black person to the Supreme Court OR to a high level Cabinet post, he DID, however, appoint a REPUBLICAN to run the Department of Defense however ... did the black community complain about that ... of course not ... just like they still voted for Bill Clinton after that Sister Souljah nonsense, after welfare reform, after the crime bill and three strikes laws, even after a record number of blacks were imprisoned thanks to Bill's tough on crime agenda blacks supported Clinton when practically no one else BUT THE EGGHEAD CREATIVE COMMUNITY LIBERALS would, etc.)