I confess I didn’t read the whole opinion piece in the New York Times as carefully as I should have (I have so little patience for this sort of excruciating hand wringing analysis).
But, I read far enough to know that the gist of the schism, between our two major political parties, has to do with the rapid racial and ethnic diversification of America with the Dems on the side of the ‘new Americans’ and showing little interest in helping white working class American citizens.
Much of the current polarization is driven by difference of opinion on issues of race and immigration.
In fact one of those pontificating about how the Dems should proceed suggests that the Dems don’t hesitate to move in the direction of more catering to their immigrant base and forget the white working class altogether.
And then author, Thomas Edsall, mentions Paul Begala (remember him from the Clinton inner circle, Rush calls him the “forehead”) who is on the side of trying harder to reach the white working class.
Begala says something that I know many readers here will relate to (after you get past his painting of some whites as drunks and drug-addled).
Edsall at the NYT:
Paul Begala, a Democratic consultant and adviser to Bill Clinton, also comes back to the cultural breach between upscale Democrats and the white working class and poses this basic question:
If you look at the Democratic platform, or Hillary’s speeches on the economy, Democrats have a raft of good ideas, loads of sound policies that would make life better for the white working class. So why have they rejected us?
White working-class Americans are “dying before their time,” Begala wrote in an email, specifically citing the rise in alcoholism, cirrhosis, drug addiction, overdoses, suicide and poisoning:
If the life expectancy of, say, Somali immigrants in Minnesota suddenly took a dive, Democrats would be falling all over each other trying to ascertain the causes and advocate the cures. We owe white working-class Americans no less.
Ain’t it the truth!
This post is filed in my ‘Laugh of the day’ category, here.