Blue collar or white collar, white men in general are a GOP constituency [View all]

[YoungDemCA]

There's been some talk and concern about Obama not doing so well among "blue-collar" white voters, particularly those who have historically voted Democratic in places like West Virginia, Pennsylvania, or Ohio.

However, a few other factors should be noted:

1) Private sector unions are few and far between these days, or are weakened after years of union busting.

2) White men are a GOP constituency anyway these days. Has anyone taken a poll of white-collar white men and compared it to the blue-collar white male vote? The white-collars are, I suspect, probably even more GOP than the blue-collars.

3) Many Republican-voting "blue-collar" white men are self-employed or have relatively high incomes, considering their jobs. Both of these factors lead people to vote Republican.

4) Oil, gas, logging, construction, mining, coal, farming, ranching...these are all industries that have a lot of "blue-collar" jobs. They are also industries that are usually dominated by conservative Republicans, at all levels. So it's a not a big surprise that the workers vote Republican.

5) Race is a big fault line in politics. To this day, a majority of whites vote Republican, and a majority of non-whites vote Democratic. Gender is also a big fault line, too. If white males are strongly Republican in general, why is it such a big surprise that a considerable segment of the "blue-collar" white male population is also Republican-voting?

These are just a few thoughts I had about this.