Democrats' hunt for the white working-class male voter

[whatthehey]

95. Wish I knew. I'm no marketing guru. But we know what doesn't work

Harking on about the needy and the "little guy" won't work because they don't see themselves that way, but as tough resourceful people who stand on their own two feet (even the ones on benefits). If they aren't earning a lot it's because the Mexicans are undercutting their wages or the liberals are taxing them too much. To need help is to be weak. To accept that you are the little guy is to be proud of being weak. The brotherhood of the downtrodden is a nonstarter here. This is why I think pols of all stripes focus rhetoric on the middle class, because your average $9/hr white guy is too proud to think of himself as less than middle in any way.

The very last thing that will work with this crowd is to stress that Dems champion minorities, or women, or gays. We should actually do that of course, but to advertise that to the lower echelon white male demographic that hates, belittles and shrinks from association with those groups, in that order, is to turn them away from you. Who would want to support a party that supports those you have been told, and thought, are beneath you your whole life? What insults do white men trade the most with each other? Ones that indicate they are either female or gay. What group do they see as the embodiment of all that is antithetical to the rugged self-made straight arrow they see themselves as? The pop-culture stereotype of shiftless, welfare-dependent, criminal blacks who in their mind are the only type of black people who exist. Christ help you if you support non-Christians too, but the Dems by and large haven't yet been brave/suicidal enough to do much of that.

Image is honestly all they react to. To me it's like buying small foreign cars in the early 70s. It doesn't matter that they were more reliable, cheaper to buy and run, more practical. They weren't big and tough and macho and real 'Murican. John Wayne wouldn't drive a Honda, and he wouldn't vote Democratic. The only way I see to beat that is to focus on changing a few key images mostly with emotional loading but maybe with very very simple facts repeated over and over again, for years. You don't go from "Democrats aren't wussies" to "let's talk about the conflict arbitration ramifications of the TPP" very quickly. I'd start on hammering D vs R job growth data in very very very simple snapshots, with emotional tie ins always included, and maybe one other attribute - terrorism prosecutions or captures or something intensely "macho", and little else for months on end until it becomes an embedded image, then move on to others. And if, which is of course a questionable if, we want the white working class male vote to trend Dem again we absolutely must abandon any meaningful gun regulation support.

The typical argument against this is that people already support "liberal" ideas. We get bombarded with such data but few of the advocates that the US is really liberal even including white males either notice or admit a couple of key facts:

1) Surveys that show a majority supporting gay marriage or universal health care or whatever rarely show a majority of white lower echelon males doing so.
2) Those surveys NEVER include the follow up "and would you vote for the party most likely to advocate this in a national election assuming that's the Democrats?" because Bubba may very well be ok with the idea of the Fed paying for his doctor, he doesn't want the same for Shawnt'elle and her kids dsown the street. He may even be ok with Adam and Steve geting married (as long as they never hold hands in his sight) but not if it goes along with actual diplomacy towards the "towelheads" in Iran instead of bombing them like a real man would.

Frankly I'm even less a political strategist than a marketer, but personally I wouldn't chase the low information white male voter very hard, beyond a campaign as mentioned above top pick off a few of the more rational ones. They are too far gone and to get very many of them back would take imaging and even actions that would turn our backs on both principles and utilitarian benefit in too many areas. It would mean speaking out even less than Dems already do for equality and fairness and peace and progress, because in all honesty that's not what the bar crowd wants. Demographics will cover their numbers nationally, and given the chance a serious overhaul of education policies would over generations decrease the number of proud know-nothings still further. In the short term, politically the Dems should basically say "fuck the middle aged lower echelon white male vote", and I say that as a middle aged white male who came from the lower echelons.