Winning over Blue Collar Voters: Part III
We have noticed that we still have a ways to go to win over more socially conservative, blue collar voters.
However, there may be a "wedge" that we can use to separate off these voters and bring them back into our tent.
Let's take a look at a recent article by Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
" Parent-trap snares recruitersThe tune changes at some homes when they hear 'sign here'Thursday, August 11, 2005
By Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
It was a large home in a well-to-do suburb north of the city. Two American flags adorned the yard. The prospect's mom greeted him wearing an American flag T-shirt.
"I want you to know we support you," she gushed.
Rivera soon reached the limits of her support.
"Military service isn't for our son. It isn't for our kind of people," she told him.
"Parental consent is the toughest thing we face right now," said Rivera's boss, Maj. Michael Sherman, 36, commander of the recruiting battalion headquartered in Pittsburgh. "There are so many kids just waiting for their 18th birthday, so they can enlist."
It is even tougher for the Army, which, along with the Marines, has seen the bulk of the action in Iraq, but has far higher enlistment quotas.
Recruiters have to contact as many as 100 young people just to get one who is willing to talk about enlisting, chiefly because of opposition from parents, said Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle, commander of the Army Recruiting Command. That's nearly four times as many as before the war in Iraq began.
The Army's difficulties were reflected in the latest monthly recruiting figures, released yesterday by the U.S. Department of Defense.
They show that while all active-duty military services met their goals for July, and the Army met its goal for the second month in a row, the Army continues to lag for the recruiting year that began 10 months ago, reaching only 89 percent of its goal.
The Army figures to be about 8,000 soldiers short of its goal of 80,000 for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, which would be the first time since 1999 that it will have missed an annual target."
And so we can focus on what we have in common. When we think that a war is truly necessary, we are willing to risk our blood for the cause. On the other hand, the elites of the GOP see war as nothing more than an investment opportunity; they let others do the bleeding.
Remember that, while it is true that Bush, Cheney, Rove and the like are chickenhawks, many of their well to do supporters are chickenhawks as well.
So the "chickenhawk" label won't split off the well-to-do GOP vote; then again neither will anything else in our message. But it is entirely possible that me might start getting some more of the lower income, socially conservative vote.
But, in all this, let us remember that when we are reaching out, that we are inviting people to be "members of our family" and not cynically begging for their votes, only to ignore them if we win.
However, there may be a "wedge" that we can use to separate off these voters and bring them back into our tent.
Let's take a look at a recent article by Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
" Parent-trap snares recruitersThe tune changes at some homes when they hear 'sign here'Thursday, August 11, 2005
By Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
It was a large home in a well-to-do suburb north of the city. Two American flags adorned the yard. The prospect's mom greeted him wearing an American flag T-shirt.
"I want you to know we support you," she gushed.
Rivera soon reached the limits of her support.
"Military service isn't for our son. It isn't for our kind of people," she told him.
"Parental consent is the toughest thing we face right now," said Rivera's boss, Maj. Michael Sherman, 36, commander of the recruiting battalion headquartered in Pittsburgh. "There are so many kids just waiting for their 18th birthday, so they can enlist."
It is even tougher for the Army, which, along with the Marines, has seen the bulk of the action in Iraq, but has far higher enlistment quotas.
Recruiters have to contact as many as 100 young people just to get one who is willing to talk about enlisting, chiefly because of opposition from parents, said Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle, commander of the Army Recruiting Command. That's nearly four times as many as before the war in Iraq began.
The Army's difficulties were reflected in the latest monthly recruiting figures, released yesterday by the U.S. Department of Defense.
They show that while all active-duty military services met their goals for July, and the Army met its goal for the second month in a row, the Army continues to lag for the recruiting year that began 10 months ago, reaching only 89 percent of its goal.
The Army figures to be about 8,000 soldiers short of its goal of 80,000 for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, which would be the first time since 1999 that it will have missed an annual target."
And so we can focus on what we have in common. When we think that a war is truly necessary, we are willing to risk our blood for the cause. On the other hand, the elites of the GOP see war as nothing more than an investment opportunity; they let others do the bleeding.
Remember that, while it is true that Bush, Cheney, Rove and the like are chickenhawks, many of their well to do supporters are chickenhawks as well.
So the "chickenhawk" label won't split off the well-to-do GOP vote; then again neither will anything else in our message. But it is entirely possible that me might start getting some more of the lower income, socially conservative vote.
But, in all this, let us remember that when we are reaching out, that we are inviting people to be "members of our family" and not cynically begging for their votes, only to ignore them if we win.
posted by Harriet at
8/14/2005 11:26:00 AM
1 Comments:
Ollie -- I assume you've read Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? which is the current Democratic bible on the question of winning the white working class. Both very good and still not good enough in my opinion. Am about to review it. :-)
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