Class Warfare

Bill Clinton tries his hand at it. Setting aside the fact that the real "problem" is non-college, modest-income white voters, he would have a point, perhaps, if working-class Americans demonstrated some sort of allergic reaction to voting for Obama. But they don't. In Missouri, Obama and Clinton split non-college voters, with Obama winning voters with "some college" degree. He also won voters in all income categories except $30,000-50,000, where he tied Clinton. In Massachusetts, the non-Southern state that gave Clinton her largest margin, he still won a third of non-college voters and a third of those earning less than $50,000. There's every reason to think that as Obama has more time, he will be able to get more and more working-class support.

But let's go ahead and take Bill Clinton seriously. If people making more than $50,000 or who have college degrees "don't really need a President but feel like they need change", he should come out against his wife's tax proposal, because it preserves the tax cuts for families making up to $200,000. And he should come out against plans to lower the cost of student loan borrowing. After all, they don't need it.

Comments

[Ron]

Black low income voters don't count, Nick.

[Nicholas Beaudrot]

But there aren't that many in Missouri.

[ikl]

This is wierd. Why does the Clinton campaign think that crapping all over states and demographics that don't support them is a good strategy? Do they think that no ordinary voters (just journalists and various sorts of people with a professional stake in politics) will read this sort of quote from Bill Clinton or Mark Penn? And aren't you just sort of illustrating why your candidate is a weak general election candidate by highlighting the groups that don't support you (check out exit polls from the last election if you don't think that doing better among upper income voters would help the Democrats) and then crapping on them? If you were the McCain camp, wouldn't you love the Mark Penn quote about how none of the Obama states except for IL are "significant"?

[Joe Klein's conscience]

I'll mention it again. While Bill faced a tough campaign against Bush Sr. back in 1992, Dole was a cake walk(when do successful incumbents get turned out?). Hillary has never faced a tough race for NY Senate. Rudy bagged out in 2000. And 2006 was a joke.