Word: collar
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...months from now, let alone a year. Then, the economic outlook might have been much worse and immigration might have become an even more divisive issue. The twin issues at the core of the campaign would clearly have benefited the PP by eroding the Socialist base of blue-collar workers afraid of their mortgage payments and foreign labor competition...
...scene was indicative, though, of the Illinois Senator's shaky first steps with labor. A year ago, many pundits predicted that John Edwards' populist message and tireless union wooing could earn him the bulk of labor endorsements, with Hillary Clinton's establishment mantle securing the rest. Most blue-collar workers didn't know what to make of the upstart Obama, who didn't help matters by skipping one early labor forum due to a scheduling conflict - and falling flat in several others...
...Ohio, which has lost hundreds of thousands of manufacturing and blue-collar jobs over the past fifteen years, NAFTA has become one of the most contentious issues between the Clinton and Obama campaigns, which has done its best to try and link the former First Lady to her husband's trade legacy. Clinton, like Obama, now supports amending NAFTA with enforceable environmental and labor standards, although at the time of its passage, and in at least one of her subsequent best-selling books, she hailed NAFTA as an achievement...
This year, by contrast, the issues that once split the Democrats along race and class lines--the death penalty, welfare and affirmative action--have virtually disappeared. On foreign policy, blue-collar Dems have grown as tired of the Iraq war as have their upscale counterparts. And downscale white Democrats simply aren't as conservative as they were in the Archie Bunker days. During Vietnam, Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley--the quintessential lunch-pail Democrat--sent cops to bust the heads of hippie protesters. Today his son, Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, opposes the Iraq war, promotes environmentalism and marches...
...fact, this year's deeper class divide is among Republicans. The party's blue-collar base is furious over illegal immigration and has begun to notice that the GOP's business wing is keeping the borders porous. McCain, whose position on immigration is more chamber of commerce than Lou Dobbs, may get caught in the cross fire, with nativist Republicans opting for a third party or simply staying home. All of which suggests that the media's fretting about beer and wine Democrats is misplaced. The party that's likely to have trouble holding its liquor this fall...