Eleanor Clift: White Male Reagan Dems Are Racist, Sexist

Eleanor Clift's latest online column for Newsweek assumes that white male "Reagan Democrats" are racist and sexist, or at least they're sickened by appeals by too much focus on the "rights" of blacks and women.

Whether the term is Reagan Democrats or NASCAR dads, they're euphemisms for the white men who deserted a party they thought focused too much on the rights of blacks and women.

Isn't that a bit simplistic? Couldn't there be a lot of reasons for white male Democrats to vote for Reagan? There's no room in Clift's racist/sexist analysis for the possibility that defections came because of issues like abortion, the Vietnam War and the "peace" movement, and later, in Reagan's case, the Carter mismanagement of the economy and the Iranian hostage crisis. Clift continued: 

No Democratic candidate for president has won a majority of the white vote since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Bill Clinton came close, but with Ross Perot in the race siphoning off votes, even Clinton with his natural affinity for lower-income working-class folks, people he grew up with and understood, fell short when the votes were counted. In an election season focused on race and gender, it's ironic that white male workers have emerged as the most prized cohort.   

Again, the "ironic" import to Clift is that white males, who are by her definition insensitive to the rights of blacks and women, are still a stubborn math problem for people who worry they're all bigots. Clift loves the John Edwards endorsement, which she wrote "couldn't have come at a more opportune moment. He is the embodiment of the working-class message that has eluded Obama and that has become the core of Hillary Clinton's campaign." She wants Edwards at a VP nominee, or at least in an Obama cabinet.

Later, Clift talks to St. Louis labor writer Phil Dine, who at least tries to argue with her about that white male racism against Obama, the reputed unifier:

 "Working people don't give a damn about unity," says Dine. "They want somebody who'll fight for them. They don't care about the broad reform of politics." They like Clinton because she's scrappy, and West Virginia voters are the epitome of scrappy, hardworking people. She has more of a built-in appeal to these voters, based in large part on their affection for her husband, and they rewarded her with a 41 point margin of victory over Obama in Tuesday's primary. The state is 97 percent white, but as Dine points out, Obama won Iowa, which is 96 percent white. "A lot of voters talk about race, but it's more about who's in touch with your values," he says, resisting any implication that blue-collar people are more afflicted with racism than other voters.