Thomas B. Edsall, in the NYT:

For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.

All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.

Edsall quotes Democratic strategist Ruy Teixeira saying that the GOP “has become the party of the white working class.” True. The Democrats have become the party of welfare and the Sexual Revolution (Edsall’s phrasing is, of course, more neutral: “strengthening of the safety net” and “freedom from repressive norms”).

Steve Sailer snarks rightly:

The obvious question is whether Republicans will, in response, do anything to motivate working class whites to go to the polls other than to promise to cut taxes on billionaires?

What an important point. If the Democrats have become the party of welfare and the Sexual Revolution, what are the Republicans? The party of nationalism and plutocracy? At least it makes rational sense for the Dems’ constituencies to favor them. What do non-wealthy GOP voters get out of the deal? For example, it’s not the sons of the one percent who are volunteering to fight this country’s wars, which the GOP candidates — Ron Paul excepted, and possibly Jon Huntsman — are eager to continue, and even to expand.

Why should the Republicans do anything for their natural constituency aside from blustering nationalistically, calling the Democrats socialists, and acting like any attempt to curtail the maximum economic liberty for the wealthiest individuals, for corporations, and for investment banks, is the nose of the Marxist dragon? Seems to me that from the point of view of the white working class, the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is only one of pretense.