So instead of going around in circles some more on this, I would like to move the discussion on a bit and ask WHY the myth is being promulgated? My own theory is that , like the other Left-bashing "left" arguments ( no humor! don't like sports! too p.c.! ) it is about the Democratic Party: everyone must get with the program, which is to move as far to the right as necessary to win back congress. (Remember when "the left" placed its hopes in expanding the electorate through voter registration? Remember the year of the Woman, and the radical idea that one could win elections by appealing to women's needs and interests rather than by taking their votes for granted? that's all over.) Just as Richard Rorty imagines that the rudeness of the student left sent the working class into the arms of Nixon, when in fact, Nixon was paying construction workers to beat demonstrators up, the Michael Moore-Michael Kazin left-bashing imagines that if leftists had been more respectful of the lifestyle of the Reagan Democrats, and had moderated their own political demands (abortion,gay rights) the white working class would not vote for Republicans.
But what do other people think?
katha