In '84, Reagan got a slight majority of the Michigan UAW membership. In '88, Jesse Jackson got a quarter of the white vote in Michigan. http://www.issues2000.org/Celeb/Rev__Jesse_Jackson_Principles_+_Values.htm
If you write off the mass of the white w/c, that cedes the ideological terrain to the Right. And sound like the Weatherman or MIM Notes, http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/mn/mnbrowse.html
And, do nothing to broaden the AmeriKKKan Left, beyond the upper-middle class, white careerists, "Politics and the Class Divide: Working People and the Middle-Class Left, " (Labor and Social Change) by David Croteau (Paperback - January 1995)