>Turbulo at aol.com wrote:
>
>>In my long-distant political heyday, a liberal in the American sense
>>(not as in neoliberal) meant someone who favored a more humane class
>>system, but was basically committed to the existing order, and
>>therefore limited in the extent to which s/he would go in mobilizing
>>the workers and the poor to fight in their own name. But it just
>>doesn't seem to occur to the author, as it doesn't to, say, Tom
>>Frank, either, that it may not not be just a question of lack of
>>communication between liberals and workers, or explaining
>>working-class reality to liberals. It may also be the case that
>>their ideology, while less hostile than that of the Republican
>>right, represents a class interest different from and in the end
>>opposed to that of workers.
> ******
>So why did about half of the white working class vote for W?
>
>Doug
>
> ******
>A number of people--Tom Frank, Mark Danner, Andrew Hacker--have had
>some very worthwhile things to say on this topic, some of which have
>been recently posted here. But I don't quite understand the
>relevance of your question to my comment, which was about liberals,
>not workers. Just because workers aren't guided by a rational
>perception of their class interests doesn't mean that the
>bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie aren't either.
I thought you were arguing that liberals don't get workers' votes because the workers perceive them as a hostile class interest. In that case, why did so many workers vote for an even more hostile class interest?
Much of what Woj writes is tinged with too much misanthropy for my taste, but he's got a point about resentment of the urban(e) and wussy. A lot of American populism's historical hostility to Wall Street was powered by a resentment of city slickers - rootless cosmopolitans, if you will - which is why anti-Semitism has been its frequent travelling companion. That's a lot different story from yours.
Doug