Even more alarmingly, the white working class vote provides the perfect way for the GOP to drive a wedge into those 241 electoral votes Democrats have held for five straight presidential elections. Contested states with high proportions of white working class voters like Minnesota (60 percent white working class in 2012), Wisconsin (58 percent), Pennsylvania (55 percent), and Michigan (53 percent) could easily be flipped if this group flees from Obama.
^^^^^^^ CB: The tea-Republicans assault on the working class has provoked a very big fightback struggle in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, and many other states. Major components of the protestors I witnessed are the building trades unions, firefighters and police (!). In Florida, a police union recently held a press conference to announce that they were switching from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party. These sections of the "middle class" are also main components of the Reagan Democrats; they are the rightwing of the working class.
The tea-Republicans' attacks are creating potentially an actual "the worse , the better" dynamic. Many in the crowds at the rallies in Lansing Michigan said or it is pretty clear that they had voted Republican in the 2010 election. There are many news reports of individuals saying they wouldn't have voted Republican if they had known this is what the Republicans were going to do. In Michigan the AFL-CIO and many unions have taken on political organizing for recall and referenda campaigns on a scale and with vigor not seen for decades. You hear the term "they've just gone too far". The whole thing really has the feel of a "waking sleeping giant", something I've been waiting for personally for a long time (lol). Also, in Michigan GM and Chrysler are adding jobs, and Obama is claiming credit for them by his actions to save GM and Chrysler. A recent article reported positive economic growth in Michigan for the first time in a while. We'll see, but with all these novel developments in the "middle" working class, I really don't see the Republicans matching in 2012 their take of the working class vote in 2010, as this article discusses it.