[WS:] My point exactly. There is no generic "working class" but various classes of wage earners defined by residence, cultural identities and institutional affiliations. The county map of election results shows that quite clearly. It is cities vs. suburbs and rural areas. It is even more obvious if you look at the election results in NYC.
Of course, residence is a proxy for a combination of socio-economic factors. Suburbia and rural areas have a large proportion of downwardly mobile middle or lower middle class whereas the cities is the combination working class, lumpenproletariat, upwardly mobile middle class and upper class (especially in the DC area and NYC). It is no surprise that downwardly mobile middle of lower middle classes fear proletarianization and cling to fascist ideologies as a defense. This is a classic case of Nazi Germany during the Great Depression and it is the root cause of the teabagger popularity. You can read about it here http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/williamson/files/tea_party_pop.pdf and here http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19618-the-revolt-of-the-lower-middle-class-and-the-stupidity-of-the-elites
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Unlike many liberals, such as Kurgman, who are bewildered by the teabagger war on the poor which they attribute to ideological zeal and market ideology - the teabagger behaviot has nothing to do with economics, government finances etc, but everything to do with the angst experienced by downwardly mobile middle and lower middle class - their fear of being proletarianized and abandoned by government and blaming that on the usual scapegoats - the "degenerate" elements of society: idle poor, foreigners, and liberal elites. It is that angst that teabagger politicians speak to and draw support from. And what most urban liberals see as irrational wrecking of the economy and political institutions, the teabaggers and their middle and lower middle class supporters see as a perfectly legitimate way to vindicate their "honor" by trashing the institutions that they see as a threat to that honor. In essence, this is the logic of a street thug picking up seemingly irrational fights with anyone who "diss" him because that is the only way he can defend his "honor."
The Nazis used that strategy very effectively. They literally trashed the Weimar political system - which bewildered political establishment could not understand - but the downwardly mobile middle and lower middle class understood all to well, and rewarded the nazis with their allegiance. This speaking to the angst of the lower middle class fearing proletarianization is the key to understanding the popularity of fascist movements around the world. Not the financial support of the reactionary rich, important as it may be - but the ability to capture the angst of the army of middle class schmucks losing their social standing.
It is this ability to see the socio-economic class dynamic and speak to the classes that are threatened by that dynamic that is the key to understand the success of fascist movements. The left never had that ability - or at least lost it after the Russian Revolution - and instead stuck to its dogmatic views and definitions of class. That explains why no liberal democracy ever succumbed to a socialist revolution, but plenty of liberal democracies succumbed to fascist takeovers.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."