Pres. Obama’s popularity with working-class white Americans increasingly grows during presidency?

A POD to get a Barack Obama willing to think about working class issues would most likely require him to either divorce Michelle or never marry her, in favor of someone else less ah ambitious/focused on getting into the upper-middle class.
I like Michelle! :cool:

Her big issues were military families, a White House garden, and better nutrition and exercise. And that’s about as apple pie and American as you can get.
 
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Throwing a few more bankers to the wolves, just for PR kicks, would probably help a bit.
Getting Bin Ladin earlier in his first term couldn't hurt.
Not saying that guns and bibles comment would be a plus.

There's also the issue of "which working class whites". Appalachia other places with large Appalachian (Scots-Irish) populations were pretty much the only areas that got redder in 2008 as the rest of the country got bluer with the exceptions of McCain's Arizona and Palin's Alaska.
 
I like Michelle!

Her big issues were military families, a White House garden, and better nutrition and exercise. And that’s about as apple pie and American as you can get.

It's not exactly appealing to the working class, though, with their high prevalence of broken families, greater like of local control (As the son of a superintendent of schools, I can't tell you how often my father complained about the absurdity of some of the regulations, compliance issues, and absurdity of suggestions coming from above that came out of that initiative), and focus on the practical while disdaining the glorification of an upper class indulgence like the garden. She never came off as down to earth as the Bushes.
 
Murdoch die in 2008s, his successor couldn't handle FOX News and it changed hands multiple times, making it 'normal' channel like CNN.
 
I like Michelle! :cool:

Her big issues were military families, a White House garden, and better nutrition and exercise. And that’s about as apple pie and American as you can get.
Right, upper-middle class concerns. The lifestyle puritanism of the upper-middle class left, and as a sop to suburban conservatives military fetishism, even if we're talking a less ah aggressive form of it(focusing on helping military famileis rather than "RAH RAH MURRICA"). Stuff that only the top 20% of the pyramid cares about.
 

elkarlo

Banned
Wall Street execs and the big bank bosses were says by they got off scot free to countless outlets. They knew there was more that Congress and the Obama White House could’ve done, like using the Dodd-Frank laws to break up the banks, but that’s not what happened at all.
Yeah Dodd frank just made it harder for smaller and medium banks to compete with the megabanks.
Should have split up all the major banks into 2_3 banks each. I feel that was a major letdown and I'm a conservative
 
Yeah Dodd frank just made it harder for smaller and medium banks to compete with the megabanks.
Should have split up all the major banks into 2_3 banks each. I feel that was a major letdown and I'm a conservative
Some would argue that breaking up the banks would just lead to the whole Standard Oil/Ma Bell thing – the broken up banks just end up resembling their old bloated selves.
 
. . . When the US federal and state governments train workers to believe that medicaid is crap, inefficient, complex and humiliating, the attitude towards extending government supply of health services will be that it will be an extension of suffering to a new plane of hell, . . .
I think it was Sen. Russell Long of Louisiana who said, a program for the poor is a poor program, and I think he’s right!

And think this explains why social security works fairly well, that it’s for everyone and it has a lot of people interested in it, who expect to be receiving it for years and years. And most of the other social safety net does not.
 
Yeah Dodd frank just made it harder for smaller and medium banks to compete with the megabanks.
Should have split up all the major banks into 2_3 banks each. I feel that was a major letdown and I'm a conservative

Some would argue that breaking up the banks would just lead to the whole Standard Oil/Ma Bell thing – the broken up banks just end up resembling their old bloated selves.


That's a matter of scale in a lot of ways though that you can't really regulate your way out of; nobody wants to break up their portfolio to be managed by half a dozen institutions, since it provides no benefit to them, produces lower yields since the investments can't be co-ordinated and net administration costs both to handle it from their end and that of the banks rise, and takes more time and attention. However, a lot of smaller banks can't take on larger bundles/financial instruments whole cloth due to lacking the staff or risking overcapitalization/too high a lose that sinks or heavily cripples the business if the purchase dosent preform (No matter how low risk it seems, one Black Swan of that size is all it takes) while charging a competitive rate. Diversification is important.

Maybe you'd need to provide preferential treatment/regs that benefit the rise of semi-large banks to provide a critical "glut" of competition at that level and than strictly ban mergers that raise a single institution above a fairly low share of the market (not growth, but you can't buy your way to the top) I'm no financial expert, but I can't see a way to allow for large scale banking and thus large scale business to occur without getting banks large enough to shoulder the weight
 
Wall Street execs and the big bank bosses were says by they got off scot free . . .
I think a lot of people take the view, hey, doesn’t the SEC regulate Wall Street and require full disclosure with an accounting firm auditing the statements?

That is, we don’t need a complicated new thing. We just need to close the loopholes and make sure the existing thing works. Very similar to overtime laws where companies do the end-around of declaring a pretty modestly-paid employee to be on salary, just close the loophole.
 
. . Maybe you'd need to provide preferential treatment/regs that benefit the rise of semi-large banks to provide a critical "glut" of competition at that level and than strictly ban mergers that raise a single institution above a fairly low share of the market . .
Honest to gosh, I think one reason Clinton and the Democrats supported bank deregulation in the late ‘90s was that Germany and the UK had large mega banks and the idea that we needed to “compete.”

I wish we had taken a deep breath. Just because they’re doing something reckless and foolhardy is no reason for us to, too.
 
People seem to forget that Obama was actually quite popular with WWC voters through the much of his presidency. He did extremely well with blue collar whites in the Northeast (as every nearly democrat ends up doing) but he also did incredibly well In the Midwest (especially in 2008) getting impressive numbers in the rural Midwest.

I think two things make it seem like Obama wasn't popular with these voters:

1) He did terribly in Appalachia, which while bad, inst the only place where white working class voters reside.

2) He did poorly with non-college whites in the exit polls. However using Education as a way of measuring class is, not reliable. Escoially when you have the paradox of having older Americans being the least educate depart of the populace, but also the most affluent.

The reasons while Obama terribly in Appalachia and with Deep South rural whites, were mostly to do with cultural reasons. Getting a higher stimulus is not going to convince these people that Obama has their interests at heart.

At best a more economically successful Obama administration, allows Hillary to do better with WWC voters and successfully win the 2016 election.
 
. . . The lifestyle puritanism of the upper-middle class left, . . .
I can partially agree. I remember following city council meetings about ten years ago in which a smallish town was considering extending a workplace smoking ban to private clubs with employees. And it did strike me as elitist, as opposed to creating more jobs. But the thing is, it’s just really difficult to create more jobs, especially for an approx. 50,000 population town.

But on the other hand, if First Lady Obama was talking about good middle-of-the-road advice on nutrition and matter-of-factly talking truth to power regarding Agribusiness and the food industry, to me that’s a winning combination. (for example, raising questions about high-fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oil)*

And, at the end of the day, the political left speaks up for the underdog and challenges entrenched economic interests, at least it does in my book.

* don’t know whether Mrs. Obama took this tack, but even if she did it a little bit, I tend to think it’s better than nothing
 
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Ending the ban on importing sugar would have actually cut obesity by a bit, making it more comparable to other anglosphere nations. Making school lunches more or less inedible? Not helpful, but it's the kind of unhelpful that creates upper-middle class jobs so it's the kind of stuff that gets done.

Going by the Obamas' low opinion of "rural white people clinging to their guns", he was probably the one recent president who could have been willing to toss the subsidies for agribusiness that put corn syrup and hydrogenated oil and ended the sugar import ban nonsense. Given the dem majorities 2008-10 in congress, he could have done it too.
 

FBKampfer

Banned
Kick
And with the inconsistent income, it's harder to get a car loan, or if they were paying some real money and/or housing prices were more reasonable, a mortgage for a home. Yes, I can see how this is a definite problem.

I've still had the experience of being classified as a "manager" and expected to work 60 hours a week. Perhaps you have also. This is one reason I think nothing can really take the place of a good overall economy in which companies are scrambling to hire dependable workers and have an actual incentive to treat these workers right.


Long term they have every incentive to do just that already.

The problem is that maximum control is exerted by keeping people poor, but not too poor that they revolt.


I've suggested it before, but beheading the Koch Brothers and the Waltons in public execution would go literal miles to fixing the problems of the country.
 

FBKampfer

Banned
As for Obama's popularity, quietly force the FCC to reimplement the News Fairness Doctrine, but with failure to adhere resulting in forced divestment of subsidies.

Kicks fox's chair right out from under them, and you nip anything not on the internet in the bud.


That alone will go a long, long, LONG way to cutting down on the libel and slander.
 
As for Obama's popularity, quietly force the FCC to reimplement the News Fairness Doctrine, but with failure to adhere resulting in forced divestment of subsidies.

Kicks fox's chair right out from under them, and you nip anything not on the internet in the bud.
You are aware, a savvy-enough conservative could use this against liberals, right? Forcing MSBNBC/NBC/CNN to "balance" out their programming.

tbh the progressive focus on trying to reinstate the fairness doctrine reminds me of HUAC. they created HUAC to use it against fascists, but yet we all know it got used for McCarthyism otl
 
. . . and as a sop to suburban conservatives military fetishism, even if we're talking a less ah aggressive form of it(focusing on helping military famileis rather than "RAH RAH MURRICA"). . .
Think we have a lot of agreement here. I don’t like how doing right by veterans and military families blurs over to supporting whatever war our current crop of politicians have gotten us into. For example, I publicly protested the Persian Gulf war in 1991. Yes, it was difficult, yes, I’m glad I did it, and yes, I still think I was right even though at one point 85% of my fellow citizens thought this “successful” war was a good deal.

In one thread, I’ve even considered my U.S. having a head of state separate from the head of government, say the House electing a First Citizen for a five-year term, with two such terms being tradition but not hardwired. Yes, it might then be more socially acceptable to disagree with a political leader during wartime.

Think Bernie Sanders gets it about right in opposing a war but wanting to do right by veterans. And would be interested if people know of mainstream Democrats who have basically said the same thing and also have been outspoken about it.
 
Here’s a study which says VA hospitals are on average about as good as other health care facilities, although with ups and downs among VA facilities, and not looking at how easy or quick it is to get into the VA system.
https://www.upi.com/Health_News/201...ar-with-other-health-providers/6231524758936/

And from the scandal(s) in which some VA hospitals were keeping under-the-table waiting lists to get into the system, it was at times pitifully slow. I do, however, think it’s important to make the case that on-average care was about the same, so we won’t thrash around like wounded animals and go with desperate solutions, like privatizing for the sake of privatizing, or appointing a director with no experience running large organizations as Trump did.

If Obama had appointed an exceptionally good director, and gotten some luck along the way, well, it would have improved the lives of a number of people. But Obama probably would not have gotten credit for scandals which don’t occur.
 
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elkarlo

Banned
Honest to gosh, I think one reason Clinton and the Democrats supported bank deregulation in the late ‘90s was that Germany and the UK had large mega banks and the idea that we needed to “compete.”

I wish we had taken a deep breath. Just because they’re doing something reckless and foolhardy is no reason for us to, too.
Japan did the same. Mitsubishi UFJ and Sumitomo/Mitsui became mega banks too. Mega banks can be nice but scale isn't always necessary. Several can get together to team up for larger loans. Mega banks just concentrate risk
 
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