When blue-collar pride became identity politics /
Remembering how the white working class got left out of
the New Left, and why we're all paying for it today
BY JOAN WALSH
Sept. 6, 2010
Salon.com
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/politics/2010/09/06/when_blue_collar_dreams_became_identity_politics/index.html

The great political failure of the 1960s was the
New Left's inability to bring the labor movement into
its great liberationist tent. . . .

Still, the inability to forge a political movement that
was as much about class as race and gender rights
haunts the United States today. We saw the shadows of
that struggle even in the 2008 presidential campaign,
as supporters of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama
traded charges of "racism" and "sexism," but few paid
attention to the increasing openness of white
working-class voters, especially men, to pick a
Democrat again in a time of profound economic crisis.
We see it today in the hostility of many Democrats, and
the resistance of the Obama administration, to backing
aggressive government action to address the continuing
unemployment disaster. The decline of the labor
movement hobbled the Democratic Party, and so far
nothing has come along to replace it, to represent the
great majority of Americans who are disadvantaged by
the ever-increasing power of corporate America and the
wealthy. If you want to understand how we got here --
how the Democrats' New Deal coalition shattered in the
1970s, and why progressives are still picking the
shrapnel out of their political hides -- you must read
Jefferson Cowie's "Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the
Last Days of the Working Class." If you missed the
1970s entirely, or only remember it as a child or teen
(as I do), you'll learn a lot. If you lived through it,
you might come to think about it all very differently
-- the missed opportunities, and what they say about
our own time. Plus, this isn't an eat-your-spinach
review, it's a fun read with cultural insight that
makes connections I hadn't, from "Saturday Night Fever"
to "Dog Day Afternoon," Bruce Springsteen to Devo.

<For the complete text go to http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/politics/2010/09/06/when_blue_collar_dreams_became_identity_politics/index.html or click the link above.>

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