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President Obama receives majority support from professional workers and service workers while Mitt Romney gets strong backing from business owners and people in the mining, construction, fishing and farming industries. From Gallup:
Not surprisingly, the industry divide mirrors the large city vs country geographic divide in our politics. People employed in industries normally found in more rural places such as mining and farming vote Republican, while those employed in jobs found mostly in urban area such as service workers support Democrats.
The fact that Obama does so poorly with people in the “construction or mining workers” at least partly explains why he has done embarrassingly badly in Democratic primaries the Appalachian coal states. While Obama’s environmental record leaves much to be desired, it is not nearly as extraction industry friendly as the GOP’s “drill here drill now” position.
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The pro-Romney result for manufacturing workers and transportation workers is a little surprising, given that whole “GM is alive, and bin Laden is dead” business.
It’s interesting — and I believe, more than a little deceptive — to lump construction in with mining. Many of the big mining states have a relatively small portion of the construction industry, esp. residential construction.
Maybe the reason people in construction favor Mitt is that they are tired of the lesser-evil Dems and the Barackstar selling them out. You lose your job installing drywall or replacing roofs to an illegal alien, you tend not to support a party that openly caters to illegal aliens. You find “your” president hobnobbing with and publicly praising people who help offshore your job (like Jamie Dimon, Jeffrey Immelt, etc.) then you figure, “Why the fuck should I support Dems?”
It all gets back to Harry Truman’s observation to the effect that, “Given the choice between a true Republican and a Democrat who votes like a Republican, voters will pick the true Republican every time.”
Most of my red neck relatives and friends who are Romney supporters just hate the N_gg_r, its that simple.
You give these people to much credit. They don’t know any of that. They couldn’t tell you who the hell Jamie Dimon is.
They do know Obama is black. They can’t point to one statistic “FACT” that shows Republicans are better at running the country than Democrats. Not one.
Far as I’m concerned if your stupid enough to vote Republican after the Bush years your an idiot.
That goes double here in Texas. In fact, don’t have to be a redneck, just a conservative racist.
And they did not notice that in 2008? His fall from grace is way more him than his color.
Sorry, but I’m abandoning the lesser/greater of two evils dilemma in favor of third-party candidates all down the line.
The numbers show how uninformed most voters are as they see Romney as this century’s Calvin Coolidge. People have no money – to buy houses, cars, teevees and the shit that supports miners, sales workers, lumber jacks, and carpenters. The economy goes nowhere on copper coins. Except for food-clothing-shelter…scratch clothing, I mean health care, little left for the end of the month other then plastic. And it will only get worse no matter who wins, with Obama by inches, maybe. With Mitt it’s a return to the golden years of Bush II. Woohoo.
Per miners, it’s also true that mining safety has declined even farther under Obama.
Per construction, I know, why not create jobs in that sector? They enjoy a very high unemployment rate, so Obama’s “gubbamint can’t create jobs” schtick undoubtedly doesn’t wear so well in that sector. Our infrastructure is crumbling, yet our ruling elites think high unemployment is more important than rotting bridges.
Per manufacturing, BO would be more popular there if not for his active off-shoring of US manufacturing jobs. Again, if he’d created jobs instead of shedding them, he’d be more popular there too.
This is what happens when you screw the Little People. It turns out they don’t like being shat upon.
So chances are a lot of the sentiment in those cross-tabs has to do with the fact that Obama is a do-nothing president who couldn’t give a flying (bleep) what those people think.
You fucking idiot,vote for Ralph Nader like the 96,000 other fucking idiots did in Florida in 2000 and gave us 8 years of Bush.Its either Obama or a fucking fascist theocracy.
and a vote for Obama will give us a fucking fascist corporatocracy.
By and large the U.S. electorate are nothing more than marionettes fed an endless stream of indoctrination and propaganda as they stuff their faces with Cheetos while self lobotomizing themselves with a steady diet of Idol, Survivor, America’s Got Talent, et al.
As H.L. Mencken said “no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” The U.S. electorate has a very short attention span and an even shorter memory.
Although most of the information is understandable, there are local farms here in WI who are seeing their safety net being trampled by Scotty. They are reassessing their traditional value of rural America. Much of the Medicaid is being dismantled and their children are suffering.
WI is a bellweather of things to come, if a course correction isn’t recognized here at home. Ryan is not riding high here either. It may not be a getable seat, but it may be contested well.
Again, I ask any of you who can help with a few dollars or ground work, if you live close. We need to reject or Recall Walker on June 5th. That will send tremors in the GOP!
Go to http://www.wearewisconsin.org
Nader did not take away Gore’s ability to win. It was the Secretary of State in Florida, ahead of the creating the ballot and getting it to the Supreme court.
The ballot was rigged, so that most people who voted for Buccanan, thought they were voting for Gore. The butterfly ballot made a lot of people confused.
Speaking of fucking idiots…
Good ol’ Al Gore couldn’t even win his home state of Tennessee. So don’t blame Nader voters in Fla for his defeat.
Oh, right, Bush. You mean the Bush who signed the bill repealing Glass-Steagall? Oops, that would be…Clinton.
You mean the Bush who had Robert Rubin as his Treasury Secretary?
Double oopsie! That would also be Clinton.
And it would be Clinton who kept Greenspan in office, who sided with Rubin/Summers/etc., in muzzling and eventually ousting Brooksley Born.
The political divide seems to be `knowledge workers` vs `people who actually work for a living.` Did that make you mad? Try this: liberal intellectuals primarily use words to trick people. They talk about things that will never happen. They hate working people They hate decent people.
Now some of these `people who actually work for a living,` understand that the U.S. is not a democracy. They do not understand much of the details, but they do notice that liberal intellectuals never mention democracy. Liberal intellectuals love to talk about political issues. Boy do they love to talk about political issues. About the only political issue liberal intellectuals never talk about is democracy. Obviously if democracy is a problem that would be the primary thing they would talk about. They also like to complain about how stupid the voters are. Ever notice that? Are they stupid or uneducated?
I remember back a ways, prior to the internet; liberals, progressives, socialists used to complain loudly about how anti-intellectual the U.S. was. Europe, Canada, even sometimes South America were mentioned as being massively more intellectual. I have spent over a year in Europe and I certainly agree about Europe. Heck, sometimes it seemed that the blue collar workers knew more history than our college students.
My experience of political activism in Europe was transforming. An individual that walked up to me at a small bar in Amsterdam. I was seated at a table and he asked if he could join me because he wanted to talk about the history of road building! I started to look around to see what kind of bar I had walked into. He then explained that he was practicing a speech he was planning to give at a local community political meeting, and he also wanted to practice his English. After about 15 minutes he had finished the talk, and I asked him if he worked in road building. He replied absolutely not. He owned an electroplating company. His company plated the models in `2001 a Space Odyssey.` He said no one was stupid enough to listen to a political talk about road building from someone who had an economic interest in the subject. After he left, I wondered why people did not have conversations like this in U.S.?
I think I know why, but I will let you guess because this post is long enough!
Twelve years on and this bullshit that Nader caused Gore to lose is still wrong. Besides the fact that the Supreme Court stopped the vote counting in Florida, Gore could not even win his home state. Gore was truly uninspiring.
It is a shame there is not a candidate with the integrity and stature of Nader running this cycle. Until there is I will continue to give him my write-in vote.