General Discussion

"The hardhat riot was the first major salvo in America's culture wars, and it had been planned in the Oval Office. ... Patrick Buchanan, then a Nixon aid, wrote in a memo to his boss that 'blue collar Americans' are 'our people now.' The hardhat riot revealed a deep split in America's left that had begun to show itself during the 1968 Democratic convention -- dividing the coalition of workers and progressives that Franklin D. Roosevelt had knitted together in the 1930s. It showed that working class whites could be peeled away from middle-class liberals and college-educated professionals on cultural issues involving nationalism and class as well as race and gender. ... They despised the protestors as a bunch of pampered, long-haired, draft-dodging, flag-desecrating snots. ... As the journalist Pete Hamill observed at the time, the workingman 'feels trapped and, even worse, in a society that purports to be democratic, ignored.'"

Every day here in the 21st century we're told Democrats ignore the white working class, forcing them to vote for Republicans, ignore so hard that non-white working class are voting for Republicans too. Always blame Democrats is the story and they're sticking to it no matter what reality is.