Pickman's has raised a reasonable question though; registration rates in the USA are extremely low compared to most liberal democracies - and in the UK registration rates are as low as in the 40%s among sections of the urban demographic (the lowest are young people in rented housing). I'm really ignorant about the actual state of play about registration rates in the US but I am really confident they're lower than in the UK.
Of the top of my head (these morning posts are often on buses so no other sources available) I cant give you exact registration figures (a reason why I suggest anyone with a genuine interest looks them up), but in general terms (across all races) post-Kennedy there was a general malaise & a down turn in voter registration & turn out over the following decades.
I dont have time to cover 50 years of electoral history so lets skip forward to 1982 (the Reagan era).
Today Reagan is considered a near god by conservatives for his policy of tax cutting, but in reality he raised taxes as many, if not more times, than any other modern President.
At the time many of the biggest protestors were actually poor Republicans (the Dems were considered a bit of a joke at the time) & with the Dems being so useless at the time & with many people unhappy at Reagan, this accelerated the down turn as an increasing number of people felt unrepresented.
This all ties in with what I said earlier about these two parties not being left & right in the UK sense.
This malaise continued until around 10/15 years ago when campaigns were launched to increase voter registration amongst minorities (interestingly that included some federally funded initiatives so even Bush chipped in).
Since then blacks have been the fastest growing minority, in terms of voter registration & as I already pointed out that includes a rise of about 2 million at the last election alone.
So if you're after disenfranchised groups then African-American isnt the one for you.
Probably at the moment the largest & fastest growing disenfranchised group would be poor working class rural white Americans (the same people mentioned above & usually dismissed as ignorant, racist rednecks based partly on propoganda).
Im not sure how many people here are actually interested in the working classes, or are aware of the conditions that many of these people live in, but the situation is dire for many of them & has been for decades (hence their protests against Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II & Obama).
Many of these people (hundreds of thousands) live below the poverty line, & indeed below the standard of living we get on benefits over here.
As I mentioned above there are people working 50 hour weeks, people with wives & kids, who earn less than a single man gets on benefits in this country.
Seriously, forget the Thatcher years, the conditions many of these people are living in makes living as a working class Brit. in the 80's look like middle class living & theyve put up with this for decades (hence the protests against Reagan too) & as I point out in another post in real terms its been getting worse, year on year, over the last decade or two.
Have you ever heard of economic flight?
Thats when you get so dirt poor that you cant actually, humanly afford to live where you live anymore and your forced to abandon your home and move hundreds of miles away and go live in a hostel or something.
This is whats happening (& has been for years) to hundreds of thousands of Americas poorest over the last few decades & of course such an exodus has knock on effects because the smaller the population of a community the larger the share each individual has to pay to maintain infrastructure etc. to the level where whole communities are abandoned, where as others are forced to offer free land, or other incentives, in a futile attempt to try and attract new residents in an attempt to survive.
This is a serious, serious issue. People are dying, communities are dying, they literally have no more to give & yet the Democrats will smear them as middle class racist rednecks, despite many being amongst the poorest people in the country, & the fact that the majority are not racist, & the fact that were not just talking about white people here.
Thats why I responded to Vintage Paws post.
Im sorry if he was offended by my assumption & I know that to assume is to make an ass out of me and u, but reading his post it was a logical assumption based on his innacurate portrayal of Dems as the saviours of the working classes (when true understanding of the American political scene shows that both parties are very dangerous to the poorest in society and in some areas Dems are the more dangerous - where as the GOP is in others) & also because I would have thought that anyone with the credentials that he seemed to be hinting he had (whatever they are) would have been aware that such schemes of out reach as he was advocating have in fact been tried many times before & met with condemnation as ill conceived & ignorant by both Republicans & Democrats & some might wonder why the Democrats might slam a little help of that kind but its for the reasons I mentioned above.
They are just as aware as I am that racists, crooks, paedophiles & other assorted nasties can be found in their ranks, just as easily as in the GOP & therefore universal advocacy can be pretty offensive at times.
I mean seriously imagine being a black guy and getting a letter from some ignorant Brit telling you to vote for David Duke, or some guy living on welfare being told to vote for someone who defrauded your state, or a mother being asked to vote for someone who helped a paedophile get a pardon.
Can you see how you might be offended?
These parties are not left & right.
Personally Ive never liked the idea of putting loyalty to a party above policies and beliefs & therefore I cant be as enthusiastic about the Dems as some here appear to be, as I know the very real impact that such support could have upon some of the poorest people in the country.
