No one should be surprised by this.

 By Donna Cole

 Much has been made about the latest Washington Post/ ABC News poll that shows some rather abysmal numbers for President Obama, with 50% of Americans disapproving of his job performance. The liberal media wants to blame this on rising gas prices and the spin is that President has little personal control of this.


 While this has some truth to it, the liberals seem to have forgotten the words of another Democrat president, Harry Truman, who said, "The buck stops here." I have very little doubt that if gas prices were dropping, President Obama and his fellow travelers would have no problem claiming this as their own victory. But what we are dealing with here is the liberal spin, we must look deeper to find the truth about the numbers.


 The Washington Post's "Behind the Numbers" blog begins to understand who Obama is losing in this post, "Obama's problem with non college educated white americans". From the piece;

"White Americans without college degrees soured sharply on President Obama in the past month according to the new Washington Post-ABC News poll, helping to stall a rise in his popularity and bring him back to parity in hypothetical contests against Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum."

"Behind the Numbers" goes on to point out that Democrats have had trouble pulling whites without college degrees, or blue collar whites, since Bill Clinton was president. They also blame gas prices for the sharp spike in Obama's disapproval. Their numbers seem to back this up, but they also reveal something that I believe is being missed. Here is a graph of non college whites approval/ disapproval numbers from the President's inauguration until last week. ( Graph credit Washington Post.)

 While this graph shows a spike in disapproval that does correlate with the rise in gas prices, look at overall trend. Most presidents have a high approval ratings right after inauguration, but Obama lost 30 points of approval in six months among these blue collar whites and the trend only moved more and more negative to this new all time high. So, gas prices may account for the spike, but one must ask why this has been the overall trend.


 The predictable liberal answer to this would go something like this, "These uneducated knunkle draggers hate Obama because he is black." I reject this notion that anytime a white person is critical of the President it makes them a racist. If this was true, are we supposed to believe that 30% of blue collar whites who once approved of Obama have suddenly become racists in the last three years ? Of course not, so there must be more.


 For what this "more" is, we first must go back and look at what big time lefty Tom Edsall posted on the NY Times' "Campaign Stops" blog on November 27th, 2011. At the time, Edsall's piece, "The Future of the Obama Coalition", caused much fretting and consternation among the liberal chattering class. From Edsall's post;

"For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class."

"All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic."

 As both Edsall and the "Behind the Numbers" posts point out, the Democrats have been losing blue collar whites since the days of Bill Clinton. It has gotten so bad now that the Democrats are not even going to bother with them anymore. So, what is the real reason why ?


 After Clinton, the Democrat Party has moved further and further to the left with more and more emphasis on the social welfare state, massive expansion of government and ever increasing taxes, while only paying lip service to private sector wage earner jobs and their employers. The Tea Party movement was not a hard right lurch by Republicans, it was a reaction to how far the Democrats have moved to the left. The results of the 2010 election prove this.


 Many blue collar white folks, traditional Democrats, were in denial of just how far their party had gone to the left until they saw the policies of President Obama and his Democrat allies in action. Look at two of Obama and the Democrat's major accomplishments, Obamacare and stimulus.


 These white folks do not need a college degree to understand that Obamacare is just the opening that will lead to a government run socialized system. A system that will offer lower quality healthcare at a higher cost. A cost they know they will end up paying for while others freeload on that system.


 Next is stimulus. Once again, no college degree needed to understand all stimulus did was go to prop up broke and mismanaged liberal state governments and a big payday for the public sector unions. It did nothing to create the private sector blue collar jobs these folks work or help their employers. These folks know it will be them, and their children, who will pay for this monumental waste of nearly a trillion dollars that only postponed the inevitable.


 These blue collar, working folks also see the Democrats supporting things like Occupy and the something for nothing crowd. A crowd Democrats are all to happy to oblige with, "Yes, you are owed something for nothing. Let us take something from one who earned it and give it to you who didn't." They see this as un-American.


 Gas prices may be the liberal media's excuse du jour this week, but the fact is that the Democrat Party no longer offers these non college, blue collar whites anything. Democrats have even come to display a certain contempt for these white folks. Liberals like to paint them as stupid and racist, just simpletons clinging to God and their guns, but these folks are plenty smart enough to know when they are no longer wanted.  So, blue collar whites have abandoned the Democrat Party in droves. No one should be surprised by this.