In case you were wondering if class war had anything to do with the outcome of the presidential vote in 2012, take a look at the “income” breakdown in The New York Times exit polls for the top 10 swing states.

The division is stark. In eight of the 10 battleground states (Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin), President Obama won voters with incomes under $50,000 while losing voters with incomes of more than $50,000. In the other two swing states (New Hampshire and Colorado), Obama won voters with incomes under $50,000 while tying voters over $50,000 (and losing the subset of voters with incomes over $100,000).

Less than $50,000? Obama won. More than $50,000? Obama lost (or tied). Tell me again why so many Democrats want to screw around with the benefits and retirement ages for Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid? Maybe it’s their lack of class…

In his “Fact Checker” column last week, Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post wrote that “Negative ads often work. But clearly some negative ads work better than others.” He then listed two examples of Obama team ads that worked, and one set of Romney team negative ads that didn’t catch on with the voters.

The two successful Obama team negative ad sets focused on Bain Capital and the auto bailout. Both sets of ads were directly aimed at the blue-collar voters of Ohio. They were, in effect, “class war” ads.

The Bain ads drove Romney’s negatives up by illuminating his plutocrat side, portraying him as a vulture capitalist, a looter of companies, a living symbol of the greed and callousness of the 1% elites who have devastated the Rust Belt over the past 4 decades.

Kessler, who has been critical of the content of many of the Bain ads, then points out that “…more than one-fifth of voters said that the top quality they sought in a president was ‘cares about people like me.’ Obama won their votes by a ratio of 4 to 1…”

The bailout ads highlighted the success of the auto rescue in saving—and creating—good union jobs while protecting Midwestern manufacturing. They also hammered Romney hard for his opposition to the bailout.

And Kessler points out that exit polls “…showed that 59 percent of voters supported the auto bailout — and three-quarters of those voters went for Obama. That certainly made a difference in a state where the margin of victory was only 2 percent.”

Given that Ohio was regarded by almost everyone as the #1 most critical battleground, it is not much of a jump to conclude that Barack Obama “out-classed” Mitt Romney in the Buckeye State.

(Learn more at www.wageclasswar.org )

In his brilliant, day-after summation of the “new majority” that made up Barack Obama’s winning re-election vote, E. J. Dionne wrote this paragraph:

“It cannot be forgotten that saving General Motors and Chrysler was the most ‘interventionist’ and ‘intrusive’ economic policy Obama pursued — and it proved to be the most electorally successful of all of his decisions. The auto bailout was key to Obama’s crucial victory in Ohio, where six in 10 voters approved the rescue. Union households in the state voted strongly for the president, and he held his own among working-class whites.”

I’d like to emphasize two key points from that essay that have been mostly overlooked:

1. Obama’s crucial Ohio win was in major part a “class” victory.
2. Government intervention in the economy—specifically, the auto industry—not only saved good union jobs and an important industry, it created new good jobs and a better Ohio economy. This was a successful progressive public policy pursued in the face of fierce conservative opposition.

Why re-emphasize these points?

In the first case, while I totally agree that the “rising American electorate” of African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, the young, and single women are the future strength of the Democratic Party, it’s critical to remember that blue-collar White votes were necessary to cross the 50% threshold.

Stan Greenberg’s estimate is that the rising American electorate now makes up close to half of the electorate (and growing). This is a happy demography for progressives, but remember—we don’t get all that vote every time; off-year turnout among these base groups still lags presidential-year turnout; and it’s not (yet?) a majority of the vote.

We still need union organizing skills, labor turnout operations, and union voters—or at least union-friendly voters—to win key Midwestern states like Ohio, Iowa & Wisconsin, and to elect great U.S. Senators like Sherrod Brown & Tammy Baldwin.

In the second case, Dionne points out that government intervention—long derided by “free enterprise” propagandists—made a positive difference in the lives of many Ohio working families. Not only that, but government intervention in the economy paid positive political dividends. “Gifts” in the always-eloquent prose of Mitt Romney.

Imagine that. Good public policy also meant good politics.

Progressive office-holders might keep that in mind.

(Learn more at www.wageclasswar.org )