Labor's Natural Constituency

Chris Sheil has started a lively debate with his article 'Letting it Bleed' at Back Pages.

Just when you think there's no answer to the right wing braying, along comes someone who's succinct writing causes a storm of (mostly) positive comment about the events of last weekend.

Thankfully, Chris left the Sociology theory in the lecture room, unlike some other academic bloggers I've read lately. Mind you, I now know what 'Nihilism' means. Being an engineering type means my social theory is rusty, if it ever existed.

As stated previously, I had no doubt that Labor would lose the election. Howard nailed the election early by exploiting doubts about Labor's ability to run the economy. The heavily indebted people living in the mortgage belts, ie, marginal seats territory, were not going to take a chance on this unknown leader.

We now know that the non-economic issues that so many of us are passionate about didn't cut through.

Chris pointed out how the old class terms of 'boss' and 'worker' have been hijacked by the conservatives to become 'liberal elites' and 'ordinary people.' This caused a lot of discussion in the comments.

Here's mine.

The old term 'boss' is derogatory. The old class structure where the 'boss' was socially superior has almost gone. Bosses are now called Supervisors or Managers, and modern work culture has them on a much closer social level to the people they supervise. 'Worker' has connotations of manual workers or factory labourers, the type of work that mostly gone off shore. Workers and Manager and Supervisiors are all now 'employees.'

My answer to the conservative rewriting of the social strata is that the Labor party should start referring to their constituency as 'employees.' Labor should sell themselves as the party that looks after employees' interests. The 'employees' party.' Employees are Labor's natural constituency. They need to aim for them. Starting today.

This would fit Chris' observation that for the Labor party to win government, they need to aim at 100% percent of the population to get the 52% required. I think 98% would do.

And what about the employers? Well, they can vote Liberal like they always do.