MICHAEL BARONE ON THE WHITE WORKING CLASS VOTE:

What’s up with the white working class vote? For years the horny-handed blue collar worker was the star of the New Deal Democratic coalition. It was for him, and his wife and family, that Democrats taxed the rich, invented Social Security and supported militant labor unions.

Well, that was then and this is now. White working class voters — or white non-college voters, the exit poll group most closely approximating them — are now a mainstay of the Republican coalition.

Ronald Brownstein, a clear-sighted and diligent analyst of demographic voting data, provided some useful perspective in his most recent National Journal column. His bottom line is that in order to win this year, Mitt Romney must capture two-thirds of white non-college voters — about the same percentage that voted for Ronald Reagan in his 1984 landslide re-election.

The reason Romney must do so well is that white non-college voters are a smaller part of the electorate now than they were then. In 1984 they comprised 61 percent of all voters. In 2008 they comprised 39 percent.

The good news for Romney is that Republicans have been running near these levels for some time.

That’s because white working class voters don’t think Obama cares about people like them.