"Now, pollster John Zogby is hyping "Wal-Mart voters." Weekly Wal-Mart shoppers make up about one-fifth of the U.S. population, and Zogby found that 85 percent of them voted for George W. Bush in 2004; conversely, 88 percent of folks who never shop at Wal-Mart voted for John Kerry."
"Wal-Mart has become emblematic of the anxiety around the country, and the middle-class squeeze."
Well, it's also emblematic of something else: 1.3 million workers around the country who draw a paycheck from this supposed enemy of the middle class and hundreds of millions of loyal shoppers.
In particular, a new poll out from the Pew Research Center might give Democrats more than a moment of pause. Despite a relentless anti-Wal-Mart campaign over the last few years -- funded by unions that haven't been able to organize Wal-Mart and that want to keep it from growing its grocery business -- Americans still have very positive views of Wal-Mart. And not just Americans generally, but Democrats specifically.
What's more, not only do Americans generally like Wal-Mart, they also consider it a good place to work. Only 34 percent of Americans identified Wal-Mart as a "bad" place to work, and they were, again, primarily liberal Democrats.
Rich, guilt-ridden liberals see Wal-Mart, and they see injustice.
The truth is, the people in the middle, working Americans (most of them, by far, non-unionized) see Wal-Mart for what it is: a place to get stuff for cheap, to keep the family budget in balance.