There is so much wrong with Michael Lind's Salon article, so lets just stick with the self-serving idiocy and malice of his thesis.  He writes that the white working class is in demographic decline and that the Republican party is resisting Obama's "change" agenda out of "demographic panic".  Well its tough to tell, and of the presidential approval tracking polls don't carry racial crosstabs that I could find, Obama's approval is at 50% or lower in all of them.  Whites without a four year degree made up somewhat less than half of the 2008 electorate.  So presuming that the half or more of the country that does not approve of the President's job performance, is not entirely made up of working class whites, we would have to expand the circle of anti-change people in "demographic panic".  Maybe anti-change, demographic panic is a general affliction among whites.  I think that we might inquire into the theory's explanatory value. 

Let us look into the intersection of fear of change, demographic decline, and whiteness.  President Bush supported adding private accounts to social security.  This was a big change.  Lind opposed the change.  Lind is white.  Is Lind's article some kind of projection of his own bigoted anti-change, demographic panic in the last decade?