Dog whistle or siren?

Fox Nation headline:



And the Wall Street Journal's William McGurn gives us this: Obama Abandons the Working Class.

At the root of these articles is a paper published by John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira taking a look at the demographics that are likely to affect the 2012 presidential election. It addresses historical and current trends - definitely not campaign strategy.

As Dave Weigel notes:

The funny thing here is that "abandoning" the white working class means "continuing to lose voters who have been voting Republican since 1966."... But with Fox Nation we get an illustration of Obama gritting his teeth and waving "see ya," while flanked by his wife and an unidentified black guy. This is quite subtle.

Yeah, real subtle. As I said, dog whistle or siren?