In the uneasy aftermath of the primaries, the Obama and Clinton camps are like two bloodied schoolyard toughs circling each other after a grueling fistfight. For the winner, the victory has been all-but pyrrhic, and bitter is the realization the defeated foe is needed now as ally: Outside the chain-link surrounding the track field, the Fat Boy awaits, his car-trunk full of 9 mm’s and his fangs filled with toxin.

Now it begins. The big one, the main event. This jarring primary season was just the preliminary. And after the summer conventions, the gloves will really drop, and both corners will be awash in gore. Now is the time to stop the finger-pointing and start shoring up the old donkey stall. We must come together.

...And the party must start drawing the Democratic expatriates back to the fold.

The Obama campaign in the primary was prescient in noting that old models and drafts were no longer operative in a political climate altered by the strains of the last seven years – and Democratic strategists are aware that colors inking the red states aren't indelible, and in fact are fading under the wash of war fatigue and economic corrosion.

The GOP has reaped the blessing of a decades-long defection of Democratic under-voters. The DINOs (Democrats In Name Only) or whatever they’re called - Reagan Democrats,  rebuilt Republicans – have handed the White House to the elephant party in seven of the last 10 elections., as Hillary Clinton pointed out in her concession speech Saturday.

It’s odd that GOP.com doesn’t list these Blue Dog allies as more substantial contributors to the cause, giving them a link on the “Groups” page, for instance. The party has a potential treasure trove in embittered Hillary backers – with 28 percent of Clintonians saying – immediately after the heat of the primary battle and before the smoke has fully cleared – that they prefer McCain over Obama this year. Now… that's grudge talk.

And familiar subject matter for the Democrats.

The white, working-class voters who gravitated to the GOP, the so-called “Reagan Democrats,” as a social phenomenon, preceded the Reagan-era 1980s. In the South, a key area of traditionally Democratic support, voters began turning GOP two decades earlier.  In the ‘60s, the civil rights movement was considered radical – a mortal threat to a status quo that attracted loyalty more out of comfortable familiarity than from premiums economic and social for the common folk. Democrats gave way to Dixiecrats - and then all-out domination by Republicans.

Across the country, most of what has come to be known as “Reagan Democrats” were working-class whites who felt estranged from a party that was gravitating toward social action and activism, and which seemingly viewed them in return as para-fascist “hardhats” filled potentially with reactionary violence and ill-will. The party was grooving with revolutionary chic, and so had little time for the thermos/time-clock crowd. Reflecting the political trends of whatever era seems a Democratic hallmark, and perspectives on most social issues are filtered through liberal, even leftist, lens.  The American working class takes a more conservative stance on issues like crime and taxes, for instance, simply because their lower-income neighborhoods and budgets are more susceptible to negative effects of these elements.

Almost a generation ago, Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg discovered white ethnic voters in a Michigan area voted 63 percent for John Kennedy in 1960 – and 66 percent for Ronald Reagan in 1984.  He saw, rightly that these voters felt disenfranchised from their traditional party of choice.

But that picture has been long-altered across the country, where one-time roiling issues like social revolution, culture wars and the racial divide have either faded into the past or become integrated into the fabric of everyday life. Nowadays, truckers and small-town pig farmers in north Georgia and southern Illinois are beginning to wonder why they still cling to the GOP, a party revealing itself more and more as a distant Tory citadel, protecting elite interests that have more than beer-money to spend. Beckoning is that old time “religion” of soft-sell class warfare. Most Democratic Party speeches are dressed up as tone-poem meditations on WPA murals… Americans are forever hard-working, sacrificial and brave.

The  economy is always primary concern for these voters, and this year, fear has added the tincture of alarm for the Lunch-pail Quorum. The news on Main Street isn’t good. Our economic meltdown has become incandescent for these folks, and the key ingredient is spiraling fuel prices that incrementally boost household costs for every mercantile item transported across the waves or rolled down our highways – which are all items - and most crucially, food.

Added to this is the growing awareness that this most unpopular of wars is central to domestic financial woes.  The GOP must heft this debacle across its shoulders, and has found it as attractive as a lynx stole at a PETA convention. And, on top of that, the party can’t be trusted: Republicans lie.

…Too much.

These one-time Democrats are too thrify and industrious to be called "prodigal". But it's time to welcome the long-lost wanderers home, anyway.