I work with a bunch of blue collar guys in Kentucky that make $80,000 a year and that goes a long way here. It's not about economics, it's cultural, it's about White male anxiety and angst. They as well a black and hispanic men are drifting away because they want to believe the Republicans will produce an economy so dynamic and robust a solid middle class standard of living will "trickle down" to all. That will never happen in the American economy, not anymore. They want to believe the Republicans will return to "traditional" social structures and that will solve problems like crime, drugs. It won't. My point is you won't get these guys back in some comprehensive overhaul of Democratic politics or positions, the best you can hope for is to peel away a significant enough number, 5 or 10%, to win the next election
I beg Mitch, and everyone else, to read The Political Brain by Drew Westen. The research has already been done and it’s brilliant. Whatever the Clinton campaign said, their ads didn’t focus on the economy. They focused on emotion: getting people to identify with Bill, the way they identified with Reagan (and, even more horribly, with Trump). Republicans are so good at this, and most Democratic candidates aren’t. Please find us another Bill!
The party needs to quit fearing its base and be willing to say not now to some extremes in the party. I needs a counter narrative that can pivot off of the other sides position. not everything the GOP says is a lie. Trump figured out if The GOP quit trying to privatize social security in its platform that a lot of working class people would join them. Becuase they are taught that the dems are more interested in getting people help who don't need it than to helping people get what a middle class income should bring. another issue is Democrats often say middle class tax cut then when elected refuse to honor the promise saying "we didn't know how bad it is witht he finances, tell people one thing than do another is the fastest way to get people to leave your party. as I have said we have lost the working class becuase you have nancy pelosi talk down to the working class like some school marm when she is a multi millionaire it just irritates the heck outa people.
"The thing that touches 180 million people is the day-to-day stuff that people deal with, which is high prices at the gas station, high mortgage rates,” he said. Wow....the Dems just mined the nugget. Anyone who can walk and chew gum at the same time could have told them that, if they were the least bit interested. I'm a life long Dem, by the way. Not changing that but totally understand why millions apparently did.
“Politically, we were incorrect in not addressing the microeconomic feelings and anxieties of the public, because those are the things that many, many, many millions of Americans touched every day where the infrastructure stuff didn’t.” (Landrieu) Landrieu must be one of our fellow Americans who does not live like the vast majority of us live.
The illness Landrieu hopes to diagnose? The illness is our two-party system, which has failed us miserably. The Republican Party has been consumed by the MAGA faction, and the Democratic Party (I'm talking about the Party Structure) is out-of-touch and unrealistic. Those of us who are Independents, Conservative liberals, center and common ground-minded folks, need a party that represents all of us.
"Once the reliable core of the party, those voters have moved dramatically right since Donald Trump burst onto the scene." Worst is yet to come. Donald "The Beast" Trump is building a wall once again. Colossal tariff wall that is the beginning of the end for the system of down. At first the beast will pull the plug out of the global economy. The worst financial crisis of human history will pull a swarm of the banks underwater and the bank run begins. Then the beast will collapse a mountain of debt shattering the backbone of the monetary system causing a systemic risk to realize. Finally the beast will cast American citizens into a system slavery under the name of Ronald Wilson Reagan, just to "honor his legacy" count the number. After the destruction a new world order will be established in the US. And the Golden Age begins from the ruins of the world wide collapse. All of the system slaves will love it. No more cash - just digital transactions. No more traditional criminal activity. No more tax evasion. No more transactions without the "all seeing eye". Outcasts will hate the world without freedom, hope and privacy. To cover up the mess and distract the public by smoke and mirrors, the beast will engage in a war with Iran. Lies and deceit, corruption and decay, dancing on the graves will continue. Until; Black hole sun, won't you come, won't you come... I want to play a game. Time has come to opt out of the empire of filth. Live or die...
Democrats represent 27%? of voters so our priorities have to appeal not only to Independents, but disenchanted Republicans as well. Yet they focus heavily on issues that touch a very small minority while ignoring that it takes a very large Congressional majority and President to pass that legislation. I come from a working class family but am comfortably retired. The Democratic wing of my family is interested in a good economy, and social equality; the Republican wing's interest was in a good economy (making ends meet), and I suspect, whichever candidate promised the most. A chips plant was being built in our community but was years away from opening, and many of them were even unhappy with the change it would bring to their town. I have to agree with Chuck Eagle's assessment, that if issues don't touch voters everyday lives, it means nothing to them. With Democrats, the benefit of everything they legislate is years away, and with the last campaign, I didn't see too much emphasis in promoting what Biden and the Democrats had accomplished, tho it was a lot, and no mention of the year Americans would feel the impact, and $25,000 for a new home was meaningless to them because very few had the funds or were in the market to buy. Nor did they emphasize that anything their opposition promised couldn't be counted on. But you can't discount the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. They had a Plan and Trump was their Messenger. And if you disregarded Trump's dishonesty and his habit of promising much and delivering little, if anything, he told a good story of a chicken in every pot and religious freedom for all Protestants and Evangelicals, and how he was going to rid us of the criminals (that build our houses, maintain our landscaping, and staff our hotels, restaurants and even hospitals, but this part was silent); and he told it over and over and over again until every American was familiar with it. Elon's campaign contributions and the Broz' he solicited to vote for Trump didn't hurt their campaign. Nor did the Silicon Valley shift to Trump with the promise of tax cuts and deregulation and, I suspect, a place at the table of the upcoming AI technological revolution.
A commentor on another thread nailed it when he/she said "The problem is that America does not have a Labor Party, because half of labor defected to the GOP over racial issues and the civil rights legislation". I paraphrased, but you get the idea.
In 2016, for the first time in American history, white people voted as an "oppressed/threatened" identity group. Something like 70% of voters in this country are still white, so it made a huge impact. That trend continued in 2024. Even in 2020, when Biden won, his victory margin can be attributed mostly to the ubiquity of mail-in voting and the GOP's complete lack of understanding about how that would impact elections. By 2024, the GOP had adapted. Trump and the GOP relentlessly campaigned to their own voters on the importance of early and mail-in voting, while suppressing that vote in Democrat areas, and the turnout model reverted back to 2016, or worse.
With the mail-vote relatively equalized, people now vote by race and culture, not by class and income solidarity. Trump wins the spectrum of white voters, from the trailer park trash to the billionaires, plus a not insignificant number of hispanics who want to fit-in or "pass". Democrats have only the white professional class, coastal elites, and minority/marginalized groups. That's a lot, but it's not enough to overcome the shift in white-identity voting.
Good luck trying to appeal to the economic interests of the white working class. They lie, or are not self-aware about their priorities. They have demonstrated for years now that they will not vote for the "Party of Other", even if that party is campaigning on giving them a hand(out).
Since November, it seems that Democrats are doing everything in their power to avoid facing the central issue. Abandon "Other", or lose these voters for the foreseeable future.
You'll never convince me that the Democrats' deficit with "working class" voters is due to "pocketbook" issues. Populists have always emphasized cultural ones, especially as, like Trump, they typically ignore the same voters' economic interests. Why? Because culture is the glue that holds societies together.
To take an obvious, extreme example, white supremacy was critical to retaining white working class loyalty in the South, as it provided poor whites with the validation and social imprimatur they would have lacked in a truly free market or libertarian system. Indeed, it was precisely the fear of reducing them to the economic level of blacks that motivated explicit defenders of the system.
To a much lesser but still recognizable extent, gender identity plays the same role today. The Democrats are the "women's" party, and all the policy polemics they bring to bear will be hard pressed to overcome working class male solidarity.
Moreover, how to dislodge MAGA cultural prejudices without provoking a backlash among the Democratic base, I have no idea. Unless Trump creates such an economic catastrophe that his voters disregard culture and, in a panic, simply rush for the exits.
Working class culture is not well understood. It is much more based on emotion than middle class culture is. Trump excels in appealing to emotions, especially those related to victimhood...fear, anger, resentment...and those emotions are often at the center for the working class, especially when times are tough. When the working class was well paid and a path to the middle class was clear, those negative emotions were replaced by feelings like pride, hope, trust, and friendliness. The subtle, but real shift into permanent low status they have experienced since the 80s, has left the working class prone to those more negative feelings and the man who seemed to share their angst. D's could focus on ways to raise the fortunes of the working class by offering things like supports for childcare, more federal support for ACA insurance, more affordable housing including rental as well as buying options, raising the minimum wage. But, critically, anything they offer must be presented in a manner that appeals emotionally. Feelings need to be emphasized, not ideas, the heart needs to be reached, not the mind. Acknowledge their pain, refurbish the path to the middle class. Give them some hope again. Biden tried with his constant refrain of "good, union jobs", but that ignores the reality that unions are reviled in large parts of the country and do not exist in the number they used to where they are welcomed. This is doable!
The Democrats often have noble and genuinely needed long term legislative goals like funding infrastructure and climate change mitigation, and aiding counties like Ukraine or disease burdened people in Africa. These all bring America net gains in the long term.
But they seemingly obliviously prioritize these in campaigns when they are playing a game with short terms and frequent election cycles. Each party has a solid chunk of locked in voters, but the elusive swing voters and will they/won't they show up to the polls voters simply kneejerk back and forth from one party to the other as they blame the incumbent for any and all things they currently don't like.
They aren't nerding out like us on long think pieces about policy and rule of law ethics. They aren't reading or watching legacy newspapers and cable TV. They aren't listening to NPR or reading political blogs. They get all their info in passing on social media, from acquaintances, and their own wallet. They often decide the week of the election who they are voting for based on vibes. The giant legislative win for new roads and bridges you won in July? They don't even know about it.
That quote there summarizing the focus groups just hits the nail on the head. Hopefully the party actually thinks about that this next time.
The Democratic party needs to realize that while yes very important, having the luxury in life to care about what the country or planet looks like 10 years to decades from now is not a luxury most Americans have when they aren't able to afford necessities, rent, homes, food for themselves and children, healthcare, cars, etc. If the vote is marketed to them by both parties as a choice between Party Which Will Maybe Make Climate Change Less Bad in 2100 and Magic Man Who Will Make Everything Cheap and Great, they will mostly vote for the Magic Man. Because people are desperate, and often frankly stupid and uneducated. Only stupidly naive people would vote for a guy who tried to steal the country a few years ago, other than legit right wing fascists who want that. Every single regretful swing Trump voter quote I see is a picture of a totally clueless moron who actually really did think he was gonna rewind grocery prices back to 2017. How, dumbass? If it was that easy, wouldn't Biden have just done it? I digress.
If you have the financial and personal freedom to make climate change or the longterm condition of roads and bridges your number one concern, you are comfortable and doing better than most. That includes people like me. People with immediate pressing issues like those above cannot and will not prioritize those long term topics when voting. They will do silly desperate shit like vote as if the President has a magic lever controlling each commodity price in the oval office and they are just one election day away from New Guy magically lowering all prices. They view the US President as the mastermind behind everything down to stuff controlled only by their local city or county politics and elections. Again, because they're stupid and don't know how their own country works. Democrats need to remember they are attempting to reach true idiots here who would get a 12 out of 100 on a 6th grade civics test. While at the same time, not letting it be known that they think these stupid people are stupid (they are and the gop knows it but is better at talking to them as if they are all brilliant).
You see the same thing of putting the cart before the horse on trans issues. We can mostly all agree here that this is the morally the proper stance to take. These people do exist, and do need civil rights. It's the right thing to do. But the ham fisted way they attempted to ram these very large changes to people's established notions of what genders and sexes are, and how they fit into the world at large, was just yet again overplaying a hand they didn't have the cards to play. It's like trying to ram through gay marriage equality in 1982 - it may be right, but the public opinion isn't there yet to get that win yet. You need to get a majority of them on board first before making it a central policy in a platform. Those HURRRR KAMALA USED TAX MONEY ON PRISONER SEX CHANGES BRO ads sold more votes for Trump than I'd wager all of the Dems frequent self glazing about their infrastructure bill did for them.
The Democrats are very good at messaging to the people who will already be voting for them - well off or at least financially comfortable white college graduates who shop at Whole Foods, and select minority groups (though even this time Trump took some of them rightward too). long term projects just don't move the needle against a fascist fire hose of propaganda and pot stirring about hot button, more readily seen problems like grocery prices and home affordability, even when the rest of us all know the Republican Party isn't going to a damn thing about after they win (because they can't undo a pandemic worth of global inflation either). Voters will get more hot and bothered about like 8 trans kids in high school sports than they will about the highway bridge in town being about to collapse.
They have to find a way to harp more on these kinds of immediate problems as a means of selling the other items further down the list with them. No one paying $2000 a month in rent while making $40k a year is going to base a vote on climate change effects 60 to 80 years from now. It's not a luxury they have. Only people who have everything else figured out and stable in life can make a choice like that. Sorry. You have to tell them they are right and the economy is bad and you're gonna work to make it more affordable and THEN move on to those bigger picture projects.
They spent the entire last election cycle telling voters who perceive the economy to be bad because everything is more nominally expensive than it was a decade earlier, that no, it's actually good! Stock market great! High wages! Low unemployment! While all true, it's useless when the voters don't see it that way. You have to tell them what they want to hear a little, when the only thing the opponent is doing is telling big lies and never telling them no or they're wrong about a single thing. Like just read the fucking room.
You give them too much credit. The white working class didn't vote for Trump because they think he is some economic genius (although it wasn't hard to contrast Trump's pre-Covid economy with Biden's high prices/9% inflation and 7.5% interest rates). They don't really care about economics, no matter what they tell pollsters and focus groups.
They care about "Other". Period. They see the Democrats as centering blacks, gays, feminists, hippies, illegals, and the like over them. If you held out your hand to offer them a $100 bill, they'd spit on it if they believed you'd also try to take their privilege and give it to "those people".
well if he was "stunned on election night when the race was called for Donald Trump. But the second gut punch came later, when voter data rolled in showing the Democratic party had lost working-class voters—something that had not happened just four years earlier." by this outcome, which was well written about and cautioned about in moderate to progressive publications and by Bernie Sanders and many others beginning when NAFTA was passed, I wonder what sources of information he is exposed to . It seems like he must be in some data desert or political silo to have been " stunned"
Democrats have done a lot for working class voters. But they aren't hearing about it or feeling it. I blame MSM, Fox, and Magas for that. I hope we (Democrats) can figure out a way to get people to understand all we've done for them. of course, the current administration's policies are wrecking the working class, so hopefully they will start hearing us.
It is flagrantly illegal and unconstitutional for the federal government or any government entity to target an individual or organization for political reasons. ActBlue must sue immediately to prevent the EO from gong into effect.
I'll go to my grave saying, until we fix the media and information crisis, we've got a huge problem in convincing voters to vote sensible. Most anybody who had a basic knowledge of the world voted Kamala, even WSJ readers voted Kamala by like 2 to 1. I do climate outreach work in deep red districts and the level of misinformation they are under is just incredulous. We desperately need to fix that. I welcome strategies and tactics.
First, you must convince them you have their interests as a priority, especially over the "people they hate". Until you do that, nothing you say will matter. There is a saying "Nobody cares what you say, until they know how much you care (specifically about them)".
Bill Clinton was good at this. He could behave any way he wanted, and be as insincere and corrupt as he wanted to be, because enough people thought he cared about them and was one of them. Maybe a lot of it was wink and nod, but it worked for eight years.
Thanks for the note. To me the challenge is more difficult when they have a misunderstanding of the world. If I'm advocating for a law to address climate change, that is directly making "their interests a priority." But if you think "climate change is a hoax to take away my freedoms," of course you're going to ignore me and even punish folks who are trying to address it. You run into the same challenge regardless of the issue: "tariffs stick it to china," "immigrants take more than they contribute." It's all garbage understanding of the world. You can't convince them you care if they misunderstand what you're doing.
For a while, you might have to play within their frame, their understanding. Instead of trying to convince them climate legislation is moral and "good for the planet", show them how it will directly save them money. Electric cars are cheaper to run than gas cars. More efficient homes are cheaper to heat and cool.
Win first, then try to make gradual change and change their "understanding" of the world. Again, I go back to Bill Clinton. He was a moral dirtbag POS, and nobody's idea of a progressive icon, but his two victories made Obama and Joe Biden possible, and their presidencies moved the country left on several issues progressive think are important.
Well, to be clear that's the tact we take but it's still structurally flawed because it ignores the real reason for the switch...to stop emissions. As a result here is what I often hear "well damn if you would just let us drill baby drill we'd have $1 gasoline and then we wouldn't need those environmentally disastrous EVs with their toxic metals for transportation." The structural flaw is that if you don't understand that burning fossil fuels is wrecking our planet, insurance markets, and our livelihoods, you're always going to argue "why change my vehicle or my home systems, just make the inputs cheaper...and Trump will do that."
Jesus, if democrats keep overthinking this, we’ll lose again, and the country can’t afford that. I think we need to quit siloing groups and focus on a consistent, unified message (and policies) of equal rights and opportunity for everyone, safety, and prosperity. Money out of politics, no special rights for billionaires, everyone contributes and benefits.
When "white working class" voters hear "equal rights and opportunity for everyone" come from a Democrat's mouth, they immediately hear "taking privilege from people like me and giving it to 'Others'". And, you've lost them before you even started.
Democrats aren't going to want to hear this (remember, for context, I'm not a Democrat - I actually liked the Bush years), but the Bill Clinton approach might work. Find a Democrat voice that seems to repudiate the "woke", and is not "threatening" to the core of MAGA (which is their rejection of a party that centers "Other" over them). Someone with charisma and regular guy, down-home charm. Tim Walz had some of that, but he also had a very liberal record in a very liberal state like Minnesota, so he was a non-starter. Maybe the governors of NC, KY or PA? They seem to be able to appeal to the same voters who provided Trump his margin. One thing is certain - women need not apply, at least not for now, and especially not a fire-breather like AOC. Keep them far away from this effort.
Once you have the right messenger, the message needs to be "we are moving away from all those things you find icky about Democrats, and are ONLY going to focus on fixing the things you find frustrating about the 'New GOP' - the meanness, the rudeness, the lawlessness, the destruction of norms, the casual disregard for the economic interests of anybody but Trump and his billionaire pals." Also, this straight, white, male candidate needs to be able to convey to the voters who matter "I care about people like you, but more importantly, I LIKE people like you".
You're not going to get the hardcore MAGAs (but they are hopeless, and you don't need them anyway). You are playing to the Nikki Haley/Establishment GOP that have been repudiated by MAGA, the Indies and conservative Democrats who left Joe Biden and wouldn't vote for Kamala Harris, and generally everybody who hates Trump and knows deep down, he is an ass. Keep in mind, though, most of those voters have a far bigger problem with Trump the ass and MAGA the attitude, than they do with Trump/MAGA the policy. If you lead them to believe they'll be trading MAGA for a heaping helping of liberal policy, they will almost certainly stick with MAGA.
Let's be clear,...this is going to suck for progressives and liberals - just like the 1990's did, but it won't be as bad for them as Trump, Vance, DeSantis would be. The Left won't get any of their priorities from whatever/whoever can turn this ship around. That is going to take decades and moving the Overton window back to the Left again. 2024 was a referendum on two world views: progressive/woke vs whatever the hell MAGA is (a strange witches' brew of corporate conservatism and white nationalist faux "populism"). And MAGA won everywhere it mattered.
Right now there is only Trumpism and Woke, so people chose Trumpism. First you need to win elections. Then, you can begin to address attitudes and policy. You can't win them over to what the current Dem party is perceived to be offering.
Offer a third way, and you might reach enough of them to replicate the 1990's, which eventually paved the way for what turned out to be Obama and Biden.
I work with a bunch of blue collar guys in Kentucky that make $80,000 a year and that goes a long way here. It's not about economics, it's cultural, it's about White male anxiety and angst. They as well a black and hispanic men are drifting away because they want to believe the Republicans will produce an economy so dynamic and robust a solid middle class standard of living will "trickle down" to all. That will never happen in the American economy, not anymore. They want to believe the Republicans will return to "traditional" social structures and that will solve problems like crime, drugs. It won't. My point is you won't get these guys back in some comprehensive overhaul of Democratic politics or positions, the best you can hope for is to peel away a significant enough number, 5 or 10%, to win the next election
I beg Mitch, and everyone else, to read The Political Brain by Drew Westen. The research has already been done and it’s brilliant. Whatever the Clinton campaign said, their ads didn’t focus on the economy. They focused on emotion: getting people to identify with Bill, the way they identified with Reagan (and, even more horribly, with Trump). Republicans are so good at this, and most Democratic candidates aren’t. Please find us another Bill!
The party needs to quit fearing its base and be willing to say not now to some extremes in the party. I needs a counter narrative that can pivot off of the other sides position. not everything the GOP says is a lie. Trump figured out if The GOP quit trying to privatize social security in its platform that a lot of working class people would join them. Becuase they are taught that the dems are more interested in getting people help who don't need it than to helping people get what a middle class income should bring. another issue is Democrats often say middle class tax cut then when elected refuse to honor the promise saying "we didn't know how bad it is witht he finances, tell people one thing than do another is the fastest way to get people to leave your party. as I have said we have lost the working class becuase you have nancy pelosi talk down to the working class like some school marm when she is a multi millionaire it just irritates the heck outa people.
"The thing that touches 180 million people is the day-to-day stuff that people deal with, which is high prices at the gas station, high mortgage rates,” he said. Wow....the Dems just mined the nugget. Anyone who can walk and chew gum at the same time could have told them that, if they were the least bit interested. I'm a life long Dem, by the way. Not changing that but totally understand why millions apparently did.
“Politically, we were incorrect in not addressing the microeconomic feelings and anxieties of the public, because those are the things that many, many, many millions of Americans touched every day where the infrastructure stuff didn’t.” (Landrieu) Landrieu must be one of our fellow Americans who does not live like the vast majority of us live.
The illness Landrieu hopes to diagnose? The illness is our two-party system, which has failed us miserably. The Republican Party has been consumed by the MAGA faction, and the Democratic Party (I'm talking about the Party Structure) is out-of-touch and unrealistic. Those of us who are Independents, Conservative liberals, center and common ground-minded folks, need a party that represents all of us.
"Once the reliable core of the party, those voters have moved dramatically right since Donald Trump burst onto the scene." Worst is yet to come. Donald "The Beast" Trump is building a wall once again. Colossal tariff wall that is the beginning of the end for the system of down. At first the beast will pull the plug out of the global economy. The worst financial crisis of human history will pull a swarm of the banks underwater and the bank run begins. Then the beast will collapse a mountain of debt shattering the backbone of the monetary system causing a systemic risk to realize. Finally the beast will cast American citizens into a system slavery under the name of Ronald Wilson Reagan, just to "honor his legacy" count the number. After the destruction a new world order will be established in the US. And the Golden Age begins from the ruins of the world wide collapse. All of the system slaves will love it. No more cash - just digital transactions. No more traditional criminal activity. No more tax evasion. No more transactions without the "all seeing eye". Outcasts will hate the world without freedom, hope and privacy. To cover up the mess and distract the public by smoke and mirrors, the beast will engage in a war with Iran. Lies and deceit, corruption and decay, dancing on the graves will continue. Until; Black hole sun, won't you come, won't you come... I want to play a game. Time has come to opt out of the empire of filth. Live or die...
Democrats represent 27%? of voters so our priorities have to appeal not only to Independents, but disenchanted Republicans as well. Yet they focus heavily on issues that touch a very small minority while ignoring that it takes a very large Congressional majority and President to pass that legislation. I come from a working class family but am comfortably retired. The Democratic wing of my family is interested in a good economy, and social equality; the Republican wing's interest was in a good economy (making ends meet), and I suspect, whichever candidate promised the most. A chips plant was being built in our community but was years away from opening, and many of them were even unhappy with the change it would bring to their town. I have to agree with Chuck Eagle's assessment, that if issues don't touch voters everyday lives, it means nothing to them. With Democrats, the benefit of everything they legislate is years away, and with the last campaign, I didn't see too much emphasis in promoting what Biden and the Democrats had accomplished, tho it was a lot, and no mention of the year Americans would feel the impact, and $25,000 for a new home was meaningless to them because very few had the funds or were in the market to buy. Nor did they emphasize that anything their opposition promised couldn't be counted on. But you can't discount the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. They had a Plan and Trump was their Messenger. And if you disregarded Trump's dishonesty and his habit of promising much and delivering little, if anything, he told a good story of a chicken in every pot and religious freedom for all Protestants and Evangelicals, and how he was going to rid us of the criminals (that build our houses, maintain our landscaping, and staff our hotels, restaurants and even hospitals, but this part was silent); and he told it over and over and over again until every American was familiar with it. Elon's campaign contributions and the Broz' he solicited to vote for Trump didn't hurt their campaign. Nor did the Silicon Valley shift to Trump with the promise of tax cuts and deregulation and, I suspect, a place at the table of the upcoming AI technological revolution.
A commentor on another thread nailed it when he/she said "The problem is that America does not have a Labor Party, because half of labor defected to the GOP over racial issues and the civil rights legislation". I paraphrased, but you get the idea.
In 2016, for the first time in American history, white people voted as an "oppressed/threatened" identity group. Something like 70% of voters in this country are still white, so it made a huge impact. That trend continued in 2024. Even in 2020, when Biden won, his victory margin can be attributed mostly to the ubiquity of mail-in voting and the GOP's complete lack of understanding about how that would impact elections. By 2024, the GOP had adapted. Trump and the GOP relentlessly campaigned to their own voters on the importance of early and mail-in voting, while suppressing that vote in Democrat areas, and the turnout model reverted back to 2016, or worse.
With the mail-vote relatively equalized, people now vote by race and culture, not by class and income solidarity. Trump wins the spectrum of white voters, from the trailer park trash to the billionaires, plus a not insignificant number of hispanics who want to fit-in or "pass". Democrats have only the white professional class, coastal elites, and minority/marginalized groups. That's a lot, but it's not enough to overcome the shift in white-identity voting.
Good luck trying to appeal to the economic interests of the white working class. They lie, or are not self-aware about their priorities. They have demonstrated for years now that they will not vote for the "Party of Other", even if that party is campaigning on giving them a hand(out).
Since November, it seems that Democrats are doing everything in their power to avoid facing the central issue. Abandon "Other", or lose these voters for the foreseeable future.
You'll never convince me that the Democrats' deficit with "working class" voters is due to "pocketbook" issues. Populists have always emphasized cultural ones, especially as, like Trump, they typically ignore the same voters' economic interests. Why? Because culture is the glue that holds societies together.
To take an obvious, extreme example, white supremacy was critical to retaining white working class loyalty in the South, as it provided poor whites with the validation and social imprimatur they would have lacked in a truly free market or libertarian system. Indeed, it was precisely the fear of reducing them to the economic level of blacks that motivated explicit defenders of the system.
To a much lesser but still recognizable extent, gender identity plays the same role today. The Democrats are the "women's" party, and all the policy polemics they bring to bear will be hard pressed to overcome working class male solidarity.
Moreover, how to dislodge MAGA cultural prejudices without provoking a backlash among the Democratic base, I have no idea. Unless Trump creates such an economic catastrophe that his voters disregard culture and, in a panic, simply rush for the exits.
Working class culture is not well understood. It is much more based on emotion than middle class culture is. Trump excels in appealing to emotions, especially those related to victimhood...fear, anger, resentment...and those emotions are often at the center for the working class, especially when times are tough. When the working class was well paid and a path to the middle class was clear, those negative emotions were replaced by feelings like pride, hope, trust, and friendliness. The subtle, but real shift into permanent low status they have experienced since the 80s, has left the working class prone to those more negative feelings and the man who seemed to share their angst. D's could focus on ways to raise the fortunes of the working class by offering things like supports for childcare, more federal support for ACA insurance, more affordable housing including rental as well as buying options, raising the minimum wage. But, critically, anything they offer must be presented in a manner that appeals emotionally. Feelings need to be emphasized, not ideas, the heart needs to be reached, not the mind. Acknowledge their pain, refurbish the path to the middle class. Give them some hope again. Biden tried with his constant refrain of "good, union jobs", but that ignores the reality that unions are reviled in large parts of the country and do not exist in the number they used to where they are welcomed. This is doable!
The Democrats often have noble and genuinely needed long term legislative goals like funding infrastructure and climate change mitigation, and aiding counties like Ukraine or disease burdened people in Africa. These all bring America net gains in the long term.
But they seemingly obliviously prioritize these in campaigns when they are playing a game with short terms and frequent election cycles. Each party has a solid chunk of locked in voters, but the elusive swing voters and will they/won't they show up to the polls voters simply kneejerk back and forth from one party to the other as they blame the incumbent for any and all things they currently don't like.
They aren't nerding out like us on long think pieces about policy and rule of law ethics. They aren't reading or watching legacy newspapers and cable TV. They aren't listening to NPR or reading political blogs. They get all their info in passing on social media, from acquaintances, and their own wallet. They often decide the week of the election who they are voting for based on vibes. The giant legislative win for new roads and bridges you won in July? They don't even know about it.
That quote there summarizing the focus groups just hits the nail on the head. Hopefully the party actually thinks about that this next time.
The Democratic party needs to realize that while yes very important, having the luxury in life to care about what the country or planet looks like 10 years to decades from now is not a luxury most Americans have when they aren't able to afford necessities, rent, homes, food for themselves and children, healthcare, cars, etc. If the vote is marketed to them by both parties as a choice between Party Which Will Maybe Make Climate Change Less Bad in 2100 and Magic Man Who Will Make Everything Cheap and Great, they will mostly vote for the Magic Man. Because people are desperate, and often frankly stupid and uneducated. Only stupidly naive people would vote for a guy who tried to steal the country a few years ago, other than legit right wing fascists who want that. Every single regretful swing Trump voter quote I see is a picture of a totally clueless moron who actually really did think he was gonna rewind grocery prices back to 2017. How, dumbass? If it was that easy, wouldn't Biden have just done it? I digress.
If you have the financial and personal freedom to make climate change or the longterm condition of roads and bridges your number one concern, you are comfortable and doing better than most. That includes people like me. People with immediate pressing issues like those above cannot and will not prioritize those long term topics when voting. They will do silly desperate shit like vote as if the President has a magic lever controlling each commodity price in the oval office and they are just one election day away from New Guy magically lowering all prices. They view the US President as the mastermind behind everything down to stuff controlled only by their local city or county politics and elections. Again, because they're stupid and don't know how their own country works. Democrats need to remember they are attempting to reach true idiots here who would get a 12 out of 100 on a 6th grade civics test. While at the same time, not letting it be known that they think these stupid people are stupid (they are and the gop knows it but is better at talking to them as if they are all brilliant).
You see the same thing of putting the cart before the horse on trans issues. We can mostly all agree here that this is the morally the proper stance to take. These people do exist, and do need civil rights. It's the right thing to do. But the ham fisted way they attempted to ram these very large changes to people's established notions of what genders and sexes are, and how they fit into the world at large, was just yet again overplaying a hand they didn't have the cards to play. It's like trying to ram through gay marriage equality in 1982 - it may be right, but the public opinion isn't there yet to get that win yet. You need to get a majority of them on board first before making it a central policy in a platform. Those HURRRR KAMALA USED TAX MONEY ON PRISONER SEX CHANGES BRO ads sold more votes for Trump than I'd wager all of the Dems frequent self glazing about their infrastructure bill did for them.
The Democrats are very good at messaging to the people who will already be voting for them - well off or at least financially comfortable white college graduates who shop at Whole Foods, and select minority groups (though even this time Trump took some of them rightward too). long term projects just don't move the needle against a fascist fire hose of propaganda and pot stirring about hot button, more readily seen problems like grocery prices and home affordability, even when the rest of us all know the Republican Party isn't going to a damn thing about after they win (because they can't undo a pandemic worth of global inflation either). Voters will get more hot and bothered about like 8 trans kids in high school sports than they will about the highway bridge in town being about to collapse.
They have to find a way to harp more on these kinds of immediate problems as a means of selling the other items further down the list with them. No one paying $2000 a month in rent while making $40k a year is going to base a vote on climate change effects 60 to 80 years from now. It's not a luxury they have. Only people who have everything else figured out and stable in life can make a choice like that. Sorry. You have to tell them they are right and the economy is bad and you're gonna work to make it more affordable and THEN move on to those bigger picture projects.
They spent the entire last election cycle telling voters who perceive the economy to be bad because everything is more nominally expensive than it was a decade earlier, that no, it's actually good! Stock market great! High wages! Low unemployment! While all true, it's useless when the voters don't see it that way. You have to tell them what they want to hear a little, when the only thing the opponent is doing is telling big lies and never telling them no or they're wrong about a single thing. Like just read the fucking room.
You give them too much credit. The white working class didn't vote for Trump because they think he is some economic genius (although it wasn't hard to contrast Trump's pre-Covid economy with Biden's high prices/9% inflation and 7.5% interest rates). They don't really care about economics, no matter what they tell pollsters and focus groups.
They care about "Other". Period. They see the Democrats as centering blacks, gays, feminists, hippies, illegals, and the like over them. If you held out your hand to offer them a $100 bill, they'd spit on it if they believed you'd also try to take their privilege and give it to "those people".
well if he was "stunned on election night when the race was called for Donald Trump. But the second gut punch came later, when voter data rolled in showing the Democratic party had lost working-class voters—something that had not happened just four years earlier." by this outcome, which was well written about and cautioned about in moderate to progressive publications and by Bernie Sanders and many others beginning when NAFTA was passed, I wonder what sources of information he is exposed to . It seems like he must be in some data desert or political silo to have been " stunned"
Democrats have done a lot for working class voters. But they aren't hearing about it or feeling it. I blame MSM, Fox, and Magas for that. I hope we (Democrats) can figure out a way to get people to understand all we've done for them. of course, the current administration's policies are wrecking the working class, so hopefully they will start hearing us.
It is flagrantly illegal and unconstitutional for the federal government or any government entity to target an individual or organization for political reasons. ActBlue must sue immediately to prevent the EO from gong into effect.
I'll go to my grave saying, until we fix the media and information crisis, we've got a huge problem in convincing voters to vote sensible. Most anybody who had a basic knowledge of the world voted Kamala, even WSJ readers voted Kamala by like 2 to 1. I do climate outreach work in deep red districts and the level of misinformation they are under is just incredulous. We desperately need to fix that. I welcome strategies and tactics.
First, you must convince them you have their interests as a priority, especially over the "people they hate". Until you do that, nothing you say will matter. There is a saying "Nobody cares what you say, until they know how much you care (specifically about them)".
Bill Clinton was good at this. He could behave any way he wanted, and be as insincere and corrupt as he wanted to be, because enough people thought he cared about them and was one of them. Maybe a lot of it was wink and nod, but it worked for eight years.
Thanks for the note. To me the challenge is more difficult when they have a misunderstanding of the world. If I'm advocating for a law to address climate change, that is directly making "their interests a priority." But if you think "climate change is a hoax to take away my freedoms," of course you're going to ignore me and even punish folks who are trying to address it. You run into the same challenge regardless of the issue: "tariffs stick it to china," "immigrants take more than they contribute." It's all garbage understanding of the world. You can't convince them you care if they misunderstand what you're doing.
For a while, you might have to play within their frame, their understanding. Instead of trying to convince them climate legislation is moral and "good for the planet", show them how it will directly save them money. Electric cars are cheaper to run than gas cars. More efficient homes are cheaper to heat and cool.
Win first, then try to make gradual change and change their "understanding" of the world. Again, I go back to Bill Clinton. He was a moral dirtbag POS, and nobody's idea of a progressive icon, but his two victories made Obama and Joe Biden possible, and their presidencies moved the country left on several issues progressive think are important.
Well, to be clear that's the tact we take but it's still structurally flawed because it ignores the real reason for the switch...to stop emissions. As a result here is what I often hear "well damn if you would just let us drill baby drill we'd have $1 gasoline and then we wouldn't need those environmentally disastrous EVs with their toxic metals for transportation." The structural flaw is that if you don't understand that burning fossil fuels is wrecking our planet, insurance markets, and our livelihoods, you're always going to argue "why change my vehicle or my home systems, just make the inputs cheaper...and Trump will do that."
$1 gasoline is not coming back. There isn’t enough oil left.
Jesus, if democrats keep overthinking this, we’ll lose again, and the country can’t afford that. I think we need to quit siloing groups and focus on a consistent, unified message (and policies) of equal rights and opportunity for everyone, safety, and prosperity. Money out of politics, no special rights for billionaires, everyone contributes and benefits.
When "white working class" voters hear "equal rights and opportunity for everyone" come from a Democrat's mouth, they immediately hear "taking privilege from people like me and giving it to 'Others'". And, you've lost them before you even started.
What do you think would reach people and resonate?
Democrats aren't going to want to hear this (remember, for context, I'm not a Democrat - I actually liked the Bush years), but the Bill Clinton approach might work. Find a Democrat voice that seems to repudiate the "woke", and is not "threatening" to the core of MAGA (which is their rejection of a party that centers "Other" over them). Someone with charisma and regular guy, down-home charm. Tim Walz had some of that, but he also had a very liberal record in a very liberal state like Minnesota, so he was a non-starter. Maybe the governors of NC, KY or PA? They seem to be able to appeal to the same voters who provided Trump his margin. One thing is certain - women need not apply, at least not for now, and especially not a fire-breather like AOC. Keep them far away from this effort.
Once you have the right messenger, the message needs to be "we are moving away from all those things you find icky about Democrats, and are ONLY going to focus on fixing the things you find frustrating about the 'New GOP' - the meanness, the rudeness, the lawlessness, the destruction of norms, the casual disregard for the economic interests of anybody but Trump and his billionaire pals." Also, this straight, white, male candidate needs to be able to convey to the voters who matter "I care about people like you, but more importantly, I LIKE people like you".
You're not going to get the hardcore MAGAs (but they are hopeless, and you don't need them anyway). You are playing to the Nikki Haley/Establishment GOP that have been repudiated by MAGA, the Indies and conservative Democrats who left Joe Biden and wouldn't vote for Kamala Harris, and generally everybody who hates Trump and knows deep down, he is an ass. Keep in mind, though, most of those voters have a far bigger problem with Trump the ass and MAGA the attitude, than they do with Trump/MAGA the policy. If you lead them to believe they'll be trading MAGA for a heaping helping of liberal policy, they will almost certainly stick with MAGA.
Let's be clear,...this is going to suck for progressives and liberals - just like the 1990's did, but it won't be as bad for them as Trump, Vance, DeSantis would be. The Left won't get any of their priorities from whatever/whoever can turn this ship around. That is going to take decades and moving the Overton window back to the Left again. 2024 was a referendum on two world views: progressive/woke vs whatever the hell MAGA is (a strange witches' brew of corporate conservatism and white nationalist faux "populism"). And MAGA won everywhere it mattered.
Right now there is only Trumpism and Woke, so people chose Trumpism. First you need to win elections. Then, you can begin to address attitudes and policy. You can't win them over to what the current Dem party is perceived to be offering.
Offer a third way, and you might reach enough of them to replicate the 1990's, which eventually paved the way for what turned out to be Obama and Biden.