Ruy Teixeira: Biden’s Working Class Blues
Episode Notes
Transcript
The system feels rigged for the millionaires and the billionaires, and the populist red lights are flashing for 2024. Can the Democrats get back to being for the little guy, or will the man with the golden toilets convince them he’s on their side? The Liberal Patriot’s Ruy Teixeira joins Charlie Sykes.
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
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Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. Okay. It is time for Tough Love. I know you didn’t wake up today saying, Hey, I hope the Bulwark podcast has some tough love.
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I, you know, I I want more fan service. I I want you to tell me that everything’s gonna be okay. Well, I’m sorry. To tell you, you’ve probably come to the wrong place. We are joined by my good friend.
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Rui Tashara, senior fellow with American Enterprises, to where he focuses on the transformation of party coalitions. Rui, you have been in progressive politics for a very, very long time. You bring a lot of street cred to this. Mhmm. But as I was mentioning to you right before we started, there’s a lot of resistance, isn’t there?
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To the tough love, trying to explain to Democrats why you have a problem on economics, why you have a problem when it comes to the working class. I I just sense that there is this sense of denialism that’s kind of you know, built in, and we’re gonna get lots of comments saying, well, I don’t wanna listen to all of this because if we just put our heads in the sand, apparently the argument is. If we just put our heads in the sand about these difficulties, they will just go away. They will magically go away. But you’re sounding the alarm for a reason.
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Right?
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Yeah. I’m sounding the alarm for a very good reason, which is, you know, the Democrats are in a in a heap of trouble. If anyone who pays the remotest attention to the polls must realize that we are in this extraordinary situation where Donald j trump appears likely to be the nominee of the Republican Party, and Donald j trump also appears like He could he could very, very much, possibility. He could beat Joe Biden, the current maximum leader of the United States. And, you know, this this should be frightening to people.
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People should be asking themselves. Anyone who’s a Democrat should ask us, well, if he’s so bad, He was such a bad president. He’s such a bad man. There’s so many things wrong with him and his party. Why?
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At this point are the Democrats at best kind of in this this stalemate with him? I mean, if he said this apotheosis of evil, why is that happening? And I think the most parsimonious explanation is people don’t much like the Democratic party that much either. And then you have to ask yourself, well, why is that? And why are working class voters in particular unenthusiastic about the Democrats and giving Trump the majority of their votes and why are the Democrats even losing votes among non white?
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Working class voters? Something’s going on here. Right.
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There’s something is going on You know, and I and I think there’s been a lot of analysis of, you know, what what’s happened to the working class vote. But I don’t think there’s been an sufficient introspection on the part of Democrats, say, okay. So why is it that millions of voters from the Democratic coalition have left leads it to this moment. Okay? And let me just take a step back because we are in the midst of a democratic freak out.
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Now I wanna sort of, you know, break out the the legitimate concerns versus just the bed wetting. Right? So the big headline in the Washington Post today that everybody’s talking about that’s leading the drudge report is the headline is anxiety ripples through the Democratic party over Biden. A growing number of polls are showing voters concerned about president Biden’s age and energy Democratic lawmakers have hesitated to offer full throated endorsements of his running mate. Prominent commentators have ruminated on whether he should drop out of the presidential race.
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This series of political vulnerabilities, along with House Republicans announcing an impeachment inquiry, and the Justice department indicting Biden’s son on gun charges is now sending waves of anxiety through parts of the Democratic party as some threat about whether the man who helped oust Donald Trump from the White House may not have the vitality at eighty to successfully prevent a return. So now there’s the moment people are going, how could we possibly lose to this guy. And I wanna leave the age issue aside because I think we’ve done that. Let’s talk about what you just mentioned. Bidenomics and the work class voters.
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I mean, you you’ve written that it is important for Democrats to understand just how poorly the Biden economy has played with working class voters so far. I mean, And you cite this, quinnipiac poll found that Joe Biden has a twenty five percent approval rating on the economy among white working class non college voters versus fifty two percent approval on the economy among white college grad voters. Now there are some people who will say, well, that’s just because they’re dumb. They don’t know what’s under they can’t read the numbers. They’re missing this.
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So tell me what’s happening, and it’s not just Joe Biden. Is it? You’ve been tracking this now. Four years. This long erosion of support among the working class.
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So how does the white working class look at bidenomics right now. They look
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at bidenomics from the standpoint of what I might waggishly call their lived experience. Yes. And their lived experience of by economics The real world. In the real world has not been great. Now I know that the standard Democratic take on this tends to be, well, you know, it’s misinformation.
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The media is not covering this stuff. Right. Look, unemployment’s down. Inflation is abating. You know, all this cool stuff is happening.
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You know, they’re building battery plants. You know, and and why are people suitably grateful for that? Well, the fact of the matter is that they experienced spike in inflation that is greater than most of these voters have ever experienced. And if you look at their actual you know, family incomes, if you look at their wages, they’ve really gotten nowhere under Biden. In fact, they went down for a while because of real and power went down because of inflation.
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The inflation’s still running a bit hotter than normal and gas prices are starting to go up again. And it’s a little bit much to ask people to forget about all that just because relatively speaking, things have gotten better. And, yes, it is a very tight labor market, and that’s good. If you actually compare the performance of of household income under Trump. The household income under Biden.
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It was like way better. Under Trump, it went up ten percent before the pandemic hit you know, and since Biden’s been in office according to the latest data, it it’s gone down. Now once we get the final data from twenty three, it’ll look a little bit better. But the fact of the matter is, as most people, particularly working class, people are concerned, the economy function better under Trump than Biden, in fact, in one post poll where they asked about, well, who did a better job with the economy? Donald Trump, when he was in office or Biden so far?
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Two to one. I’m a working class voters. Non college voters as a whole. They said, Trump was better. Yeah.
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And this is consistent with a number of other polls. So you’re asking working class voters who are already uncomfortable about a lot of the apparent priorities of Democrats in the sociocultural area. Where Democrats are significantly to the left of where most of these voters are and are sort of determined to implement this brave new world, whether working class voters are ford or not. If you pile on top of that, that people well, I guess maybe I’d give you a pass if things were freaking great, but they’re not. This is my question.
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Is, you know, is it just the economic stupid? Because you also point out that this interacts with that general sense among these voters that Democrats don’t much like them. And their uneducated uncouth manner of speaking and thinking. They pick up on the disdain. Right?
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So that’s more you’re willing to cut somebody some slack Yes. If you think you like them and they like you. But that’s not the moment we’re in right now.
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Right. Well, that’s part of Donald Trump’s Secret Podcast. He a lot of these voters feel he likes them. He may be, you know, kind of a a loose cannon, but at least he likes them. I think they feel Democrats do not, in fact, feel all that great about them.
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And I wrote this recent piece, which you saw about the Democrats Oliver Anthony problem.
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The country western singer.
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Yes. I retailed some of the reactions to his famous song, Richmond, North of Richmond because there’s a line in it, which seems to be critical. The people are on welfare. And are like eating a lot and really aren’t actually, you know, disabled. This was piled on like a ton of bricks by a lot of democratic commentators It just shows he’s a bigot.
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It just shows he doesn’t have the correct attitude toward, you know, safety net programs. And just in various ways, I mean, despite the fact you know, anyone who’s listened to the song realizes it’s fundamentally Creat occur against, you know, the way rich people are ripping off the working class. And they’re controlling the country, and they get what they want, and we don’t get what we want, and that sucks. My job sucks. You know, like, I do paid enough.
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I mean, you think Democrats would yay. Great. You know, this is like, a working proletariat is waking up and realizing that, you know, we need we need action against the rich and the people who control the economic levers of power. But au contraire, as I said, they mostly denounced them for being not having the correct point of view on some of these things. And, you know, for not expressing it in the right kind of way.
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So when you have that kind of reaction to like this massively popular hit, by this populist working class guy who incidentally says, you know, I am not on the right. I’m not on the left. I’m in the middle man. I just, you know, I just think things are screwed up. You know, I’m not here witnessing for the Republican Party of the right.
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And so, you know, this to me, this was remarkable. And emblematic.
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A small digression here because in the before times, I knew a Republican politician from Wisconsin who strange guy who’s going really to the dark side, but but had a a visceral understanding of what blue collar rural voters were concerned about. And one of the things that he was pointing out was the tremendous amount of resentment. Okay. Let me just back up here. That many of these voters, he says you go into communities, and the average salary is about thirty eight thousand dollars a year or forty thousand dollars a year.
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These are not rich people. These are people who are right on the margin who work forty hours who are struggling, who are fearful of their job. These are not the rich people, but they look over at their brother-in-law. Who’s on social security disability or getting food stamps or something. And the resentment is tremendous.
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It’s not rich people who resent the welfare. Class. It’s this blue collars and I am working. I am playing by the rules. And we’ve created this vast system of people who are mooching off, but I actually wrote a book about this at one point.
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And one of the things that we’ve seen in places like Wisconsin has been this incredible shift of white working class rural voters away from the democratic party because they don’t feel that they are supporting them as the working class.
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They feel that they’ve
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created this vast safety net that plays them for suckers. Is this something that that you see that you recognize or is this unfair?
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No. This is completely fair. I mean, yeah, the Democrats wanna give them stuff. Yeah. And they’ll give people like us stuff, whether we’re working or not, or whether we’re, like, you know, playing by the rules or not.
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And that doesn’t make them feel good. It makes them feel like they’re being patronized and look down on. I mean, a very important point, Charlie Sykes know, relates to this all over Anthony, issue is that a lot of the blowback for him came because he seemed to be critical of of people who are on welfare disability. And what people missed is, no, he’s not talking about some black mother in the inner city. He’s talking about people he knows.
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People can be on any. People are like, you know, we’re like We’re in this family meeting. Tough and not doing anything, and they actually know these people and and to them, that’s wrong. That’s not the American way. That’s not what it should be about.
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And if they feel Democrats are enabling that, then they’re quite resentful. But There’s no understanding of this among, I think, the Democratic elite
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Two cosmic questions here. I mean, you know, you know that when you bring these kinds of issues up, people will say, well, what’s happening with rural white working class voters? It’s about race. It’s fundamentally about race and, you know, racial animus. I mean, obviously, there’s a component there, but I have a problem, particularly when you look at Wisconsin.
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The number of voters that voted for Obama twice and then voted for Donald Trump, many of the dependents that they are describing, the people who are, you know, at the public truck. These are not inner city African Americans. These are, you know, the white Cletuses down the road who are doing all this, but give me your sense, though. What role does race play in the alienation of the white and rural working class.
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Right. Well, my view is that race has something to do with it, but it it’s vastly exaggerated. And I think in sort of big picture terms. What people typically miss about this on the liberal side of the spectrum is they may not be completely delighted with people who have a different skin color than they do or live in a different place or come from a different country, but much more than that, they hate us. They hate, you know, the elites, educated elites in the big cities, do they feel looked down in them?
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Are they doing great and they’re they’re doing crappy and they’re and their communities are falling apart and they feel like systems rigged against them, and it’s in the interests of a lot of these these type of people. So Yeah. I mean, Catherine Kramer wrote a good book about was Conce and the politics of resentment works. Right? You really see exactly that would be the best.
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At one point of the book. She said, you know, it’s like, wow. They they really hate b boy, and they hate anybody else I was god’s a professor of Nevada. So I I think that that’s really important to keep in mind that it’s just bitter resentment at the way the country has evolved, the way certain parts of the country have done better than others about the educated elites who seem to control everything including the very culture that they are expected to consume, and they hate that. And sort of involved in that may be a set some animus toward, you know, people who are black or brown or whatever.
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I mean, this is really sort of the working assumption of most, I think, liberal Democrats at this point is what a lot of this re this resentment is fundamentally and based only about resentment, a gout, the the rising multicultural, multiracial America, and how, you know, it’s it’s a threat to their status. And this now becomes the spiral because if if that is your attitude, that is disdain. That is a certain amount
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of contempt, which then feeds that sense. Well, you people don’t like me. You’re not a complicated person. You’re a
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hateful bigot. That that’s the deal.
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The other conventional wisdom now among Democrats is okay. Well, maybe these voters are just lost. They’re lost forever. We needed to stop talking about them because, essentially, our coalition has shifted, and we’re gonna replace the working class voters with the suburban educated voters. Like, you know, college educated voters who may have voted it for Republicans in the past, Wait, first of all, are they gone forever?
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Are those white working class non college voters gone forever for the Democratic party?
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I don’t think so. I mean, looking specifically at that question, I mean, we know that the Democrats actually did slightly better among white working class voters in twenty twenty than in twenty eighteen, and we know how well Obama did among them. You know, this black guy ran for president. Remember that? So, no, I don’t think these voters are gone forever.
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The only reason you’d think they’re gone forever is if you bought into the idea that they’re only motivating factor, the only thing that’s salient for them is that they’re a hateful bigot and they wanna vote against the party that’s for black and brown people. I don’t think that’s the way it is. I think it’s much more complicated than that. I think what they’re really looking for is is a better life and a party that doesn’t treat them like crap. And, you know, they’re not that enthusiastic about the Republican party either.
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Now, you know, I mean, Charlie, this whole thing would make more sense if these voters all loved the Republican party and think there’s nothing wrong with it, but that’s not true either. They’re dissatisfied with both parties and fundamentally as I say they want a better life. So you deliver for them and they don’t feel like you’re looking down in them and you will get a bigger share of those voters. Does it mean you’ll carry suddenly the white working class? No.
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But you can do three, four, five points better, which makes all the difference. And we could also look at what’s happening with non white working class voters. If the Democrats, if this was all about race and not to some extent about class, why are non white working class voters feeling out of the Democratic party? There’s something going on here that you have really had to look at in class terms. And if you look at it in class terms, the Democratic party as a party that supposedly stands for the interest of the working class and can advance those interests should be able to get a bigger share of these voters.
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Okay. So talk to me about that because you crunch the numbers on all of this, and this this
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does seem to be at least warning flag up here. It’s not just the white working class. You’re seeing erosion of the Bulwark, working class among hispanics. Mhmm. There has been a school of thought among Democrats that demography is destiny that, you know, eventually, you know, there will be this tsunami of young people and women and minorities who will all vote for Democrats But there are some warning signs there.
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So let’s talk about Hispanics for a moment. This was the big shock, right, that, that Hispanic in South Texas were suddenly voting for Republicans. So how does this relate to this? Why would Hispanic working class, black working class voters vote for the party headed by Donald Trump. You understand the cognitive dissonance of that is really, really powerful.
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A lot of Democrats having a hard time with
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this. Back to something we were talking about earlier. If you look at the performance of the Trump economy compared to the Biden economy or compared to I mean, they basically, even even in twenty twenty, there’s no Biden economy compared to, of course, but a lot of Hispanics were pretty happy with how the economy had gone on Trump.
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They just kind of forget the crash of the Trump economy in that last year.
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I mean, that was pretty awful. COVID, man. Yeah. He got a bit of a pass for that. They remembered what had happened prior to that, and I think, you know, that’s not unreasonable on their part.
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And they also felt that Trump, you know, in a cultural sense, may have been closer to them than than the democratic party is is evolving was. I mean, the credit party became associated with everything from defunding the police to trans issues to e even a border stuff. I mean, a lot of voters who voted for for the Republicans and Trump in twenty twenty, you know, we’re actually not really down with this idea. The border should be basically quasi open They actually believe that there’s a necessity for border security and very strong border security. And the fact that Trump stood for that, and a lot of these people were border guards themselves I mean, don’t get me started on all the ways in which the Democratic Party, you know, and its association with certain set of issues was actually not considered to be in the wheelhouse of these voters who fundamentally were patriotic, upwardly mobile, hardworking, you know, believed in their communities and believed in the American dream, they felt the Democrats were not actually having their back and all this stuff and didn’t really believe the same things they did about their culture and their country.
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And the route to Bulwark mobility. I mean, it it goes even to, like, where do some of these people? If you’re talking about South Texas, look at how many people Will Saletan resources track. Right? I mean, the Democrats are associated with basically getting rid of fossil fuels.
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You know, why on earth we do not expect that to have some effect on some Hispanic voters But, I mean, we we should be careful about this particular demographic, Charlie. If we look at the trends that are affecting Hispanics, it’s not just in South Texas. And it’s not just in South Florida, and that’s what I think connects into these cultural and other issues we’ve been talking about. It was all over the country. It was in Philadelphia.
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It was in Detroit. It was in California. It was in New York. It was everywhere. The Democrats fell off a cliff.
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Among Hispanic voters, which didn’t mean they didn’t carry them, but it did mean they lost ten, fifteen, twenty margin points all over the country, which is a huge amount. So, I mean,
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when you say that they have more in common culturally with Donald Trump, of course, you know, a lot of us go, how do you look at the guy with the golden toilets and, you know, the all of the this stuff and and think you’re culturally attuned. But what you’re talking about is these cultural wedge issues. And you’ve gone through them. What is the bundle look like? The border crime, gender issues And race.
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And race.
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I mean, what are the great mistakes of the Democrats has been to think of Hispanic as so called people of color. Right? They’re they’re all sort of part of this big bundle. You know, Asians, blacks, Hispanic. So everybody who’s non white, you know, must be absolutely outraged about this white supremacist society we live in.
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And we’ll vote on that basis if they are forcibly reminded about how racist the other side is. But that’s not true, actually. A lot of Hispanics don’t really look at America as a white supremacist society at all. They believe racism comes from individuals, not structures, not society as a whole, which, of course, is The current Democratic mantra, this has been tested a number of times. And if you ask people, well, do you think racism fundamentally comes basically from individuals who hold racist views, or do you think it’s, you know, baked into the structure of our society, you know, and the structures of the society, whatever?
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I mean, that’s not the exact wording. But, you know, Hispanic’s by and large endorsed the idea, comes from individuals. And they don’t like that. Of course, nobody likes racism. It’s directed at them, but they don’t feel like that is, you know, the fundamental nature of American society.
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They like America. They’re patriotic. They think there’s plenty of opportunity for upper mobility. They want their barriers taken out of the way, and they want opportunities, but they don’t look at it as, you know, we’re part of this benighted mass of nine white people who are being ground under the heel. Of the white supremacist, the rulers of our country and the society, you know, that has all these structures that that are fundamentally racist.
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So you know, I think race is very important. And you have to understand that this is not a plus factor for the Democrats now among a lot of Hispanic voters, especially working class voters, We don’t look at the world the way Democratic liberals do. Right? I mean, there’s a lot of data that shows that liberal college educated whites now have the most, you know, sort of anti racist, quote, unquote, views of of any constituency in the country, right, that Hispanicsics are far less likely to endorse aggressive anti racist statements than liberal whites are.
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Okay. So you’ve written about how the Democrats have, you know, as as their coalition changes have become more influenced by the highly educated elites, the much more progressive elites who have an outsized role in determining where the party is. It does seem as if the average Democratic primary voter is far more centrist. We’ve seen this in election after election, which is, again, is why one of the reasons to have this conversation. But Joe Biden himself, how do you evaluate the Biden presidency?
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Did he govern as a a centrist or did he move too far to the left under the influence of this progressive elite? What is your analysis of Joe Biden. Because to me, Joe Biden’s I look at him and there are moments when I go, this is going to be the last centrist because he actually has a lot of instincts. About the issues you’re describing. Right?
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I’m including the the of the working class and and kitchen table stuff. And so why is a lot of this hitting him? Well, I think, you have to look at how he has governed rather than sort
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of what his instincts are, and I agree with you, Charlie. I think his instincts are basically as a centrist and as a sort of, you know, old style working class oriented democrat, but I think as he’s governed, it’s been quite different. I think he basically has taken on board a lot of the priorities and and even language of the progressive wing of the party. Give me an example of that. Well, I mean, there are so many execs.
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I mean, he’s talked about the structural racism and all that kind of stuff. He remember when he went to Georgia and talked about, you know, this is Jim Crow two point o and like Bulwark Connor because, you know, because of the the voting bill they passed, which is actually relatively anodyne. It wasn’t that big a deal, but He’s willing to ramp his rhetoric up to eleven. Look at his stance on trans issues. Right?
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I mean, I grant you this is not the determining voting issue, but it does say a bit about where where Biden has taken on views of the left wing of the party. I mean, look, he invited Dylan Mulvaney, the famous Budlight influencer to, the White House for a chat. I mean, this is the same guy who, you know, woke up one day, decided he was a woman and did a series of famous TikTok videos on, you know, reliving his girlhood. Mhmm. Right?
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I mean, this is pretty weird. But, you know, Biden has said that the trans issue is a civil rights issue of our time, which to my mind really, you know, is not you know, appropriate to compare the civil rights movement to what this particular set of issues is all about. And, you know, the the administration has been forced square in favor of all stuff, which is massively unpopular among a lot of the working class voters we’re we’re talking about. I mean, look at the whole issue of clean energy too. I think this is a long discussion.
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But, Biden is certainly down with the whole idea. We’re in this massive climate emergency. We must have this extremely rapid transition to renewables. And we met everybody must get an electric card. Maybe you should think twice about having a gas stove.
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So, he has said nothing. In his private office that would lead one away from the view that he basically endorses a whole democratic view on the transition to clean energy. Now he’s done a few things that are more sensible as he’s, you know, his presidency has gone on like the drilling arrangements and and Willow, but he gets this enormous blowback from parts of the Democratic party. Whenever he says anything remotely accommodating even about fossil fuels,
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How is the UAW strike gonna play in them? And they this seems like one of the issues Great.
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Except. I
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mean, a perfect example, because Trump is parachuting in, right, today, because he sees an opening. He, you know, and he’s saying they’re gonna make these electric cars in China, which is not true. But I remember the impact that Hillary Clinton’s comments had in twenty sixteen when she was, you know, talking about we’re gonna put all the coal miners out of work, not She had a longer explanation, but that was the sound by, you know, Trump and the republic is really looking to have a wedge here with the auto So how is this gonna play?
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It is a great example because, you know, the Democrats back in twenty nineteen, you know, and the Green New Deal was first being talked about Lancy Pelosi famously referred to it as well. This green dream or whatever they call it. You know, she wasn’t particularly excited about it. But in the process of the Democrats, and since then, the Democrats have really taken on the whole green new deal approach and really the inflation reduction act or IRA, is essentially a a soft scaled down version of the Green New Deal. And the theory of the Green New Deal has been, you know, we’re gonna basically throw a lot of money at this rapid transition, renewables, and electric vehicles.
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And as we implement this green new deal, There will be great jobs for everybody. Everybody will be happy. Prices of energy will go down, and it will be you know, heaven on earth. But the problem is that the actual implementation of this, you know, quasi green new deal, this IRA actually raises a lot of very thorny questions particularly for members of the working class, whether they really will benefit from it. And I think a lot of UAW workers are worried that, a, you know, a lot of these EV plants are going to other places that are not, you know, gonna be staffed by union workers because of the very of the states are going to.
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And it does not escape the notice of the UAE’s leadership that a transition to electric vehicles will probably abandon just fewer auto workers. But it means less of them because it takes less workers to make these evs. Right. And you know, there’s sort of there’s bubbling underlying resentment among many working class voters in general about What if I don’t want an EV? You know, you know, I like my car, you know, and the the idea that we’re gonna have this, like, super rapid transition to electric vehicles, I think flies in the face of of the reality of what consumer behavior.
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I mean, this is the problem of of rapid change, right, is that it creates anxiety. And particularly if you are a blue collar worker in America, you have been feeling under siege. You’ve been feeling vulnerable for a long time. So somebody comes in and says
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Right.
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We’re going to, upend your entire industry trust us people shouldn’t be surprised. So far, the UAE leadership doesn’t seem to be buying into this.
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And I think they’re just just the tip of the iceberg, Charlie. I think there’s more coming along this line. Like what? Oh, I just think, you know, working class resentment toward the spillovers from the energy transition that the Biden administration and Democrats are trying to push forward is just beginning. I mean, look, in New York state, they just had to raise the rates of a lot of the, basically, electricity people buy because the increased subsidies that have to go to the people implementing the clean energy stuff.
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And so, I mean, and look at look at all the gas stove bans that are now being implemented in a lot of places. And look at, you know, you’re supposed to get a heat pump. People hate that stuff.
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This is an important point because people make I know a lot of people on the left, and including some of my colleagues fun of the whole issue of the gas stove, but this becomes very symbolic for a lot of people, which is like, wait, don’t I get to choose you know, we talk about tolerance and diversity. I would like to have my gas stove and when the suggestion is out there, that the government is gonna come in and tell you what kind of stove you cap Again, it’s not the end of the world, but it’s symbolic. Absolutely. The reaction is far greater than the actual substance there. But it does become a stand in for a lot of what you’re describing.
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Look.
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I mean, if electric stoves are so great, if heat pumps are so great, if electric vehicles are so great, Will Saletan consumers decide, you know, let the market speak. And over time, if these things are as great as people say they are, then people will purchase them and get rid of their old stuff. But the idea that, you know, you’re not gonna have a choice. You’re essentially gonna be dragooned into into getting these devices or vehicles. I think, sits very poorly with people.
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And, you know, we should forget about the issue of energy prices, Charlie Sykes, this is an example of something Biden has bought into and is, you know, this sort of has this whole talking point solar energy so cheap. They’re giving it away. But the fact of the matter is basically the higher the density of renewable energy and grids, the more energy prices have tended to go up. For a variety of reasons, which we can’t really get into now too complicated. But but that that’s the empirical reality.
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So the empirical reality is energy prices are haven’t gone down. They’ve gone up. It’s not abundant and cheap. It’s less abundant and and more expensive. And then they’re telling you you gotta buy an electric vehicle.
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You gotta get a heat pump. You gotta get an electric stove. I mean, this is just tailor made for, as you say, for someone like Donald Trump to parachute into it. Maybe he doesn’t have the solution, but boy, he knows how to take advantage of resentment among there among people. So and I just wanna connect into this whole thing about the climate emergency.
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If it wasn’t for this conceit that we are in this massive climate emergency, we have to press the accelerator on this stuff, and we must move this forward as fast as possible. Otherwise, Armageddon is lurking. This wouldn’t be such a problem because you could roll out this stuff gradually. You could let, you know, this energy transition take place. As indeed, it will in the end over a fairly long period of time and where people don’t have to be forced to do x, y, and z, where you can gradually remake the nature of the grid and include nuclear it might add, which is, yet another discussion.
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So what’s the hurry? The hurry is that people have convinced themselves that, you know, this must be done and must be done fast and anybody who stands in the way of progress you know, let’s just run them over. So the UAW is saying, no. Don’t run me over. I’m not
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I’m not in. This hits different groups in different ways. I mean, you know, you quote some recent reporting by Ron Brownstein, you know, to explain how people, you know, look at the economy so differently. Big, you know, chasm between attitudes between the working class and college graduates. You quote them saying frustration over higher prices is especially acute among voters with fewer resources and less finance of cushion, which generally include those with less education.
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Nobody likes spending more, but the degree to which you can absorb inflation. Those at the higher end of the economic scale have less difficulty doing so. And, you know, you also quote from a British journalist in the Financial Times who writes that Biden may have over interpreted his mandate when he won. He was supposed to end the Dark Carnival of Trump and lead the country out of the pandemic, but the spending in the subsidies has allowed Republicans to draw this circumstantially plausible, even if you think ultimately false link between the administration and rising consumer prices. Okay.
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So let’s let’s get to, again, the politics of this. As you point out, it’s not surprising that Biden is losing working class voters by fourteen points in recent polls, but he’s carrying college graduates by eighteen points. Biden lost working class voters by just four points in twenty twenty. So this is bad. He’s losing more of the working class.
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Yes. I think the word bad is appropriate. Right. Really bad. So as, you know, Brownstein pointed out in his piece for CNN, middle class Joe, looks like he’s gonna end up relying on upscale voters more they did in twenty twenty.
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And I what I hear from a lot of folks is, okay. So we’ve lost the working class boat. They’re all bigots, they’re all cleatuses, the and, you know, let’s write them up, but it doesn’t matter. This is the Democrats’ replacement theory. We’re replacing them with up scale college educated voters, so it’s a wash.
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Is it Ruby? Can they just replace them?
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Well, I mean, by definition, it’s not a wash in the sense that if you lose x amount of working class voters and you gain x amount of college educated vote as x percentage. You will lose because there are more working class voters than our college educated voters. For every point or two, you lose among working class voters, you gotta get two or three points improvement among college educated voters. Now that’s mathematically possible. But is it easy?
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No. And in fact, it’s quite difficult and it may not work. Most voters in this country are working class to find that in terms of college education. So if you’re losing ground steadily among those voters, you really are putting yourself a very difficult situation in terms of jacking up your percentages among college educated voters. And let’s not forget.
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There are a lot of actually vulnerable points for the Democrats themselves among college educated voters. I did a piece for the Washington Post the other day when I analyzed the votes and inclinations of White College educated moderates, which is most of Boyd College voters. And they are not very enthusiastic about the Democrats. Democrats really have to run up the score among these voters to actually carry the wide college educated population by the margins. They’re increasingly looks like they’re gonna need.
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So even that’s not an easy lift. Right? I mean, I don’t wanna rehearse a lot of polling data here, but trust me on this, they are not enthusiastic about Biden about the job he’s done in the economy and a variety of other things. They don’t like the Democratic party that much, even though they don’t like the, like, some extent they like the Republican party, even less, which, of course, is the Democrats secret, you know, superpower these days. It isn’t that everybody loves them as they hate the other guys even more.
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So this is not a good calculus. This is not good political arithmetic. It’s not to say it might Bulwark. And who knows? Maybe it’ll even work in twenty twenty four.
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Maybe I’d no squeak out another. But is this the way we wanna live our political life forever? No. I don’t think so. I think that, you know, the party that really consolidates the working class vote, you know, will will have the American political few And I just don’t see the Democrats doing that at this point.
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And as you’re pointing out, Charlie, they’re even making this argument. Well, who cares? Everything’s fine. It’s like that dog with a coffee cup and the flames of hell. You know, like, everything’s fine.
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Yeah. This is fine. This is fine. Okay. So let’s transition.
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You’re a progressive. You’re a Democrat. You want Democrats to win. Right? I mean, and people need to understand this is in the context of wanting Democrats to fix this problem.
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Correct? You are a lifelong Democratic progress. I wanna remind you. Registered about voting.
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All of that.
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The whole shtick. So what should Democrats do? What should Joe Biden do in the next twelve months to win these voters back to change this dynamic. Pretending none of these things are a problem, pretending that that nobody should care about inflation, pretending that none of these things are out of the mainstream. None of that, yeah, I think, is gonna change that dynamic.
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So what is the agenda? What is the prosperity agenda? That you recommend?
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I think it’s very difficult at this point. I mean, I really have a hard time seeing Biden changing course and practically anything at this point. But if he did, you know, I think that the whole pitch around bidenomics needs some work. Yeah. Maybe you don’t even wanna wanna call it bidenomics.
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I mean, I really I think there’s a, like, some dazzling chutzpah to, deciding you’re gonna embrace the sober K of bidenomics in a situation where people basically detest the job Biden has done on
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the economy. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s impressive. I mean, I guess they’re assuming things. So turn around by the election time. When I hear people talk about this, let’s say, on MSNBC, they talk about the messaging problem and what Democrats have to message You are suggesting that there’s a messaging problem, but there’s also a substance problem.
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Well, given the substance problem, I think that the messaging problem does not devolve down to figuring out how to convey all the great achievements of bidenomics more effectively. I think you have to some extent admit, yeah, look. I mean, hasn’t gone quite as we wanted. Inflation is a problem. We’re really gonna get it under control, and we’re gonna make sure that, we mostly have the backs of working class voters.
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If that means, we gotta take our foot off the accelerator on some of the stuff that we’ve been doing. That’s fine. Relays are focused on you know, the actual lives, you know, most people in this country lead and, you know, how they’re doing economically, and we’re really gonna get inflation under control. And maybe we’re gonna cut back on some of the things we were gonna do because of that. You know, we understand.
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We get it.
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Who are the Democrats who are getting this? Think some of the governors are
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a little bit more in touch with this than the Biden administration. John Federman, Sherrod Brown. Yeah. Josh Shapiro, people like Gretchen Whitmer, maybe. I mean, I think they’re a little bit more circumspect about some of the stuff.
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Now Whitmer, I mean, this is like the worst thing to happen to her. The UWW strike and all that, and I think Michigan politics in general. But I think they’re more sensitive to, you know, sort of to put it gently, the mixed nature of the Biden economy, and how things have gone under under Biden. How you craft an economic oriented message that speaks to people’s discontent about the way things are and that’s realistic about what people have experienced. I think that’s a big problem, but I think you at least have to try to do that and not assume that your big messaging problem is you haven’t been able to deliver the good news.
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Yeah. You know, you’re with as much panache you know, or the right magic words. I mean, I think that’s ridiculous, but I think you also should do some things to signal. You are moving to the center and cultural issues. You are gonna tighten up the border.
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You’re gonna radically reform the asylum system. You know, you’re going to you know, maybe make some sort of signals on the trans issue that you’re not totally down with the medicalization of minors. And, you know, we need to compromise. Yeah. You need to compromise on on these kinds of issues.
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And on on crime, you’re really concerned about crime. I mean, one of my favorite little tropes in one of yours, Charlie, has been the Democrats could use a sister soldier moment on some of the issues about crime, which are not going away. And there are like sacrificial lambs out there in the democratic universe who would make an excellent sister soldier. And that would actually capture people’s attention you know, so people don’t think your main concern about, you know, crime is we gotta make sure we treat criminals fairly. And, you know, maybe like open drug use is like part of our harm reduction strategy and all this.
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There’s there’s a lot of low hanging fruit there for the Democrats to cut a somewhat different cultural profile. Than the Democrats currently caught. Do I believe they’ll do any of this? No. That’s why I think it’s gonna be a dog fight right through November twenty twenty four.
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So the the larger question is can Democrats seize back the populist message that we are for the little guy? Because I think this is one of those moments where people are looking around and going, okay. The system is rigged. It is rigged for the rich the billionaires, the millionaires, the oligarchs. There’s an asymmetry of power that people at pretty much every level of life experience.
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And yet somehow, Donald Trump has convinced millions of Americans that he of the Golden toilets and of Mar a Lago somehow is the voice of the little guy Can Democrats turn that around? I mean, they’re running against a billionaire who doesn’t pay any taxes. I think the inability to turn this around that we don’t need a society that is run without necessarily buying into the Bernie Sanders line. But, I mean, Bernie Sanders tapped into something. Donald Trump tapped into something.
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So can Joe Biden tap into that? Middle class Joe, or is it too late?
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Is my regretful duty to inform you. I think it’s too late. I mean, I think we should be talking about you know, few years down the line. Let’s think a few moves ahead in the chess game. I think the Democrats can totally recover from where they are now.
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And as I say, I think it’s, you know, maybe a slightly better than even Beth that Biden does manage to get reelected, but I think that, you know, we’re really talking about trying to change the image and approach of the Democratic party in twenty twenty four and beyond. I mean, I’d be very happy if they did it before then. I do think as you point out that the populist feelings roiling the population are out there, particularly working class voters, the Democrats should be able to take advantage of them back to Oliver Anthony, if your reaction to Oliver Anthony’s song is, you know, that racist son of a sea cook, I mean, this is not a good sign.
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I know. Not a good sign.
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So I think Democrats have to you know, sort of get back in touch with their inner centrist or something or their inner Bulwark Clinton or their inner barack Obama for crying out loud. And figure out how to to take a different approach.
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It does strike me that, you know, in twenty sixteen, in retrospect, all of the flares were going up the lights where the the motors did not want same old same old. They did not want the status quo. They did not want another Clinton. They wanted change desperately, and all the elites ignored all of that. And the elites were, you know, like, let’s have, Bush versus Clinton.
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And the voters said, to hell with that, we want something new. We got something new. And my gut tells me that twenty twenty four is the populous red lights are flashing, and if you know, the Democrats do not figure out a way to show that they don’t despise. They don’t think that the voters are stupid that bad things are gonna happen. Rui Tashire, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.
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Rui is senior fellow at the American enterprise institute. And you can read his work on the Liberal Patriot On Substack. He’s also co author of the forthcoming book where have all the Democrats gone, Rui. Thank you so much. And thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast.
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I’m Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow, and we’ll do this all over again. The Buller podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.
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