Look, I don't disagree with any of this. But the hour is way later than you know, this ship has sailed years ago. Go read Thomas Franks' Listen, Liberal (2016).
"For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin." -Chuck Schumer, 2016
Thanks to Pelosi's legacy, the Dems are just as hopelessly collaborators and servants to big money donors as the Republicans. The difference between the Pritzker and Trump families is more aesthetic than anything.
Hell, I remember very well being castigated as a "Bernie Bro" and basically slapped around by everyone in that dammed party for years and multiple rigged primaries before I left. NONE of the internal reforms or pivots to rebuild working class legitimacy has occurred. If anything, the party structurally has gotten even more deranged, rigged, and elitist. The Kamala campaign was the most elite-based campaign I've ever witnessed, entirely a firehose of corporate money sprayed across celebrity endorsements.
If the Dems gain any ground, it's because the Repubs eff up so massively the Dems can eat up the scraps for a cycle. But there is no appetite or desire in the party to do any of this stuff outside of performative aesthetics. Their long term outlook is grim.
Dem priorities are fascinating. Thank you. The Dem college educated supposed concern with authoritarianism is very likely to disappear with Trump. When Biden purposefully dissolved the Southern Border and sought to end US fossil fuels, all while regulating everything from cars to water puddles, cooktops, school discipline and everything in between, the Left was not worried about a Strongman takeover. They cheered it.
The US already provides the LGBTQ community with equal rights, found only in the West and a sliver of the rest of the world. In many nations the college educated cheer, if being Gay does not invoke execution or prison, the community enjoys no protection from fellow citizens far more hostile to the LGBTQ community, than Americans have ever been. Lip service legal protections are of little use where gang raping Gay people "straight" is culturally acceptable.
Taxing the Rich? The most significant difference between the Scandinavian and US tax code is nearly everyone in Scandinavia pays high income taxes, while a significant portion of Americans pay no income taxes at all. Anyone really concerned with gun violence would insist on long, mandatory gun enhancements in sentencing, often ignored in Blue cities and states.
Finally, oil and gas production has soared so much under Trump, the eventual end of the Iran War is likely to decrease oil prices and then inflation, quickly and dramatically. Trump's impending perpetual Impeachment and then retirement, will take even more air out of the Dem agenda. Perhaps what the Dem college educated really require are heavily stamped passports, and then new priorities, because while Reps have a bevy of issues likely cost them the House and Senate in Nov, most Rep problems have a fast approaching expiration date.
Gay guy here. There is no "LGBTQ" community. That's a piece of trans and queer activist political fiction to make the radical appear mainstream. In my opinion, gays have no natural common interests with transsexuals and queers.
This is very simple. Democrats care more about illegal aliens than they do about American citizens. The will admit that openly. (And have). They also care more about the criminals than the victims. (*See Hamas, Tyler Robinson, Luigi Mangione, Linsay Clancy, etc.).
The US Constitution tells the American government to treat every person, citizen or not, as equal, and that is what Democrats are doing. It wasn't until the Ku Klux Klan came around and gained power through fear, intimidation, and violence that the US began to destroy our core values and replace them with their bigoted ones. I would think any working-class American patriot loyal to their country and community would embrace the party that reinvigorates support these neglected American values.
The Ku Klux Klan was founded by the Democrats. (Democrat Nathan Bedford Forrest being the principle founder). It was the militia of the Democratic party to terrorize free blacks and the Republicans who freed them.
You have to be incredibly dense to use this as an argument today when any good Patriotic working-class American knows the values of the Republican Party and Democratic Party switched in the 1960s.
That is why today the GOP's slogan is Make America Great Again, which was used by the Second Ku Klux Klan as an excuse for their anti-American bigotry. If you want more evidence that the Democrats are the honest heirs to Lincoln, ahead of his election, college students formed Wide Awake groups on campus to raise awareness about slavery, and modern democrats are called woke.
It is nice that history proves you wrong and that the Democrats actually uphold our American values.
Once upon a time, every student of history – and that meant pretty much everyone with a high school education – knew this:
The Democratic Party was the party of slavery and Jim Crow, and the Republican Party was the party of emancipation and racial integration.
Democrats were the Confederacy; and Republicans were the Union.
Jim Crow Democrats were dominant in the South; and socially tolerant Republicans were dominant in the North.
But then, in the 1960s and 70s, everything supposedly flipped: suddenly the Republicans became the racists and the Democrats became the champions of civil rights.
Fabricated by left-leaning academic elites and journalists, the story went like this:
Republicans couldn't win a national election by appealing to the better nature of the country;
they could only win by appealing to the worst.
Attributed to Richard Nixon, the media's all-purpose bad guy, this came to be known as "The Southern Strategy."
It was very simple.
Win elections by winning the South.
And to win the South, appeal to racists.
So, the Republicans, the party of Lincoln, were to now be labeled the party of rednecks.
But this story of the two parties switching identities is a myth.
In fact, it's three myths wrapped into one false narrative.
Let's take a brief look at each myth in turn.
Myth Number One:
In order to be competitive in the South, Republicans started to pander to white racists in the 1960s.
Fact: Republicans actually became competitive in the South as early as 1928, when Republican Herbert Hoover won over 47 percent of the South's popular vote against Democrat Al Smith.
In 1952, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower won the southern states of Tennessee, Florida and Virginia.
And in 1956, he picked up Louisiana, Kentucky and West Virginia, too.
And that was after he supported the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that desegregated public schools; and after he sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock
Central High School to enforce integration.
Myth Number Two:
Southern Democrats, angry with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, switched parties.
Fact: Of the 21 Democratic senators who opposed the Civil Rights Act, just one became a Republican.
The other 20 continued to be elected as Democrats, or were replaced by other Democrats.
On average, those 20 seats didn't go Republican for another two-and-a-half decades.
Myth Number Three:
Since the implementation of the Southern Strategy, the Republicans have dominated the South.
Fact: Richard Nixon, the man who is often credited with creating the Southern Strategy, lost the Deep South in 1968.
In contrast, Democrat Jimmy Carter nearly swept the region in 1976 - 12 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
And in 1992, over 28 years later, Democrat Bill Clinton won Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia.
The truth is, Republicans didn't hold a majority of southern congressional seats until 1994,
30 years after the Civil Rights Act.
As Kevin Williamson writes at the National Review: "If southern rednecks ditched the Democrats because of a civil-rights law passed in 1964, it is strange that they waited until the late 1980s and early 1990s to do so.
They say things move slower in the south -- but not that slow."
So, what really happened?
Why does the South now vote overwhelmingly Republican?
Because the South itself has changed.
Its values have changed.
The racism that once defined it, doesn't anymore.
Its values today are conservative ones: pro-life, pro-gun, and pro-small government.
And here's the proof:
Southern whites are far more likely to vote for a black conservative, like Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, than a white liberal.
In short, history has moved on.
Like other regions of the country, the South votes values, not skin color.
The myth of the Southern Strategy is just the Democrats excuse for losing the South.
And yet another way to smear Republicans with the label "racist".
> It is nice that history proves you wrong and that the Democrats actually uphold our American values.
You don't actually know history. Leftism is predicated on the explicit rejection of Enlightenment values. That goes back to Rousseau who rejected Enlightenment principles like individual rights and reason in favor of group-based rights (the general will) and emotion. Ben Shapiro's tagline of "the facts don't care about your feelings" echoes this distinction.
In modern times both the Critical Theorists such as Marcuse and Postmodernists such as Foucault explicitly view Enlightenment ideals as an authoritarian mistake.
Sadly, the vast majority of staunch Democrats are useful idiots (Stalin's term, not mine) for easily duped liberals who don't know what leftists intend.
“The US Constitution tells the American government to treat every person, citizen or not, as equal, and that is what Democrats are doing. “
In what universe does the US Constitution grant the same rights to non-citizens of citizens? So non-citizens can vote in our elections? Can receive benefits meant for Americans? Non-citizens are human beings with human rights, of course but name me one human right that Donald Trump is denying them. Remember, free stuff is not a human right.
Up until the early 1920s as many as 40 states allowed non-citizens to vote in local and state elections, so long as they met residency requirements. The Founders believed that allowing non-citizens to vote would give them equity in the country and become Americans through the process of enfranchisement.
No taxation without representation to the core is what we should be, no?
If we cannot treat all people as equal, that is a failure, not the standard we should accept. George Washington wrote in a 1783 letter the people of all nations and all religions are welcomed here and "whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges."
George Washington and the Constitution, along with American history, prove that yes we can let non-citizens vote and it is our duty to treat them as equal.
Those seem like core, working-class American-loving values to me that Democrats are espousing. Don't you?
If you want to espouse open borders, you are free to do it. But there is nothing you can give the working class as good as cheap housing and high-paying jobs. All you will do is drive the working class - black and white - away from the Democrats.
In the past, we didn't have leftist zoning regulations. So housing was cheap to build. We could let in millions of immigrants without driving up housing prices.
In the past, we didn't have a welfare state. So parties couldn't gain power by taking in immigrants and giving them goodies. That's the key differences between Texas and California. California has turned into something resembling a sci-fi dystopia or an Arab nation. Except that it consists of fabulously wealthy white liberals and teeming masses of brown-skinned poor people.
By contrast, Texas is a true multiracial middle class state. As long as they can cling to that identity - and it's highly in doubt - they'll avoid California's fate.
The US Constitution treats citizens and non-citizens very differently. Non-citizens are not allowed to vote for Federal offices and have no official say in US policy.
Furthermore, your understanding of the Ku Klux Klan is sorely lacking and ahistorical.
Non-citizens might not be allowed to vote federally but they were allowed to vote in state elections through the 1920s until the Christian KKK pushed its anti-American laws to subvert our liberty.
And what’s lacking in my understanding of the KKK? They were weak whiney white Christian men who hated our values and could not compete with harder working immigrants so they whined to the government to help. It’s pathetic.
It was Republican RG Ingersoll who spoke 140 years ago about the importance of a woman's right to choose, and how the Christian Holy Bible's barbaric definitions limit their true liberty. There are many GOP state representatives using that foreign and barbaric book to justify lowering the age of consent and forcing children to give birth to their rapists' baby. Christianity and Islam are two sides of the same coin, and the GOP embraces one that is far more harmful to Americans today than Islam.
Those should be decisions between people and their creator, as the Founders intended, no?
At least Islam allows a woman the right to choose, and as George Washington wrote, the people of all nations and all religions are welcomed here, and he even cited Islam.
Bodily autonomy is a First Amendment issue, and to deny an abortion, trans ideology, or surrogacy is fundamentally anti-American. There is no definition of man or woman in the Constitution for a reason and if we are going to pick any gender ideology to segregate Americans, why not an ideology that identifies three genders, like Greek? Or four?
Should we DNA test everyone to categorize them, too? Should we force every business to build two bathrooms? Two lunch counters? Two entrances? Is that small government the GOP loves?
And just like no one has any right to single-race spaces for safety or opportunity, no one should have any rights to single-sex spaces, unless you believe women are inferior, then I can understand. The fact we built this DEI into our society based on foreign ideologies is disgusting--we are all equal.
Thomas Jefferson wrote that civil liberties do not depend on religion nor science, making abortion, transgender ideology, surrogacy, and accepting Islam pretty on brand for the Democrats today. At least some Americans still uphold our secular values instead of foreign ones.
> It was Republican RG Ingersoll who spoke 140 years ago about the importance of a woman's right to choose, and how the Christian Holy Bible's barbaric definitions limit their true liberty.
And the Christian John Locke invented the concept of natural rights 340 years ago - 200 years before your guy. Leftism rejected natural rights in favor of the Reign of Terror, the gulags and eugenics.
> no one should have any rights to single-sex spaces
You are far more honest than most leftists about taking rights away from women.
Here is how we see things....a psychological perspective.
Study Maslow's Need Hierarchy.
1. Biological needs get met
2. Safety and Security
3. Love and Belongingness
4. Esteem Needs......self respect and appreciation
5. Self-Actualization: finding true fulfillment in life
Progressives live lives of comfort and security. For example, progressives live in low crime areas, so they can afford to defund police and will still be safe.
Democrats used to focus on the first two-three needs. Now they focus on the 4th and 5th.
They don't realize how much coming from a background of privilege colors their views of the world.
Trump: He went after 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. (in terms of #4, he told working class Americans that they are IMPORTANT! Progressives tell them they are stupid and lazy.
A good example is of Progressives' views on "Defending Democracy." That view is really in Need 4 or 5 for them. Meanwhile, who are the real people defending democracy? It's our soldiers and police. People on the right are far over represented in those professions. Giving their lives to defend democracy instead of marching in a parade.
Progressives will never win over working class folks (who, by the way, are our people)
Thanks for this thorough-going analysis. I would be interested in your views of which candidates right now seem to be doing a good job of meeting the moment in the ways your analysis describes. Rob Sand is one, I would gather. I’d also be interested in your views of Sherrod Brown’s and Jon Ossoff’s approaches.
This summary observation I thought particularly helpful: “Second (and relatedly), most voters are not down-the-line partisans, and many are desperate for candidates who are either moderate or who espouse a desire to be problem-solvers and embrace bipartisanship.” Not the moderate part, as I never know what that actually means, but the problem-solver part. I don’t know whether you may have seen Jonah Wheeler’s recent campaign ad, but I thought he did a good job on that score.
PS: Thank you, too, for giving the definition you are using for “working class.” Very helpful to have that spelled out.
Thank you, Susan! Re: the candidates I think are doing a good job right now, yes, Rob Sand has been pretty impressive so far. Jamie Ager in NC and Bobby Pulido in TX are solid as well (both running for the House), and Amy Acton has been pretty good in the Ohio governor race. Though it’s worth noting that all of them are running in red-leaning territory and pretty much have to do these things to stand a chance of winning. (Not a knock on them or anything, just a note about the reality of their situations.)
I think Ossoff is pretty impressive. He leans a little more into the “divide-and-conquer” rhetoric—there’s nothing wrong with that, per se, but the reports show that tends to be less effective. I think he can also do this because GA is very much a blue-leaning state this cycle. As for Sherrod Brown, he’s proven he can win Ohio in the recent past. I haven’t really seen how he’s approached social issues, but it’s definitely harder to claim he’s an elitist than it is for many other Dems. He’s known for having had an eye out for workers when he was in Congress.
Also, I had not seen Wheeler’s ad. I think that guy is fighting a lot of lonely fights, but kudos to him for trying to work across the aisle where it makes sense.
Sherrod Brown doesn't mention a single non-economic issue on his website other than congressional stock trading. This is the way. Dan Osborn is another good example though he has a steeper hill to climb in super-red Nebraska. Also noteworthy: Brian Poindexter, Bob Brooks, Rebecca Cooke. Troy Jackson will make an interesting case study b/c he's authentically working class (logger) and is an economic populist but also talks a fair bit about divisive and less salient issues (Gaza, abolish ICE, abortion).
To your point about Jackson: it'll be very interesting to see how Dems running in places with large numbers of both right-leaning working-class voters and downwardly mobile progressives navigate that landscape. Seems like those two groups are moving further and further apart in numerous ways, even as the latter often believes it is speaking on behalf of the former. (You don't necessarily see this in places like Iowa or Ohio, but Maine appears to have a larger contingent of the DMPs than I realized, even as it still has plenty of normie working-class people too.)
Are you referring to the leaked comments about the border wall or something else? He's still holding pretty steady in polling...behind but within reach.
Dan Osborn is a phony independent who raises $ through Act Blue and has Soros fundraisers. The Nebraska Democrat party cleared the field for him and has endorsed him. He was recently caught on hot mic spewing a profanity filled rant disparaging rural people and admitting to being a Spanberger.
Yes, this is what I struck me about Brown, too. Also, as Michael has noted, he’s been consistent in his pro-worker values over an extended period of time. I don’t know whether this is accurate—you and Michael would know more—but it appears to me that the D Party fringe issues undertow hurt him by association last time around. Knocking wood he’ll escape that this year.
BTW, I would be interested in yours and Michael’s views of Pat Ryan (currently the MoC for NY-18). I have watched him over time, since my days working politically in the Hudson Valley in the run-up to 2018. While I don’t follow him as closely as when I lived there, from reports I receive from friends who still live there, it appears that, after a misstep in his first run for Congress, he has stayed close to the ground and worked hard on addressing constituent needs. In that way, particularly, he seems on a track similar to Rob Sand.
Thanks for the article Michael. I've bookmarked and will come back to look too long at the linked studies. I'm a wonk and love polling.
I'd have to assume Dem operatives are also reading this, and adopting some of the framing and positions for their candidates, and that's a good thing.
A couple speed bumps are their candidates need to come to believe the policies they purport to support in order to be effective, people can tell when a position is stated but not felt. Remember how much the Republicans were livid, spitting mad, about Trump in 16? That is the type of anger any candidate looking for a middle ground or heavens to betsy adopt some of the better Republican positions.
Staffers, volunteers, primary voters, interns, large donors, heck even small donors, are all fairly extreme. Until the party changes I don't think we can convince candidates to moderate.
You make a persuasive case for a different message. But what changes inside the party when the proposed working-class agenda conflicts with the interests or moral priorities of its most powerful college-educated donors, staff, advocacy groups, and local professional constituencies? If working-class voters do not gain real influence over candidate selection and policy, why should they believe the new rhetoric is anything more than a more culturally fluent sales pitch?
If you think the Democrats are insufferable now, wait until they win the house and senate, including Talarico winning in Texas, and then get the presidency in 2028.
I'd of agreed with you a few weeks ago, and it's a long way until the election, but I'd give Rs a better than even chance of the senate now. I'm not even sure which party I wish to win.
Good luck, the Democratic party has a lot of work to do. This train started leaving the station in the late 1960's even. And just keeps getting worse. Universities started the strong liberal woke indoctrinations back then and it really got bad with Obama. The Clinton/ Obama machine was terrible for the country.
Start fixing this in the universities or really get the universities back to what they should be, beckons of hope and ethical moral centers of learning. Now they are just network groups and resume builders for a job (and social causes platforms, Example: learn how to organize a sit in or riot??? What?). They used to be so much more and more important than just the buck $.
The university = The "New Religion" (religion of nihilism)
Like other commentators I don't disagree with these arguments, but don't find the DNC or party leadership changing so many positions believable either.
For me gun rights are critical: I live in a rural community and it could take awhile for police to arrive even in an emergency. I believe we need to uphold our constitution, including parts we may personally disagree with, so inventing unmentioned rights, like abortion, while restricting clearly mentioned rights like "the right to bear arms shall not be abridged" grates on me.
I'm not as sold on the contention moderation necessarily means crossing the aisle or compromising either however. Most of the Democratic "moderates" like Manchin were hopelessly corrupted by coal or other big polluting industries, or in bed with financial elites, as when Sinema, another former so-called "moderate," insisted on preserving tax loopholes for hedge fund managers. We need more of these moderates like we need a hole in the head.
The rest of this good advice, much as I agree with it, I don't expect the Democratic Party leadership to adopt: the party still supports do nothing elders like the 85 year old Clyburn, for no other reason than race. That won't change any time soon, even though many working class minorities (and the rest of us) would like it to happen.
College educated liberals are whacked in the eyes of the rest of the electorate; heck, I'm college educated and liberal and I find stuff like "Latinx" ridiculous.
What do you think actual hardworking Latinas want, an increase in the minimum wage, which the Biden administration didn't bother prioritizing (or getting done at all) or made up a gender neutral noun to use?
It's even more insulting to those of us who do speak Spanish because modern Castillano actually already has such a term, employing "e" as in "Latine" instead of the masculine "o" ending or the feminine "a."
Frankly the best result would be to demolish the whole party and its leadership and current adherents, and offer a new party, akin to the disappearance of the Whigs and the rise of the GOP in the mid-1800s. That's not likely to happen either though, so we'll muddle through as best we can with two hopelessly compromised political parties.
I think the advice in this essay sound, and unfortunately unlikely to be adopted. Sad, but true.
Good column and data. However, I think the fundamental challenge is that to appeal to working class voters, Dem candidates will need to stake out positions that alienate a good portion of their left leaning primary voters - who will subsequently not move them forward to the general.
I think this is an excellent collection of proposals and data to back them up. It's exactly the sort of thing I hope to see on the blog. I have other comments, but first I want to stress a single point alone:
If the goal of this blog is to persuade Democratic Party activists and their supporters to consider seriously the arguments presented here and change their strategies, the for Pete's sake please ditch the passive-aggressive phrasing: "Brahmin left." It is condescending and it implies that progressive activists are uniformly "nepo babies" asserting the privileged authority of their caste.
So much of the advice here is about persuasion through showing respect and looking for compromise, yet the authors of this blog undermine everything the blog tries to accomplish by writing as snarky opponent rather than as collegial representatives of a branch of the Democratic coalition, reaching out to persuade other branches. If you are serious in your devotion to contributing to the Democrats realigning their strategy while broadening their base, please leave behind expressions of resentment and disrespect of coalition partners who have a history of treating traditional liberals in that way. Their mistakes have created high barriers for Democratic success (both electoral and substantive); please don't adopt a version of the same mistakes.
Thanks for the feedback, Bob. I’ve always viewed “Brahmin left” as more of a descriptor for a population that shares a series of traits rather than a pejorative, though it’s obviously a group we often have serious disagreements with so I can see your point. Will take into consideration.
I second Bob's comment and appreciate your response. One of the things I've always valued about your analysis and commentary in particular is that you generally stay away from what I'd call "loaded" language and let the facts speak for themselves. It's also great, and another thing I've always appreciated about you, the way you take on board comments like this, explain your thinking, and adjust as seems appropriate.
If your goal is to persuade people to reconsider extremist positions and serve as productive members of a broad coalition, which I take to be one goal of this blog, why would you call them *any* snarky name, ban nock? Expressions of respect give you leverage as an ally; disrespect throws all leverage away. Call them progressives or the Progressive Left, as they sometimes refer to themselves.
(I have no idea why you think membership in progressive politics is obstructed by insurmountable barriers, comparable to caste. Progressive identitarianism certainly frames the world into groups, some of which concern immutable characteristics, but anyone who chooses to substantially adopt that worldview is welcome. And as for Brahmins being the caste of privilege by birth, I think you'd have a hard time arguing this has any relevance for leading figures like Bernie, The Squad, etc.)
OT but I explored some of the links in your profile. Interesting, thoughtful stuff like a lot of your comments and I understand better now where you are coming from. But where do you find the time?
I didn’t vote for Harris or Trump and have no regrets about that decision. Even as the Republican train goes off the rails driven by an increasingly insane engineer my former party the Democratic Party sinks even deeper. The Democrats lost in 2024 and will continue to lose in the future because of one reason. They have lost the support of the American working class. The historic Democratic icons FDR, and JFK would laugh at what passes for policy in their beloved party. Although they were upper class they understood that victory for their party depended on appealing to working class voters. Current party leaders distain the “deplorable” and “racist” members of the working class. Working class Americans hate the following four policies foisted on them by Democrats.
Working class people have had their wages depressed by illegal immigrants who will work for next to nothing just to be here. Their rents rise because we don’t have enough housing for our own citizens let alone millions of interlopers. The Democrats opened our borders to all with no vetting and now complain when the worst among those who entered illegally are sent home. The age of mass migration is over. People have to stay home and fix their own country. A major reason Trump won was that he understood this reality.
Democrats believe that a man can become a woman (he can’t) and should be allowed to play women’s sports and enter women’s private spaces including, unbelievably, those where they are naked and vulnerable, and that children, many of whom would grow up to be gay, should be mutilated in pursuit of the impossible. The vast majority of Americans and especially working class men want to protect women and children.
Democrats continue to discriminate on the basis of race and sex today because in the past there was discrimination on the basis of race and sex. That’s unconstitutional and a violation of the Civil Rights Act the Democrats passed in 1964 and the working class knows it.
Democrats allow the homeless, largely drug addicted and/or mentally ill individuals to degrade the quality of life of productive citizens because no one will say no: "no, you can't camp anywhere you want", "no, you can't shoot up and leave your used needles lying around", "no, you can't shit in our streets", no, you can't panhandle aggressively". We did a huge disservice to the homeless themselves when we closed rather than reform our state mental health hospitals. We need them back to provide custodial care for those who can’t survive in today’s world unassisted.
They also need to admit that crime in big cities continues to be a major problem and to quit allowing Trump to take control of this issue. Make fighting criminals a major priority of the Democratic Party and especially Democratic mayors. Why are they always on their back foot on this issue? There is no political logic to being seen as soft on crime when most of the victims of crime are the very minorities that Democrats are supposed to champion. The single most important thing Democrats could do to save the lives of young black men would be to reinstitute the police policy of “stop and frisk” in black neighborhoods to stop the carrying of illegal guns. This would stem the tide of murders of blacks that fill the nightly news in every major city in America. These kids would quickly get the message and quit carrying illegally. Young black men (15-34) are just 2% of the population and yet commit about half of the nation’s homicides. A rate an astounding 50 times higher than the average American. They are also the primary victims of these murders. We need to save their lives in spite of all the ACLU bullshit niceties.
It’s simply incredible to me that the Trump administration led by someone who I have no respect for is actually taking meaningful steps to address these problems while the Democrats either do nothing or actively resist needed change. Working class people understand that and unless things change will never again support the Democrats.
Somehow I think the Democratic Party leadership's response to this essay would be similar to Grand Tarkin Moff's, "Evacuate? In our moment of greatest triumph? I think you overestimate their chances."
My dad was the president of the Oakland (California) teachers union local and a member of the Alameda-Contra Costa Central Labor Council. Back then, the CLC's annual Labor Day picnic was a must stop for Democratic politicians, including Presidential candidates in some Presidential election years.
He would not recognize today's Democratic Party. They don't just ignore working people, they hold them in contempt. One sentinel event was AOC putting the kibosh on Amazon's New York City headquarters project. It's really easy for an elite class member to say, "If they're not union jobs, we don't want them," but a friend of the working class would say, "Let's get the jobs first and then work on organizing the workplace." For AOC and the elite class leaders of the new Democratic Party, having no jobs is better than having non-union jobs, but for working class people, putting food on the table and staying off the unemployment rolls is better than holding out for union jobs that never materialized.
This is only going to get worse with the deeper infiltration of the DSA into the Democratic Party. If the party leadership can't draw a line to keep DSA values from embedding themselves in the heart of the party, there's no chance that the party will ever see the need to look at the working class's point of view; the elites who soon will completely control the party believe they know better than working class people what working class people need and should have, because after all, working class people are trapped in false class consciousness.
I find it funny that you had to do this long analysis of the Democrat’s problem with working class voters. It’s all common sense. I suppose the Dems can find candidates who claim to espouse these more conservative values, but we all know that, if elected, they will swerve to the left. The working class is not stupid, so don’t treat us like we are.
Look, I don't disagree with any of this. But the hour is way later than you know, this ship has sailed years ago. Go read Thomas Franks' Listen, Liberal (2016).
"For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin." -Chuck Schumer, 2016
Thanks to Pelosi's legacy, the Dems are just as hopelessly collaborators and servants to big money donors as the Republicans. The difference between the Pritzker and Trump families is more aesthetic than anything.
Hell, I remember very well being castigated as a "Bernie Bro" and basically slapped around by everyone in that dammed party for years and multiple rigged primaries before I left. NONE of the internal reforms or pivots to rebuild working class legitimacy has occurred. If anything, the party structurally has gotten even more deranged, rigged, and elitist. The Kamala campaign was the most elite-based campaign I've ever witnessed, entirely a firehose of corporate money sprayed across celebrity endorsements.
If the Dems gain any ground, it's because the Repubs eff up so massively the Dems can eat up the scraps for a cycle. But there is no appetite or desire in the party to do any of this stuff outside of performative aesthetics. Their long term outlook is grim.
Spot on concur Norris.
Dem priorities are fascinating. Thank you. The Dem college educated supposed concern with authoritarianism is very likely to disappear with Trump. When Biden purposefully dissolved the Southern Border and sought to end US fossil fuels, all while regulating everything from cars to water puddles, cooktops, school discipline and everything in between, the Left was not worried about a Strongman takeover. They cheered it.
The US already provides the LGBTQ community with equal rights, found only in the West and a sliver of the rest of the world. In many nations the college educated cheer, if being Gay does not invoke execution or prison, the community enjoys no protection from fellow citizens far more hostile to the LGBTQ community, than Americans have ever been. Lip service legal protections are of little use where gang raping Gay people "straight" is culturally acceptable.
Taxing the Rich? The most significant difference between the Scandinavian and US tax code is nearly everyone in Scandinavia pays high income taxes, while a significant portion of Americans pay no income taxes at all. Anyone really concerned with gun violence would insist on long, mandatory gun enhancements in sentencing, often ignored in Blue cities and states.
Finally, oil and gas production has soared so much under Trump, the eventual end of the Iran War is likely to decrease oil prices and then inflation, quickly and dramatically. Trump's impending perpetual Impeachment and then retirement, will take even more air out of the Dem agenda. Perhaps what the Dem college educated really require are heavily stamped passports, and then new priorities, because while Reps have a bevy of issues likely cost them the House and Senate in Nov, most Rep problems have a fast approaching expiration date.
Gay guy here. There is no "LGBTQ" community. That's a piece of trans and queer activist political fiction to make the radical appear mainstream. In my opinion, gays have no natural common interests with transsexuals and queers.
This is very simple. Democrats care more about illegal aliens than they do about American citizens. The will admit that openly. (And have). They also care more about the criminals than the victims. (*See Hamas, Tyler Robinson, Luigi Mangione, Linsay Clancy, etc.).
The US Constitution tells the American government to treat every person, citizen or not, as equal, and that is what Democrats are doing. It wasn't until the Ku Klux Klan came around and gained power through fear, intimidation, and violence that the US began to destroy our core values and replace them with their bigoted ones. I would think any working-class American patriot loyal to their country and community would embrace the party that reinvigorates support these neglected American values.
Why is embracing Americanism so upsetting to you?
The Ku Klux Klan was founded by the Democrats. (Democrat Nathan Bedford Forrest being the principle founder). It was the militia of the Democratic party to terrorize free blacks and the Republicans who freed them.
You have to be incredibly dense to use this as an argument today when any good Patriotic working-class American knows the values of the Republican Party and Democratic Party switched in the 1960s.
That is why today the GOP's slogan is Make America Great Again, which was used by the Second Ku Klux Klan as an excuse for their anti-American bigotry. If you want more evidence that the Democrats are the honest heirs to Lincoln, ahead of his election, college students formed Wide Awake groups on campus to raise awareness about slavery, and modern democrats are called woke.
It is nice that history proves you wrong and that the Democrats actually uphold our American values.
Utter twaddle.
Once upon a time, every student of history – and that meant pretty much everyone with a high school education – knew this:
The Democratic Party was the party of slavery and Jim Crow, and the Republican Party was the party of emancipation and racial integration.
Democrats were the Confederacy; and Republicans were the Union.
Jim Crow Democrats were dominant in the South; and socially tolerant Republicans were dominant in the North.
But then, in the 1960s and 70s, everything supposedly flipped: suddenly the Republicans became the racists and the Democrats became the champions of civil rights.
Fabricated by left-leaning academic elites and journalists, the story went like this:
Republicans couldn't win a national election by appealing to the better nature of the country;
they could only win by appealing to the worst.
Attributed to Richard Nixon, the media's all-purpose bad guy, this came to be known as "The Southern Strategy."
It was very simple.
Win elections by winning the South.
And to win the South, appeal to racists.
So, the Republicans, the party of Lincoln, were to now be labeled the party of rednecks.
But this story of the two parties switching identities is a myth.
In fact, it's three myths wrapped into one false narrative.
Let's take a brief look at each myth in turn.
Myth Number One:
In order to be competitive in the South, Republicans started to pander to white racists in the 1960s.
Fact: Republicans actually became competitive in the South as early as 1928, when Republican Herbert Hoover won over 47 percent of the South's popular vote against Democrat Al Smith.
In 1952, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower won the southern states of Tennessee, Florida and Virginia.
And in 1956, he picked up Louisiana, Kentucky and West Virginia, too.
And that was after he supported the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that desegregated public schools; and after he sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock
Central High School to enforce integration.
Myth Number Two:
Southern Democrats, angry with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, switched parties.
Fact: Of the 21 Democratic senators who opposed the Civil Rights Act, just one became a Republican.
The other 20 continued to be elected as Democrats, or were replaced by other Democrats.
On average, those 20 seats didn't go Republican for another two-and-a-half decades.
Myth Number Three:
Since the implementation of the Southern Strategy, the Republicans have dominated the South.
Fact: Richard Nixon, the man who is often credited with creating the Southern Strategy, lost the Deep South in 1968.
In contrast, Democrat Jimmy Carter nearly swept the region in 1976 - 12 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
And in 1992, over 28 years later, Democrat Bill Clinton won Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia.
The truth is, Republicans didn't hold a majority of southern congressional seats until 1994,
30 years after the Civil Rights Act.
As Kevin Williamson writes at the National Review: "If southern rednecks ditched the Democrats because of a civil-rights law passed in 1964, it is strange that they waited until the late 1980s and early 1990s to do so.
They say things move slower in the south -- but not that slow."
So, what really happened?
Why does the South now vote overwhelmingly Republican?
Because the South itself has changed.
Its values have changed.
The racism that once defined it, doesn't anymore.
Its values today are conservative ones: pro-life, pro-gun, and pro-small government.
And here's the proof:
Southern whites are far more likely to vote for a black conservative, like Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, than a white liberal.
In short, history has moved on.
Like other regions of the country, the South votes values, not skin color.
The myth of the Southern Strategy is just the Democrats excuse for losing the South.
And yet another way to smear Republicans with the label "racist".
Complete bunk.
> It is nice that history proves you wrong and that the Democrats actually uphold our American values.
You don't actually know history. Leftism is predicated on the explicit rejection of Enlightenment values. That goes back to Rousseau who rejected Enlightenment principles like individual rights and reason in favor of group-based rights (the general will) and emotion. Ben Shapiro's tagline of "the facts don't care about your feelings" echoes this distinction.
In modern times both the Critical Theorists such as Marcuse and Postmodernists such as Foucault explicitly view Enlightenment ideals as an authoritarian mistake.
Sadly, the vast majority of staunch Democrats are useful idiots (Stalin's term, not mine) for easily duped liberals who don't know what leftists intend.
Thank you for sharing the Joy Reid talking points. Try some critical thinking in your future.
“The US Constitution tells the American government to treat every person, citizen or not, as equal, and that is what Democrats are doing. “
In what universe does the US Constitution grant the same rights to non-citizens of citizens? So non-citizens can vote in our elections? Can receive benefits meant for Americans? Non-citizens are human beings with human rights, of course but name me one human right that Donald Trump is denying them. Remember, free stuff is not a human right.
Up until the early 1920s as many as 40 states allowed non-citizens to vote in local and state elections, so long as they met residency requirements. The Founders believed that allowing non-citizens to vote would give them equity in the country and become Americans through the process of enfranchisement.
No taxation without representation to the core is what we should be, no?
If we cannot treat all people as equal, that is a failure, not the standard we should accept. George Washington wrote in a 1783 letter the people of all nations and all religions are welcomed here and "whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges."
George Washington and the Constitution, along with American history, prove that yes we can let non-citizens vote and it is our duty to treat them as equal.
Those seem like core, working-class American-loving values to me that Democrats are espousing. Don't you?
If you want to espouse open borders, you are free to do it. But there is nothing you can give the working class as good as cheap housing and high-paying jobs. All you will do is drive the working class - black and white - away from the Democrats.
In the past, we didn't have leftist zoning regulations. So housing was cheap to build. We could let in millions of immigrants without driving up housing prices.
In the past, we didn't have a welfare state. So parties couldn't gain power by taking in immigrants and giving them goodies. That's the key differences between Texas and California. California has turned into something resembling a sci-fi dystopia or an Arab nation. Except that it consists of fabulously wealthy white liberals and teeming masses of brown-skinned poor people.
By contrast, Texas is a true multiracial middle class state. As long as they can cling to that identity - and it's highly in doubt - they'll avoid California's fate.
The US Constitution treats citizens and non-citizens very differently. Non-citizens are not allowed to vote for Federal offices and have no official say in US policy.
Furthermore, your understanding of the Ku Klux Klan is sorely lacking and ahistorical.
Non-citizens might not be allowed to vote federally but they were allowed to vote in state elections through the 1920s until the Christian KKK pushed its anti-American laws to subvert our liberty.
And what’s lacking in my understanding of the KKK? They were weak whiney white Christian men who hated our values and could not compete with harder working immigrants so they whined to the government to help. It’s pathetic.
> The US Constitution tells the American government to treat every person, citizen or not, as equal, and that is what Democrats are doing.
No so fast.
- abortion requires dividing human beings up into those who have rights and those who do not
- (trans)gender ideology tells women they lose their right to single sex spaces
- surrogacy tells women that their own wombs and bodies are commodities for rich men
- Islam oppresses women in so many ways and yet Democrats defend Islam and call Republicans who critics racists
It was Republican RG Ingersoll who spoke 140 years ago about the importance of a woman's right to choose, and how the Christian Holy Bible's barbaric definitions limit their true liberty. There are many GOP state representatives using that foreign and barbaric book to justify lowering the age of consent and forcing children to give birth to their rapists' baby. Christianity and Islam are two sides of the same coin, and the GOP embraces one that is far more harmful to Americans today than Islam.
Those should be decisions between people and their creator, as the Founders intended, no?
At least Islam allows a woman the right to choose, and as George Washington wrote, the people of all nations and all religions are welcomed here, and he even cited Islam.
Bodily autonomy is a First Amendment issue, and to deny an abortion, trans ideology, or surrogacy is fundamentally anti-American. There is no definition of man or woman in the Constitution for a reason and if we are going to pick any gender ideology to segregate Americans, why not an ideology that identifies three genders, like Greek? Or four?
Should we DNA test everyone to categorize them, too? Should we force every business to build two bathrooms? Two lunch counters? Two entrances? Is that small government the GOP loves?
And just like no one has any right to single-race spaces for safety or opportunity, no one should have any rights to single-sex spaces, unless you believe women are inferior, then I can understand. The fact we built this DEI into our society based on foreign ideologies is disgusting--we are all equal.
Thomas Jefferson wrote that civil liberties do not depend on religion nor science, making abortion, transgender ideology, surrogacy, and accepting Islam pretty on brand for the Democrats today. At least some Americans still uphold our secular values instead of foreign ones.
> It was Republican RG Ingersoll who spoke 140 years ago about the importance of a woman's right to choose, and how the Christian Holy Bible's barbaric definitions limit their true liberty.
And the Christian John Locke invented the concept of natural rights 340 years ago - 200 years before your guy. Leftism rejected natural rights in favor of the Reign of Terror, the gulags and eugenics.
> no one should have any rights to single-sex spaces
You are far more honest than most leftists about taking rights away from women.
Here is how we see things....a psychological perspective.
Study Maslow's Need Hierarchy.
1. Biological needs get met
2. Safety and Security
3. Love and Belongingness
4. Esteem Needs......self respect and appreciation
5. Self-Actualization: finding true fulfillment in life
Progressives live lives of comfort and security. For example, progressives live in low crime areas, so they can afford to defund police and will still be safe.
Democrats used to focus on the first two-three needs. Now they focus on the 4th and 5th.
They don't realize how much coming from a background of privilege colors their views of the world.
Trump: He went after 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. (in terms of #4, he told working class Americans that they are IMPORTANT! Progressives tell them they are stupid and lazy.
A good example is of Progressives' views on "Defending Democracy." That view is really in Need 4 or 5 for them. Meanwhile, who are the real people defending democracy? It's our soldiers and police. People on the right are far over represented in those professions. Giving their lives to defend democracy instead of marching in a parade.
Progressives will never win over working class folks (who, by the way, are our people)
Thanks for this thorough-going analysis. I would be interested in your views of which candidates right now seem to be doing a good job of meeting the moment in the ways your analysis describes. Rob Sand is one, I would gather. I’d also be interested in your views of Sherrod Brown’s and Jon Ossoff’s approaches.
This summary observation I thought particularly helpful: “Second (and relatedly), most voters are not down-the-line partisans, and many are desperate for candidates who are either moderate or who espouse a desire to be problem-solvers and embrace bipartisanship.” Not the moderate part, as I never know what that actually means, but the problem-solver part. I don’t know whether you may have seen Jonah Wheeler’s recent campaign ad, but I thought he did a good job on that score.
PS: Thank you, too, for giving the definition you are using for “working class.” Very helpful to have that spelled out.
Thank you, Susan! Re: the candidates I think are doing a good job right now, yes, Rob Sand has been pretty impressive so far. Jamie Ager in NC and Bobby Pulido in TX are solid as well (both running for the House), and Amy Acton has been pretty good in the Ohio governor race. Though it’s worth noting that all of them are running in red-leaning territory and pretty much have to do these things to stand a chance of winning. (Not a knock on them or anything, just a note about the reality of their situations.)
I think Ossoff is pretty impressive. He leans a little more into the “divide-and-conquer” rhetoric—there’s nothing wrong with that, per se, but the reports show that tends to be less effective. I think he can also do this because GA is very much a blue-leaning state this cycle. As for Sherrod Brown, he’s proven he can win Ohio in the recent past. I haven’t really seen how he’s approached social issues, but it’s definitely harder to claim he’s an elitist than it is for many other Dems. He’s known for having had an eye out for workers when he was in Congress.
Also, I had not seen Wheeler’s ad. I think that guy is fighting a lot of lonely fights, but kudos to him for trying to work across the aisle where it makes sense.
Sherrod Brown doesn't mention a single non-economic issue on his website other than congressional stock trading. This is the way. Dan Osborn is another good example though he has a steeper hill to climb in super-red Nebraska. Also noteworthy: Brian Poindexter, Bob Brooks, Rebecca Cooke. Troy Jackson will make an interesting case study b/c he's authentically working class (logger) and is an economic populist but also talks a fair bit about divisive and less salient issues (Gaza, abolish ICE, abortion).
To your point about Jackson: it'll be very interesting to see how Dems running in places with large numbers of both right-leaning working-class voters and downwardly mobile progressives navigate that landscape. Seems like those two groups are moving further and further apart in numerous ways, even as the latter often believes it is speaking on behalf of the former. (You don't necessarily see this in places like Iowa or Ohio, but Maine appears to have a larger contingent of the DMPs than I realized, even as it still has plenty of normie working-class people too.)
This is a great discussion! Love the acronym DMP. NYC appears to be full of them.
Osborn probably lost his election over the past month by saying things he shouldn't have. It's possible to stumble, but he doubled down.
Are you referring to the leaked comments about the border wall or something else? He's still holding pretty steady in polling...behind but within reach.
Dan Osborn is a phony independent who raises $ through Act Blue and has Soros fundraisers. The Nebraska Democrat party cleared the field for him and has endorsed him. He was recently caught on hot mic spewing a profanity filled rant disparaging rural people and admitting to being a Spanberger.
Yes, this is what I struck me about Brown, too. Also, as Michael has noted, he’s been consistent in his pro-worker values over an extended period of time. I don’t know whether this is accurate—you and Michael would know more—but it appears to me that the D Party fringe issues undertow hurt him by association last time around. Knocking wood he’ll escape that this year.
BTW, I would be interested in yours and Michael’s views of Pat Ryan (currently the MoC for NY-18). I have watched him over time, since my days working politically in the Hudson Valley in the run-up to 2018. While I don’t follow him as closely as when I lived there, from reports I receive from friends who still live there, it appears that, after a misstep in his first run for Congress, he has stayed close to the ground and worked hard on addressing constituent needs. In that way, particularly, he seems on a track similar to Rob Sand.
Do Ohio voters really want a life-time, career politician?
Really helpful and insightful, thank you! BTW, if you want to see Wheeler’s ad, here it is: https://substack.com/@susanscheid/note/c-343154477?r=16541&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
I like what Wheeler is saying. Unfortunately, his delivery is stilted and that organ background music has gotta go.
I understand where you are coming from. I give him a lot of leeway, as he is 23 and still finding his way.
Superb analysis backed by great data, glad I subscribed! I’ll be sharing this broadly.
Thanks for the article Michael. I've bookmarked and will come back to look too long at the linked studies. I'm a wonk and love polling.
I'd have to assume Dem operatives are also reading this, and adopting some of the framing and positions for their candidates, and that's a good thing.
A couple speed bumps are their candidates need to come to believe the policies they purport to support in order to be effective, people can tell when a position is stated but not felt. Remember how much the Republicans were livid, spitting mad, about Trump in 16? That is the type of anger any candidate looking for a middle ground or heavens to betsy adopt some of the better Republican positions.
Staffers, volunteers, primary voters, interns, large donors, heck even small donors, are all fairly extreme. Until the party changes I don't think we can convince candidates to moderate.
You make a persuasive case for a different message. But what changes inside the party when the proposed working-class agenda conflicts with the interests or moral priorities of its most powerful college-educated donors, staff, advocacy groups, and local professional constituencies? If working-class voters do not gain real influence over candidate selection and policy, why should they believe the new rhetoric is anything more than a more culturally fluent sales pitch?
If you think the Democrats are insufferable now, wait until they win the house and senate, including Talarico winning in Texas, and then get the presidency in 2028.
The House? Likely... The Senate? Dubious.
I'd of agreed with you a few weeks ago, and it's a long way until the election, but I'd give Rs a better than even chance of the senate now. I'm not even sure which party I wish to win.
That was my take before Iran, but people hate high gas prices. Prediction markets give the Democrats a 61% chance of taking the Senate.
Instead of Libs having an epiphany about their attitudes, the author suggests they learn to lie better.
Good luck, the Democratic party has a lot of work to do. This train started leaving the station in the late 1960's even. And just keeps getting worse. Universities started the strong liberal woke indoctrinations back then and it really got bad with Obama. The Clinton/ Obama machine was terrible for the country.
Start fixing this in the universities or really get the universities back to what they should be, beckons of hope and ethical moral centers of learning. Now they are just network groups and resume builders for a job (and social causes platforms, Example: learn how to organize a sit in or riot??? What?). They used to be so much more and more important than just the buck $.
The university = The "New Religion" (religion of nihilism)
Like other commentators I don't disagree with these arguments, but don't find the DNC or party leadership changing so many positions believable either.
For me gun rights are critical: I live in a rural community and it could take awhile for police to arrive even in an emergency. I believe we need to uphold our constitution, including parts we may personally disagree with, so inventing unmentioned rights, like abortion, while restricting clearly mentioned rights like "the right to bear arms shall not be abridged" grates on me.
I'm not as sold on the contention moderation necessarily means crossing the aisle or compromising either however. Most of the Democratic "moderates" like Manchin were hopelessly corrupted by coal or other big polluting industries, or in bed with financial elites, as when Sinema, another former so-called "moderate," insisted on preserving tax loopholes for hedge fund managers. We need more of these moderates like we need a hole in the head.
The rest of this good advice, much as I agree with it, I don't expect the Democratic Party leadership to adopt: the party still supports do nothing elders like the 85 year old Clyburn, for no other reason than race. That won't change any time soon, even though many working class minorities (and the rest of us) would like it to happen.
College educated liberals are whacked in the eyes of the rest of the electorate; heck, I'm college educated and liberal and I find stuff like "Latinx" ridiculous.
What do you think actual hardworking Latinas want, an increase in the minimum wage, which the Biden administration didn't bother prioritizing (or getting done at all) or made up a gender neutral noun to use?
It's even more insulting to those of us who do speak Spanish because modern Castillano actually already has such a term, employing "e" as in "Latine" instead of the masculine "o" ending or the feminine "a."
Frankly the best result would be to demolish the whole party and its leadership and current adherents, and offer a new party, akin to the disappearance of the Whigs and the rise of the GOP in the mid-1800s. That's not likely to happen either though, so we'll muddle through as best we can with two hopelessly compromised political parties.
I think the advice in this essay sound, and unfortunately unlikely to be adopted. Sad, but true.
Good column and data. However, I think the fundamental challenge is that to appeal to working class voters, Dem candidates will need to stake out positions that alienate a good portion of their left leaning primary voters - who will subsequently not move them forward to the general.
I think this is an excellent collection of proposals and data to back them up. It's exactly the sort of thing I hope to see on the blog. I have other comments, but first I want to stress a single point alone:
If the goal of this blog is to persuade Democratic Party activists and their supporters to consider seriously the arguments presented here and change their strategies, the for Pete's sake please ditch the passive-aggressive phrasing: "Brahmin left." It is condescending and it implies that progressive activists are uniformly "nepo babies" asserting the privileged authority of their caste.
So much of the advice here is about persuasion through showing respect and looking for compromise, yet the authors of this blog undermine everything the blog tries to accomplish by writing as snarky opponent rather than as collegial representatives of a branch of the Democratic coalition, reaching out to persuade other branches. If you are serious in your devotion to contributing to the Democrats realigning their strategy while broadening their base, please leave behind expressions of resentment and disrespect of coalition partners who have a history of treating traditional liberals in that way. Their mistakes have created high barriers for Democratic success (both electoral and substantive); please don't adopt a version of the same mistakes.
Thanks for the feedback, Bob. I’ve always viewed “Brahmin left” as more of a descriptor for a population that shares a series of traits rather than a pejorative, though it’s obviously a group we often have serious disagreements with so I can see your point. Will take into consideration.
I second Bob's comment and appreciate your response. One of the things I've always valued about your analysis and commentary in particular is that you generally stay away from what I'd call "loaded" language and let the facts speak for themselves. It's also great, and another thing I've always appreciated about you, the way you take on board comments like this, explain your thinking, and adjust as seems appropriate.
Much appreciated, Michael!
Would you prefer PMC? Brahmin fits better because it signifies not only education and employment, but also an insurmountable caste divide as in India.
If your goal is to persuade people to reconsider extremist positions and serve as productive members of a broad coalition, which I take to be one goal of this blog, why would you call them *any* snarky name, ban nock? Expressions of respect give you leverage as an ally; disrespect throws all leverage away. Call them progressives or the Progressive Left, as they sometimes refer to themselves.
(I have no idea why you think membership in progressive politics is obstructed by insurmountable barriers, comparable to caste. Progressive identitarianism certainly frames the world into groups, some of which concern immutable characteristics, but anyone who chooses to substantially adopt that worldview is welcome. And as for Brahmins being the caste of privilege by birth, I think you'd have a hard time arguing this has any relevance for leading figures like Bernie, The Squad, etc.)
OT but I explored some of the links in your profile. Interesting, thoughtful stuff like a lot of your comments and I understand better now where you are coming from. But where do you find the time?
I didn’t vote for Harris or Trump and have no regrets about that decision. Even as the Republican train goes off the rails driven by an increasingly insane engineer my former party the Democratic Party sinks even deeper. The Democrats lost in 2024 and will continue to lose in the future because of one reason. They have lost the support of the American working class. The historic Democratic icons FDR, and JFK would laugh at what passes for policy in their beloved party. Although they were upper class they understood that victory for their party depended on appealing to working class voters. Current party leaders distain the “deplorable” and “racist” members of the working class. Working class Americans hate the following four policies foisted on them by Democrats.
Working class people have had their wages depressed by illegal immigrants who will work for next to nothing just to be here. Their rents rise because we don’t have enough housing for our own citizens let alone millions of interlopers. The Democrats opened our borders to all with no vetting and now complain when the worst among those who entered illegally are sent home. The age of mass migration is over. People have to stay home and fix their own country. A major reason Trump won was that he understood this reality.
Democrats believe that a man can become a woman (he can’t) and should be allowed to play women’s sports and enter women’s private spaces including, unbelievably, those where they are naked and vulnerable, and that children, many of whom would grow up to be gay, should be mutilated in pursuit of the impossible. The vast majority of Americans and especially working class men want to protect women and children.
Democrats continue to discriminate on the basis of race and sex today because in the past there was discrimination on the basis of race and sex. That’s unconstitutional and a violation of the Civil Rights Act the Democrats passed in 1964 and the working class knows it.
Democrats allow the homeless, largely drug addicted and/or mentally ill individuals to degrade the quality of life of productive citizens because no one will say no: "no, you can't camp anywhere you want", "no, you can't shoot up and leave your used needles lying around", "no, you can't shit in our streets", no, you can't panhandle aggressively". We did a huge disservice to the homeless themselves when we closed rather than reform our state mental health hospitals. We need them back to provide custodial care for those who can’t survive in today’s world unassisted.
They also need to admit that crime in big cities continues to be a major problem and to quit allowing Trump to take control of this issue. Make fighting criminals a major priority of the Democratic Party and especially Democratic mayors. Why are they always on their back foot on this issue? There is no political logic to being seen as soft on crime when most of the victims of crime are the very minorities that Democrats are supposed to champion. The single most important thing Democrats could do to save the lives of young black men would be to reinstitute the police policy of “stop and frisk” in black neighborhoods to stop the carrying of illegal guns. This would stem the tide of murders of blacks that fill the nightly news in every major city in America. These kids would quickly get the message and quit carrying illegally. Young black men (15-34) are just 2% of the population and yet commit about half of the nation’s homicides. A rate an astounding 50 times higher than the average American. They are also the primary victims of these murders. We need to save their lives in spite of all the ACLU bullshit niceties.
It’s simply incredible to me that the Trump administration led by someone who I have no respect for is actually taking meaningful steps to address these problems while the Democrats either do nothing or actively resist needed change. Working class people understand that and unless things change will never again support the Democrats.
Somehow I think the Democratic Party leadership's response to this essay would be similar to Grand Tarkin Moff's, "Evacuate? In our moment of greatest triumph? I think you overestimate their chances."
My dad was the president of the Oakland (California) teachers union local and a member of the Alameda-Contra Costa Central Labor Council. Back then, the CLC's annual Labor Day picnic was a must stop for Democratic politicians, including Presidential candidates in some Presidential election years.
He would not recognize today's Democratic Party. They don't just ignore working people, they hold them in contempt. One sentinel event was AOC putting the kibosh on Amazon's New York City headquarters project. It's really easy for an elite class member to say, "If they're not union jobs, we don't want them," but a friend of the working class would say, "Let's get the jobs first and then work on organizing the workplace." For AOC and the elite class leaders of the new Democratic Party, having no jobs is better than having non-union jobs, but for working class people, putting food on the table and staying off the unemployment rolls is better than holding out for union jobs that never materialized.
This is only going to get worse with the deeper infiltration of the DSA into the Democratic Party. If the party leadership can't draw a line to keep DSA values from embedding themselves in the heart of the party, there's no chance that the party will ever see the need to look at the working class's point of view; the elites who soon will completely control the party believe they know better than working class people what working class people need and should have, because after all, working class people are trapped in false class consciousness.
I find it funny that you had to do this long analysis of the Democrat’s problem with working class voters. It’s all common sense. I suppose the Dems can find candidates who claim to espouse these more conservative values, but we all know that, if elected, they will swerve to the left. The working class is not stupid, so don’t treat us like we are.