[D66] Les voor D66: Analyse Amerikaanse verkiezingen

[Dr. Marc-Alexander Fluks]

Bron:   USA Today
Datum:  November 2024
Auteur: Jouy Garrison
URL:    
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/11/09/democrats-working-class-exodus-sets-off-reckoning-within-party/76117107007/


Democrats' working-class exodus sets off reckoning within party
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WASHINGTON — Demoralized Democrats are soul-searching and blaming each 
other after President-elect Donald Trump's resounding election victory 
exposed erosion among working-class support for Democrats that poses a 
potential long-term crisis for the party.

Democrats − who have long prided themselves as the party for the little 
guy − instead strengthened their emerging base of financially secure 
college graduates this election while a growing number of blue-collar 
voters embraced Trump and Republicans.

Especially alarming for Democrats this election: The exodus of 
working-class voters from the Democratic Party included not just white 
voters, but helped Trump make gains with Latino and Black men.

Reflecting a widening educational divide, voters with college degrees 
backed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris 55%-42% in this week's election 
while Trump won non-college-educated voters − who made up more than half 
the electorate − 56-42%, according to exit polls. Four years ago, Trump 
won 50% of voters without college degrees to President Joe Biden's 48%.

What's more, Trump won 50%-46% among voters whose income is less than 
$100,000, a staggering turnaround from Biden's 56%-43% advantage with 
this group in 2020. Meanwhile, Harris won voters who earn $100,000 or 
more 51%-46% over Trump, who in 2020 topped this more affluent group of 
voters 54%-42% over Biden.

The realignment crystalized a political reality that's tough for 
Democrats to swallow: With blue-collar voters flocking away from their 
party over multiple election cycles, Democrats' refashioned base is 
becoming more upper-class, urban/suburban and coastal. It's a narrowed 
coalition that does not bode well for future elections.

'It should be the top and only concern of every Democrat in Congress and 
around the country for the next two years and beyond,' U.S. Rep. Ro 
Khanna, D-Calif., told USA TODAY. 'It showed that the campaign was a 
failure. We have to prioritize the economic needs and hardships of most 
working-class families. We failed to make them seem heard and seen in 
their frustrations with the economic and political system.'

The shift of many working-class voters away from Democrats helped 
produce Republicans' first popular vote victory in 20 years. Trump 
gained ground from his 2020 performance in 49 states, while a New York 
Times analysis found Trump improved on his 2020 margin in at least 2,367 
counties and decreased in only 240 counties.

'We should spend six months just listening to communities,' said Khanna, 
who grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which narrowly flipped to 
Trump in this week's election. 'Just sit there and respect the voters. 
Listen and understand what they're saying.'

For the past three-plus years, the Biden administration tailored 
economic policy to blue-collar union workers including making historic 
investments in green-energy and microchip manufacturing and supporting 
tax relief for families with young children. Biden walked the 
picket-line with striking autoworkers. And Biden and Harris pushed tax 
hikes on the super rich and corporations and savings for the 
middle-class through measures to lower prescription drug costs.

But the Biden-Harris sweeping economic agenda − which includes projects 
that are a decade out − failed to connect with working-class Americans' 
immediate concerns about inflation and high consumer costs.

'Democrats have a fundamental problem on their economic brand, and I 
don't think it can be dealt with by just offering a couple popular 
proposals or even the best message or ad test,' said Celinda Lake, a 
Democratic pollster. 'I think we have to step back and really develop an 
economic narrative that communicates that we're in touch with people's 
lives and that offers real help for working class people.'

Lake said about 60% of voters don't believe Democrats have an economic 
plan, while those who do recognize a plan believe it favors 
college-goers. She pointed to Biden's efforts to forgive college student 
loan debt as an example. She said Americans have more clarity with 
Trump's brand of conservative populism: tax breaks, 'America first' 
policies like higher tariffs, and less federal regulation.

'Trump beat us with populist economics,' Lake said, adding that 
Democrats' struggles with the working class are years in the making. 
'It's not just one loss. This has been building, and I think this is a 
call to action to get an economic brand that includes working people.'

Harris spent much of her campaign warning about the dangers of a second 
Trump presidency. She called him increasingly 'unstable and unhinged' 
and out for revenge and power. Echoing Biden before he departed from the 
race in July, Harris attacked Trump as a threat to American democracy, 
convinced that the memories of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol 
would weigh on voters.

Yet such rhetoric resonated most with college-educated voters and 'never 
Trump' Republicans who already backed the Democratic nominee. And 
restoring abortion rights, another focus of Harris, took a backseat to 
many voters behind the high costs of their groceries.

David Axelrod, former longtime adviser for President Barack Obama, 
likened Democrats to 'missionaries' in their approach to 
non-college-educated voters − a message of 'we're here to help you 
become more like us.'

'There's a message of unspoken and unintended, I think, disdain that was 
felt,' Axelrod said in an interview on CNN. 'If you're talking about 
democracy over the kitchen table − and I care deeply about that issue − 
you probably don't have to worry about the food on your table, about the 
cost of it.'

It's not as if Harris ignored blue-collar voters on policy − far from 
it. On the campaign trail, Harris championed proposals to make housing 
more affordable for first-time buyers, capital available for Americans 
starting small businesses and extending the child tax credits. She 
called it an 'opportunity economy' for all Americans, regardless of 
income.

But while she labeled reducing consumer costs her top priority, Harris 
remained tethered to the unpopularity of Biden, who voters blamed 
overwhelmingly for high inflation, even as it dropped considerably from 
a year ago, and migration at the southern border.

Rather than regularly railing on the billionaire class, Harris 
campaigned on a 'pragmatic' approach to the economy. 'I'm a capitalist,' 
she told Americans in an appeal to independent and moderate Republicans.

The Atlantic, citing an unnamed Biden aide, said Harris backed away from 
a more aggressive economic populist message at the urging of her 
brother-in-law Tony West, chief legal officer of Uber, who held an 
influential role in Harris' inner circle. West pushed the shift as a way 
for Harris to win support within the business community, The Atlantic 
reported. By the end of the campaign, one of Harris' top surrogates was 
billionaire businessman Mark Cuban.

'It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has 
abandoned working class people would find that the working class has 
abandoned them,' U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said in a statement. 
'First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black 
workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, 
the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.'

Many progressive Democrats celebrated Sanders' blistering assessment, 
but some in the party's establishment pushed back, arguing Harris and 
Biden got behind many of the very policies Sanders has championed.

'This is straight up BS,' Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime 
Harrison said in a post on X, calling Biden 'the most-pro worker 
president of my lifetime' who saved union pensions, created millions of 
jobs and 'even marched in a picket line.'

He said Harris' various economic proposals would have 'fundamentally 
transformed the quality of life and closed the racial wealth gap for 
working people across this country.'

'There are a lot of post election takes and this one ain’t a good one,' 
Harrison said in his rebuke to Sanders' critique.

For all the Democratic infighting over economic messaging, others blame 
the party's left wing for exposure on divisive cultural issues such as 
support of transgender rights and the chaos on college campuses from 
Gaza war protests. Harris didn't campaign on these areas − but 
Republicans attacked her over them anyway.

'Republicans are masterful at weaponizing the words of the far left 
against the Democratic Party, and the losses among voters of color, 
particularly Latinos, is nothing short of a catastrophe for the party,' 
U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., said in an interview on MSNBC.

Arguably the Trump campaign's most powerful ad of the 2024 race − which 
it targeted to male voters watching football games − was an overt 
anti-trans spot featuring Black radio host Charlamagne tha God sounding 
off on Harris' support for taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries in 
prison. 'Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,' the ad 
claimed.

Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky, in a Substack column she penned on 
her party's 'messaging crisis,' said the rampant number of 
anti-transgender ads this election cycle was a 'a gross exploitation of 
a vulnerable community.' But she said the average person in Saginaw, 
Michigan doesn't think it's fair that their daughter has to compete in 
athletics with someone biologically stronger than her.

Roginsky also emphasized the lack of outrage from Democrats over 
pro-Palestinian protests this year that effectively shut down some 
colleges and universities.

'Democrats are no longer perceived as the party of common sense. In our 
quest not to offend anyone, we come across as totally out of line with 
how regular people think,' Roginsky said.

Torres pointed to the results in heavily Latino Starr County, Texas, a 
southern border community that Trump won with 58% of the vote − ending 
132 years Democratic vote support. Trump came within 6 percentage points 
of winning Democratic-stronghold New Jersey, he noted, and lost New York 
by only 12 points, slicing in half his 24-point 2020 defeat in New York.

'If that is not a wake-up call then I'm not sure what would be. And we 
ignore those wake-up calls at our own peril,' Torres said. 'We have to 
seriously reckon with the results of the election.'


Reach Joey Garrison on X, formerly Twitter, @joeygarrison.

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