Most elected Democrats had abandoned a working class message by the 90s. Jimmy Carter seems like a socialist by today’s standards, but its important to remember that at the time, he was running on a pivot towards the center and an attempt to distance the party from the New Deal. Ted Kennedy’s primary challenge was a campaign to return to their New Deal principles. Mondale and Dukakis were both moving to center as well, as the party had convinced themselves that Regan’s success meant New Deal politics seemed fiscally irresponsible.
By the time Clinton was in power, the party was essentially a center-right party by their own historical standards. Clinton and the 1993 Congress passed legislation that actively hurt the middle class while helping the managerial and financial class. His deregulation of Wall Street was a gift to investors, while his work requirements for Welfare basically killed the program. Worst of all was NAFTA, which created the largest outsourcing of manufacturing jobs in American history.
Obama at least ran on a progressive platform (which should have proved to Democrats that centrism was not a winning strategy), but he governed like another moderate. He even attempted to pass another NAFTA like trade agreement, the TPP, and Trump successfully won over blue-collar workers by promising to kill that deal. Granted, he also won them over by blaming their economic woes on immigrants, and his opposition to the deal probably had more to do with his racist desire to undermine as many achievements of the first black President as he possibly could, but the TPP would have been another nail in the coffin of American manufacturing jobs.
Anyway, point is, aside from a few progressive hold-outs, the Democrats by-and-large pivoted away from their New Deal roots towards being technocratic centrists whose policies benefit investors and white-collar workers and often hurt the working class. Meanwhile, the Republicans, whose policies are even worse for the working class, are able to create the illusion of being on their side through scapegoating and dog whistles that appeal to blue-collar workers (particularly white blue-collar workers, although not exclusively).
Well, A) I didn’t say the Democrats had lost the working class. I said that their policies were not targeting the working class. Even this election, Kamala Harris’ stump speeches repeatedly focus on the middle class but make no mention of the working class.
And B) those overall numbers don’t factor in race or geography. The Democrats still do very strongly amongst black Americans because of the legacy of Civil Rights Act and the Republicans’ Southern Strategy, and they are much more likely to live below the poverty line, but the black population is also unevenly distributed throughout the south and in northern urban population centers. Because of the Senate’s structure and the Electoral College, winning white working class voters can be a successful path to power in the Midwest and most of the South, where blue-collar whites can deliver GOP victories. In fact, the Republicans have won white working class voters in 8 of the last 11 elections, and that support handed them the presidency in 6 of them.
That’s why the Republicans have the reputation of being for the working class, and the Democrats don’t. The Republicans are actively working to win working-class whites (and there’s some evidence that Trump is gaining ground with working class black and Latino men), while the Democrats are actively trying to win moderate white-collar voters and assuming their base of working class minority voters will turn out
Most elected Democrats had abandoned a working class message by the 90s. Jimmy Carter seems like a socialist by today’s standards, but its important to remember that at the time, he was running on a pivot towards the center and an attempt to distance the party from the New Deal. Ted Kennedy’s primary challenge was a campaign to return to their New Deal principles. Mondale and Dukakis were both moving to center as well, as the party had convinced themselves that Regan’s success meant New Deal politics seemed fiscally irresponsible.
By the time Clinton was in power, the party was essentially a center-right party by their own historical standards. Clinton and the 1993 Congress passed legislation that actively hurt the middle class while helping the managerial and financial class. His deregulation of Wall Street was a gift to investors, while his work requirements for Welfare basically killed the program. Worst of all was NAFTA, which created the largest outsourcing of manufacturing jobs in American history.
Obama at least ran on a progressive platform (which should have proved to Democrats that centrism was not a winning strategy), but he governed like another moderate. He even attempted to pass another NAFTA like trade agreement, the TPP, and Trump successfully won over blue-collar workers by promising to kill that deal. Granted, he also won them over by blaming their economic woes on immigrants, and his opposition to the deal probably had more to do with his racist desire to undermine as many achievements of the first black President as he possibly could, but the TPP would have been another nail in the coffin of American manufacturing jobs.
Anyway, point is, aside from a few progressive hold-outs, the Democrats by-and-large pivoted away from their New Deal roots towards being technocratic centrists whose policies benefit investors and white-collar workers and often hurt the working class. Meanwhile, the Republicans, whose policies are even worse for the working class, are able to create the illusion of being on their side through scapegoating and dog whistles that appeal to blue-collar workers (particularly white blue-collar workers, although not exclusively).
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Well, A) I didn’t say the Democrats had lost the working class. I said that their policies were not targeting the working class. Even this election, Kamala Harris’ stump speeches repeatedly focus on the middle class but make no mention of the working class.
And B) those overall numbers don’t factor in race or geography. The Democrats still do very strongly amongst black Americans because of the legacy of Civil Rights Act and the Republicans’ Southern Strategy, and they are much more likely to live below the poverty line, but the black population is also unevenly distributed throughout the south and in northern urban population centers. Because of the Senate’s structure and the Electoral College, winning white working class voters can be a successful path to power in the Midwest and most of the South, where blue-collar whites can deliver GOP victories. In fact, the Republicans have won white working class voters in 8 of the last 11 elections, and that support handed them the presidency in 6 of them.
That’s why the Republicans have the reputation of being for the working class, and the Democrats don’t. The Republicans are actively working to win working-class whites (and there’s some evidence that Trump is gaining ground with working class black and Latino men), while the Democrats are actively trying to win moderate white-collar voters and assuming their base of working class minority voters will turn out