Democrats Learned to Love Class Dealignment – Jacobin/msn
“The neoliberal economic program embraced by the Clinton-era Democratic Party alienated many working-class voters. Democrats responded by reorienting their electoral strategy toward professional-class voters, accelerating workers’ departure from the party.”
Democratic Party leaders often say they have a messaging problem. It goes much deeper than that. When it comes to the working class they have a perception problem. While the party works to please higher-income voters and funders, it routinely tunes out lower-income people.
Leaders of both parties often do not notice working class people they encounter in their everyday lives. Among other functions, these people serve their coffee and food, clean their homes, mow their lawns, cut and color their hair, trim their nails, wash and repair their cars, service their AC, deliver mail and packages, roof and paint their houses, and take care of their kids. Most of these people work for low wages with scanty or no benefits. The political class they service in effect has excluded many from having health coverage or retirement savings. If they do have a job with health insurance, many do not have paid sick days. Going to the doctor means taking a pay cut.
The Democratic Party does perceive and fight for selected subgroups of the working class based on ethnic, gender, and other characteristics while purposefully excluding others. This serves to pit one group of working people against another (ex.: white men = privileged/bad; women, gay and black people = oppressed/good), which distracts from the job of representing working people as a whole. This is one reason Democrats have been losing voters to Republicans who do little for the working class in economic terms but appeal to many on cultural issues.
Working class people know the US political establishment does not represent them. They are expected to serve university-trained elites without treading on the cultural standards of those paying them — all the while staying in the background, politically invisible. Congress once defined slaves as 3/5 of a person, thereby giving plantation owners more of the electoral vote. Despite their value in deciding elections, the slaves remained property – powerless and invisible to the ruling establishment.
Working class voters have noticed a back drift toward the old days. As wealth and power grow at the top of the American pecking order and wages stagnate at the bottom, they have been shifting their votes, seeking political leaders who will represent them and fight for their interests. Perceiving the existence of these people is the first step the political class must take to represent them.
Below is a Democratic agenda CCSE developed for a senate candidate in 2020. If party leaders had fought harder on these issues, Democrats might be the party in power now:
Agenda: Increase economic inclusion, reduce inequality at reasonable public cost