Part of the problem for Democrats is that the Party’s current reputation pushes away some voters who might benefit from its agenda, a predicament that was underscored in another recent survey conducted by the Center for Working-Class Politics. It tested the level of support for a populist economic agenda among three thousand residents in four crucial swing states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Many of the proposals tested in the survey—barring companies that receive tax benefits from laying off workers, capping prescription-drug costs, eliminating taxes on Social Security income—drew strong support across the political spectrum. Strikingly, though, the level of enthusiasm varied dramatically depending on the messenger. When respondents were asked whether they would vote for a candidate who made various populist statements, such as “It’s just plain wrong that hardworking families are struggling to keep up while big corporations get massive tax breaks and then turn around and lay off American workers,” they were, on average, eight per cent more likely to say yes when the candidate was an Independent than when the candidate was a Democrat.
That margin is more than enough to swing an election in a state like Michigan, Wisconsin, or even Ohio, where, in 2024, the Democratic senator Sherrod Brown, a populist who has opposed unpopular free-trade deals and pushed to raise the minimum wage, lost to the Republican Bernie Moreno by three and a half points. (Brown is now attempting to unseat Senator Jon Husted, who was appointed to replace Vice-President J. D. Vance.) The authors of the survey call this the “Democratic penalty,” and they found that it was especially striking among working-class voters, Latinos, and residents of small towns and rural areas.
The perception that the Democratic Party is led by and caters to élites, which right-wing media outlets have relentlessly propagated in recent decades, and that it does not fight hard enough for boldly progressive ideas, which a growing number of their own members have come to feel, will not be easy to overcome. Among the Democrats who will be running for Congress on populist platforms this fall are Bob Brooks, a union member and retired firefighter vying to win a key swing district in Pennsylvania, and Chris Rabb, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, from Philadelphia. (Brooks and Rabb both won closely contested primary elections on Tuesday.) Compounding this challenge is the influence that big donors and establishment voices exert. When Kamala Harris ran against Trump, two years ago, she assembled a team of corporate advisers, which urged her to strike a moderate tone on issues such as price-gouging and the minimum wage. Harris promised to create an “opportunity economy,” an idea that may have pleased her donors on Wall Street and Silicon Valley but fell flat with struggling workers in places like Reading, where opportunity is scarce and the poverty rate is twenty-nine per cent.
Manuel Guzman told me that he is now worried Democrats could squander the opening created by Trump’s dwindling popularity by neglecting to focus on the issues that brought him to power. In Berks County, which includes Reading, one of these issues is the cost of rent, which will likely be exacerbated by the Trump Administration’s proposed cuts to rental-assistance and affordable-housing programs. “Let’s say we win back the House in November: Are we going to spend the next two years going through an impeachment process and not talk about everyday issues?” he asked. At the time of our conversation, which took place in early May, Guzman noted with dismay that the Democratic Party had still not released an autopsy it had promised to conduct examining the factors that led to Harris’s defeat. (On Thursday, the report was released; it barely touches on inflation.) If the growing disaffection with Trump does enable Democrats to sweep the midterms, Guzman believes that his party would be better served by learning some lessons from the President, about both what to do and what not to do. They should promise to make America affordable again, in other words, and, unlike Trump, deliver. ♦
Ref: https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/is-the-working-class-finally-turning-on-trump
