“A new report commissioned by a labor-backed group is examining a problem many Democrats might rather ignore: the exodus of working-class voters from the party they used to call home,” Alex Seitz-Wald explains in “Democrats have been losing working-class voters. Here’s one playbook to win them back” at nbcnews.com. “Republicans under former President Donald Trump have been making inroads in the working class, including among Black and Hispanic voters, while Democrats have been gaining suburban moderates and highly educated professionals that used to vote Republican,” Alex Seitz-Wald explains in “Democrats have been losing working-class voters. Here’s one playbook to win them back” ate nbcnews.com. “Some voices on the left have downplayed the significance or even denied the loss of working class voters, but the data is increasinglyclear and signs of realignment are everywhere….“I’ve watched as MAGA flags have encroached into my community, which used to be a solid deep-blue working-class suburb of New York made of ethnic whites and people of color,” said Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party, a labor-backed group that aims to organize a multiracial working-class coalition. “Republicans are making inroads into the working class, and it’s not just white working class people.”….A nonprofit offshoot of Working Families embarked on an extensive research project last year to try to take an honest accounting of Democrats’ problems with working-class voters and find effective messages for the Democratic presidential campaign and others. The group shared its findings exclusively with NBC News….“We take the right wing and Republican Party seriously when they say they want to be the party of the working class,” Mitchell said. “And as much as Democrats are interested in organizing working-class people, and we don’t deny their sincerity, we wanted to start with a grounded place that provides the most accurate picture.”….The effort started with an attempt to better understand the working class of the 21st century by creating a more nuanced definition of the demographic and breaking it down into seven values-based typologies.

“Those categories,” Seitz-Wald continues, “were based on a battery of 40 questions put to more than 5,000 participants in surveys conducted with HIT Strategies, a Democratic research firm….The conclusions, laid out in a 60-page research report and accompanying 23-page political handbook, was shared for the first time this week in a virtual meeting with 160 representatives of left-leaning organizations and labor unions….The result is a novel approach to analyze the working class, which the report says represents about 63% of the electorate….“The working class represents a gigantic share of the electorate. Yet ideological differences within the working class are almost never explored in any systematic way,” the report states….The report sorted people into seven subtypes, each of roughly equal size, arranged on the ideological spectrum from “Next Gen Left” to “Core MAGA,” but the research is especially interested in the four groups in the middle that it says are “cross-pressured,” with values that are best represented in both parties….Those groups include “Tuned Out Persuadables,” “Anti Woke Traditionalists,” “Diverse Disaffected Conservatives” and “Secure Suburbans.”….The cohorts may look different demographically, but more importantly, they’re sorted by their feelings about economic, social and cultural issues. The key to reaching these cross-pressured sections of the working class, according to the report, is differentdepending on what messages resonate with each subgroup….For instance, the research found that populist economic messages about taking on corporations and “big money” in politics are generally popular across the working class, while less effective messages included focusing on the Biden-Harris administration’s work on climate and infrastructure or on Harris’ potential to make history as the first woman president….If nothing else, Mitchell hopes the research will push Democrats to take seriously the erosion with working class voters and to move beyond one-size-fits all stereotypes when thinking about how to talk to working-class voters.”

In “Harris can end the Trump-Vance culture wars. Here’s how,’ Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. writes: “Now that she has routed Donald Trump on the debate stage, Vice President Kamala Harris needs to take the next step and reinforce her campaign’s most powerful theme: That it’s time to end the cultural and ideological warfare — much of it phony, some of it rooted in prejudice — that keeps our nation from solving its most important problems….Despite her standing as the incumbent vice president, Harris has transformed herself into the candidate who represents change by speaking to a reality most Americans sense in their bones. Although Trump has been out of office for nearly four years, his angry and pessimistic spirit still dominates the country’s public life. As long as Trump lurks, every controversy will be turned into a culture war, elections will be defined around who hates whom, and actual problems will be left to fester….Fighting over gender, ideology, sexual identity or religion won’t change that. What would make a difference is uniting behind practical steps to achieve a better balance between work and family life, between the economy and community needs….The fight over abortion will not go away, but opponents of abortion ought to be sympathetic to more help for women who bring children into the world….What’s clear is that Americans across our divides agree we need to do more to help parents and kids. During the debate, Harris rightly but briefly mentioned the child tax credit and helping young families afford a home. I wish she had talked more about her agenda on leave, child care, elder care and adequate pay for those who work in the care economy….Doing so in the coming weeks will be a clear answer to critics who say she’s short on policy. She’s not (especially compared with Trump), but more detail on these and other ideas to strengthen the country’s families can only help her with the voters she needs.”

At The Washington Monthly, Robert J. Shapiro argues that “even though it’s already Labor Day, there’s still time for her campaign to pay attention to a major issue that concerns millions of voters and offer them a response that would underscore her pledge to chart a more prosperous future for middle-class Americans, what she calls “an opportunity economy…..The big issue is the fading prospect of upward mobility for Americans without college degrees. One way to help people raise their incomes is by offering free retraining for higher-paying jobs….The fading prospects for upward mobility have made millions of Americans feel aggrieved and resentful. Donald Trump has used his own sense of personal grievance and resentment to channel their disappointment—to his benefit….The Harris-Walz campaign can turn the tables on this vital issue by giving average Americans a reason to feel optimistic about their futures. The campaign has promised to mandate paid family leave and sick leave, limit price hikes by large corporations in certain circumstances, reduce medical debt and subsidize first-time home buyers….That’s fine as far as it goes. But people still have to live on what they earn. In this economy, the way most people increase their incomes is to become more productive….While few of them have time or money to go to college now, the government could easily afford to give them free access to evening and weekend retraining courses at public community colleges as a pathway to revive their prospects for upward mobility….Community colleges today charge about $450 per course, so retraining would cost about $4,050 for a would-be plumber, $3,150 for those aspiring to be entry-level computer programmers, and $3,600 for a student electricians program. Using these three examples, the average retraining program would cost about $3,600. A new nationwide retraining program could waive those costs since the point is to restore upward mobility for millions who couldn’t afford to lay out $3,600, regardless of the potential benefits….Those costs would be de minimis for taxpayers. If we assume that 500,000 low earners would sign on each year for two-year programs of evening and weekend classes, the government could cover annual tuition costs for 1 million people each year for $2 billion annually. That’s equivalent to two-tenths of 1 percent of all non-defense discretionary federal spending….That’s a very small price to create a new path to upward mobility for millions of aggrieved Americans and get millions of those voters to take a new look at Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.”