In this stub of his article at Jacobin, Jared Abbott explains why “It’s Still Possible to Rebuild a Working-Class Majority“:
What is the best way to build working-class power when labor’s leverage over capital is near a historic low? With private-sector union density at just 5.9 percent, the structural weakness of the labor movement imposes severe limits on progressive political possibilities in the medium term. Rebuilding labor must be a central priority of any long-term strategy. But even the most innovative organizing efforts — alongside promising tactics like ballot initiatives or worker cooperatives — cannot, on their own, deliver a major shift in class power.
Such a breakthrough requires favorable political conditions and a large working-class base that sees the value of both unions and strong government programs to expand economic security. In other words, labor organizing cannot succeed at scale without a supportive legal and political environment — one created by majoritarian coalitions capable of enacting reforms, confronting corporate power, and proving to a skeptical working class that progressive governance delivers. That kind of transformation will take years, even decades. But in the short term, building political power for working people — especially in purple and red states — is essential.
To make this possible, progressives must prioritize an economic populist approach, led by credible — ideally working-class — candidates and anchored in durable local infrastructure, particularly in the regions where they have struggled most.
Why Progressives Must Rebuild Support Among the Working Class
Progressives cannot afford to ignore the political consequences of working-class dealignment from the Democratic Party. While the magnitude of this shift varies depending on how the working class is defined, the underlying trajectory is consistent and alarming. Class dealignment is real and increasingly multiracial, especially since the 2024 election when non-white men shifted decisively toward the Republican Party.
Working-class dealignment matters for several reasons. First, it makes it much harder for progressives to win national elections. The structure of the US political system — particularly the Electoral College and the Senate — gives disproportionate power to states with large working-class electorates. Without winning back significant numbers of these voters, progressives are unlikely to secure durable governing majorities. In 2020, working-class voters (defined as those without a four-year college degree) made up the majority of the electorate in all five key swing states — and working-class whites alone constituted outright majorities in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. According to my analysis of Cooperative Election Study data, Joe Biden’s gains among working-class voters in Arizona and Georgia from 2016 to 2020 were 2.3 and 8.5 times larger, respectively, than his overall margin of victory in those states. Similarly, American National Election Study (ANES) data show that 72 percent of battleground state voters who switched parties between 2016 and 2020 were noncollege graduates. Without holding or expanding their current share of the working-class vote, Democrats’ odds of winning national majorities remain slim.
But the stakes go beyond electoral math. As political commentator Andrew Levison has argued, ceding the traditional working class to Republicans deepens the far right’s hold over communities where progressive voices have already grown scarce. In red, working-class districts, the absence of credible progressive alternatives enables the spread of far-right narratives — not just at the ballot box, but through churches, schools, social media, and everyday conversation. Once progressive ideas disappear from the local political culture, it becomes significantly harder to reestablish them. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle of alienation and extremism that threatens the social fabric and increases the political cost of inaction.
Read more here.
