From “The Death Of Class Consciousness In America—And How To Revive It” by Brian Beutler at Off Message: “…I don’t suspect Dems have unleashed the liberal equivalent of Paul Manafort or Roger Stone to deceive and manipulate the Republican electorate into abstaining or voting third party. Nor do I think they’ll try to judo flip Republicans with the SAVE Act. They’ll try to divide the GOP the old fashioned way, through normal campaign appeals and legislative tactics, and they’ll weigh in on GOP primaries in the hope of drawing unelectable opponents. But that’s about it…There are a bunch of reasons people don’t vote, and disaffection with policy is only one factor. Voting is needlessly hard in some places, and could be made easier for everybody. Presidential election votes don’t really count for much outside of a handful of swing states. Our political institutions are sclerotic, so voting doesn’t strike many people as a good way to solve big problems quickly…Even if we corrected all those systemic defects, and Democrats swung into action to enact a sweeping egalitarian policy agenda—and it had the intended effect of awakening the nonvoting electorate—well, Republicans would probably adjust. Maybe they’d be content with permanent irrelevance like the California Republican Party. But my suspicion is that they’d move left on some issues and experiment with new ways to appeal to voters on other issues. And, thus, over time, class solidarity would weaken…Part of the standard error in progressive thinking is the idea that class consciousness exists in latent form throughout society already, perhaps particularly among non-voters, such that if Democrats promised and delivered them more robust safety nets and worker power, they’d become regular Democratic voters for life, and put national elections out of reach for the GOP…We are a less solidary society than we ought to be, and should of course encourage efforts, in and outside of politics, to build bonds across class. But if workers won’t vote in solidarity with members of their economic station and won’t prioritize their personal economic wellbeing, then politics becomes a pure contest of reason against might. Morally upright ideologies, bare-knuckling it against lies and conspiracy theories and threats of violence and tribal claims to dominance.” More here.

An excerpt from “The Democrats’ Blue-Collar Brigade” by Julia Terruso at Time magazine: “If 2018 was the Democrats’ year of the woman, 2026 may be the year of the tatted-up tough guy. Oyster fisherman Graham Platner is running for Senate in Maine. Dan Osborn, an industrial mechanic, is running for Senate as an independent in Nebraska, while former Secret Service agent Logan Forsythe talks about growing up in poverty as he campaigns for the Democrats’ Senate nomination in Kentucky. Before recently dropping out, military veteran Nathan Sage was running for Senate in Iowa as a “tattooed, hairy, fat guy who says it how it is.” It’s not just men, either.Kaela Berg, a single mom and flight attendant, is currently running for congress in Minnesota. JoAnna Mendoza, a retired US Marine who grew up on a farm, is running for an Arizona House district…After years of hemorrhaging working-class voters to Trump—while bumping up against the ceiling of their share of college-educated suburbanites—Democrats are trying to compete harder for voters who feel culturally alienated and economically squeezed. “The Democratic Party is at its best when it’s fighting for working-class people against the powerful,” says Tommy McDonald, an ad maker with the FIGHT Agency, who is working with Brooks and Osborn and previously cut ads for John Fetterman’s Senate campaign. “This year we have a chance to run actual candidates who experience the impact of the policies made in D.C., who can speak to the lives of the people they are trying to represent and the challenges they’ve faced.”

“Tomorrow night, President Trump will stand before Congress and deliver the State of the Union,” Matt Hildreth writes in “Speeches Don’t Pay the Bills: The Real State of Rural America: Ahead of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union, rural families are confronting rising housing costs, job losses, increasing farm debt, and climbing energy bills” at RuralOrganizing. “He’ll brag about his “accomplishments,” but the reality is a legacy of soaring costs, chaos, and corruption. That’s the real state of rural America: Skyrocketing expenses for families while incomes aren’t keeping pace…Housing is the clearest example. Rural home prices are up 61% since before the pandemic, compared to 49% in suburban areas and 46% in urban areas. Meanwhile, rural household income has grown just 33%, the slowest growth anywhere. The income needed to afford a home in rural America has jumped nearly 106% since 2019. In short, rural America is facing the steepest housing cost increases while their income has grown the least…That’s not politics. That’s reality. That’s a young family realizing they can’t afford to live in their hometown. It’s a paycheck that no longer covers the mortgage…President Trump and the MAGA Republicans in Congress promised that manufacturing would come roaring back, but manufacturing jobs have been tankingsince Trump announced his tariffs in April, with more than 77,000 jobs lost. That’s eight straight months of losses — the kind of trend economists usually associate with recessions. In 2025, in fact, many rural counties saw no job growth at all…Manufacturers themselves are pointing to tariff instability and rising input costs. And all the while, orders are being canceled. Supply chains are disrupted. Companies are passing higher costs on to customers…Farmers are feeling it too, going further into debt even as farm bankruptcies grew 46% in 2025. Tariffs have destabilized export markets and pushed our trading partners away, and Trump’s immigration policies are fueling a major farmworker shortage. Farm incomes are down. Labor shortages persist. Support programs have been frozen or cut. You cannot scramble global markets and gut the workforce and expect farm country to absorb the damage without consequences.” More here.

In “The Real State of the Union: Millions of Americans Are Just Disgusted,” Michael Tomasky writes at The New Republic: “The corruption: Its scale is nearly impossible to comprehend, which I suppose is the point. The New York Times found last month that Trump had made at least $1.4 billion since reentering the Oval Office, but the paper emphasized that “we know this number to be an underestimate because some of his profits remain hidden from public view. And they continue to grow.” To watch someone abuse the presidency like this is sickening to many millions of Americans…And worst of all, in a way, is the cocoon of fantasy in which he lives. He surrounds himself with flatterers and flunkies. He spends his weekends surrounded by extraordinarily wealthy people who have no idea what working people’s lives are like and who know that if they want his attention for 10 minutes, they must tell him that he is the greatest president ever. This is ridiculous, but it is not just ridiculous: It’s profoundly undemocratic and destructive. It is not how democratically accountable leaders live…This totalitarian-style toadyism will be on full display Tuesday night. Trump will tell lie after lie about the economy, about his tariffs, about America being the “hottest” country in the world, about countless other things, and congressional Republicans will interrupt him 40 or 50 times with rapturous applause. Yes, Democrats interrupt their presidents with applause excessively too, but Barack Obama and Joe Biden—and for that matter George W. Bush—weren’t openly engaged in a war on democracy. Trump is, and Republicans in Congress are cheering him every step of the way.”