Jared Abbott, a researcher at the Center for Working-Class Politics and a contributor to Jacobin and Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, argues, “Class Dealignment Hasn’t Gone Away”  at Jacobin: “Working-class voters may be having second thoughts about MAGA, but they’re still abandoning the Democratic Party. Democrats’ reliance on college-educated suburbanites is arithmetically insufficient and politically unsustainable…Whatever short-term movement we see in the polls, the structural trend that has defined American politics for decades remains firmly in place: working-class voters continue to abandon the Democratic Party. The 2024 election confirmed and accelerated this pattern among non-white working-class voters, and the fact that the Democrats aren’t reaping the rewards we’d expect from Donald Trump’s disastrous poll numbers (at least not yet) is a clear sign of the party’s continued working-class woes…The most basic measure of partisan alignment is party identification, or whether voters think of themselves as Democrats, Republicans, or Independents. On this measure, the trend toward dealignment is unambiguous. Data from the American National Election Studies (ANES), stretching back to the early 1970s, show that working-class Americans, defined as those without a college degree and in the bottom two-thirds of the income distribution, identified as Democrats at rates as high as 65%. That share stayed well above 50% until 2016. By 2024, however, that figure had fallen to 42%, dropping an alarming 9 percentage points between 2020 and 2024. Over the same period, college-educated, upper-income voters moved in the opposite direction, with their Democratic identification rising to a whopping 68% by 2024…The General Social Survey (GSS), using an entirely different measure of class based on occupation, confirms the same pattern. Whether you define the working class as manual, service, and clerical workers (the “traditional” definition) or expand it to include more highly credentialed workers like teachers and nurses, the downward trend is the same. No matter how you define the term, working-class identification with the Democratic Party has fallen to historic lows.” Read more here.

The gerrymandering follies roll on, now in Florida. At Politico, Mia McCarthy, Ali Bianco and Riley Rogerson report that “Florida Republicans make peace with proposed new House map,” and write: “Some House Republicans spent weeks warning against a drastic redraw of Florida’s congressional map…Now that it’s out — with Gov. Ron DeSantis targeting as many as four Democratic seats for a GOP takeover — they’re mostly keeping any criticism to themselves…“I think they did a pretty good job,” said Rep. Gus Bilirakis, who said he was one of the Florida Republicans whose district changed “quite a bit…“But I think they could touch it up a little bit, too,” he added…Rep. Scott Franklin said he is set to represent his third constituency in four terms. He still lives within the confines of the 18th district, he said, though it is much smaller in area…“Mine gets significantly less red than it was,” Franklin said. “But it’s still a conservative performing seat.”…DeSantis’ map still has to be approved by the Florida legislature, and it’s almost certain to face challenges in court. But many of the states’ 20 Republicans are already making peace with new districts that will be at least slightly more competitive…Many warned that redrawing the existing GOP-favored map to pick up more than one or two Democratic seats could dangerously dilute the Republican vote. And at least one, Jacksonville-area Rep. John Rutherford, said targeting four “could be a bit much.” More here.

In “Give Workers the Right of First Refusal,” Bhaskar Sunkara writes at Democracy: “For most workers, the defining economic experience is not the level of after-tax inequality in the abstract, but instability and the feeling of powerlessness in the modern economy. Factories are closed, offices relocated, and plants sold off not only when they fail, but often when ownership changes or financial incentives shift. The people who depend on those firms—for income, yes, but also as a font of individual and local identity—absorb the consequences, while the decision itself remains firmly out of reach…If Democrats want a reform that will shape our national political conversation and how the party is perceived, they could champion demands more closely tied the point of production. One concrete way to do that would be to establish a federal right of first refusal for workers to buy their workplace when it is being sold, closed, or relocated, paired with access to standard-form public financing that makes that right real…This policy does not mandate worker ownership, abolish markets, or require ideological buy-in from the people it affects. It simply recognizes that when a firm can plausibly continue operating, the people who built it and rely on it should have a legally enforceable opportunity to keep it running.” More here.

In “National Trust says it won’t drop suit against Trump’s $400M White House ballroom after DOJ request,” Meg Kinnard reports at apnews.com: “Preservationists are pressing ahead with their lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s planned $400 million White House ballroom, declining a request by the Department of Justice to withdraw the complaint following the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday…Trump and other conservatives have made a renewed push for the ballroom in the wake of Saturday’s media dinner shooting, arguing it exposed the difficulties in ensuring presidential security at large events outside the White House grounds, and urging the National Trust for Historic Preservation to drop its lawsuit…Top Justice officials said the government would ask a court to dismiss the lawsuit “in light of last night’s extraordinary events” if the Trust did not voluntarily drop it…Trust attorney Gregory Craig declined that request, writing to the Justice Department that the legal issues at the heart of the lawsuit are unchanged…“What Saturday’s awful event does not change is that the Constitution and multiple federal statutes require Congress to authorize construction of a ballroom on White House grounds, and that Congress has not done so,” Craig wrote…The preservation group sued in December, a week after the White House finished demolishing the East Wing to make way for a ballroom that Trump said would fit 999 people. Trump says the project is funded by private donations, although public money is paying for a below-ground bunker and security upgrades…In its lawsuit, the Trust argued that Trump had overstepped his authority by moving forward with the project without first getting approval from key federal agencies and Congress.” More here.