From “Is the Working Class Finally Turning on Trump?” by Eyal Press at The New Yorker: “In an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll published in early May, eighty-one per cent of respondents said that higher gas prices were straining their household budgets. Sixty-three per cent of those feeling the strain blamed the problem on Trump. In another recent poll, carried out by CNN, three-fourths of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, said that Trump’s policies have increased the cost of living in their communities…Until a generation ago, the majority of workers in steel plants and automotive factories voted Democratic, in part because their political identities had taken shape on picket lines and in union halls, where a sense of class consciousness was forged. These days, as the scholars Theda Skocpol and Lainey Newman document in “Rust Belt Union Blues” (2023), the disappearance of factories and the consequent decline in union membership have meant that workers in many Rust Belt towns are more likely to cross paths at gun clubs and megachurches…And, among this subset of blue-collar voters, support for Trump is tenuous, Jared Abbott, a political scientist and the director of the Center for Working-Class Politics, which analyzes polling data to determine how Democrats can craft policies and messages that will resonate with the working class, told me…Although it is often assumed that Trump’s most loyal supporters are working-class people without college degrees, the opposite pattern emerged in the survey. Thirty-two per cent of respondents without high-school diplomas said they are now “wavering” on voting for a Republican; just eighteen per cent of respondents with four-year college degrees said the same. Black and Latino working-class voters made up a high share of those who are wavering, the survey found, suggesting that the multiracial coalition Trump cobbled together in 2024 could be coming undone. (In a New York Times-Siena poll conducted from May 11th to 15th, Trump’s approval rating with Hispanic voters had fallen to just twenty per cent; his approval among Black voters was fourteen per cent.)” More here.

In “The three things Democrats must do to regain rural America’s trust,” Anthony Flaccovento writes at The Guardian: “When most liberals think of elites, they picture Wall Street executives and corporate CEOs. But where I live, the term reaches further – to academics, media figures and professionals who are seen as talking a lot but not understanding much, have never worked with their hands, and scold people for their supposed backwardness or tell them they “vote against their own interests”…Sometimes, it also extends to economists, health officials or other policy experts who aren’t always right. Bill Clinton promised that Nafta would create 1m net new jobs within five years of its passage. How should the workers who saw their textile mill close in North Carolina, or their auto parts plant leave Michigan for Mexico, feel towards the politicians who made it happen?…Or what of the people in Appalachia, who were assured by health professionals more than two decades ago that OxyContin was completely safe and non-addictive, only to see an opioid epidemic ravage their communities?…Anti-elitism here isn’t just about taking on the oligarchs. It’s about rejecting a professional class that many believe has helped sustain a system rigged against them…Clearly there’s a significant segment of Trump voters motivated by some combination of racism, homophobia and anti-immigrant hostility. But that explanation alone cannot account for the fact that an astounding 37% of working-class voters of color moved towards Republicans from 2012 to 2024; or that 13% of 2012 Obama supporters – nearly 9 million people – voted for Trump in 2016…What moved many of these voters to the GOP was that they felt seen and heard by some of its leading figures. Rightwing populists spoke directly to the millions whose jobs and communities had been shredded, telling them that they were right to be angry, right to rage against a rigged system that had failed them…Democrats, by contrast, largely dismissed their concerns or scolded them for “voting against their own interests”. More here.

AP’s Mike Catalini reports that “Democratic group launches ad campaign to help flip control of Congress in midterm elections,” and notes: “A Democratic group that previously focused on presidential races is wading into the midterms by targeting more than a dozen House and Senate contests, many of them on Republican turf, in a new advertising campaign that begins Tuesday…American Bridge 21st Century’s $50 million effort adds financial firepower to Democrats’ attempt to flip control of Congress in the midterm elections. The party has struggled to match Republicans’ fundraising, and it has lost ground in a nationwide redistricting battle that President Donald Trump initiated last year…American Bridge, known for its opposition research, has been escalating its own advertising efforts. During the last presidential election, it announced plans to spend $140 million in an attempt to siphon away Trump’s support among rural voters…”Trump made a big promise to these working-class voters that he was gonna bring down costs,” Beychok said. Now it’s clear, he said, “that Trump and Republicans really broke that covenant.”…The House seats American Bridge is targeting are in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. On the Senate side, they’re getting involved in races in Alaska, Iowa, Michigan and Mississippi…The group passed on Senate races in states like Maine, North Carolina and Texas because it doesn’t expect those to lack resources…The campaign will involve digital ads, streaming audio and television, social media, direct mail and radio…Beychok said the organization is learning to focus on issues at a “visceral level,” and featuring specific voters so they can offer firsthand accounts of their experiences with the economy.” More here.

At Mother Jones, Abby Vesoulis explains “Why the Scandal-Ridden Democrat With a Nazi Tattoo Won Maine’s Senate Primary,” and quotes Musa al-Gharbi, author of  the best-selling book “We Have Never Been Woke,” who said: “One thing that influenced how the primary shook out is that there are a lot of people within the Democratic coalition who recognize there’s a large cultural distance between them and the rest of society. Maine is a pretty rural state; it’s a pretty purple state, and so they were maybe thinking, hoping, that someone like Platner would send a different set of social signals than the typical Democrat…A lot of working-class voters, irregular voters, and so on, are often willing to overlook various types of indiscretions of politicians who represent them, as long as they have the sense that this person is on their side and not looking down on them—even if the candidate isn’t a saint, even if they have serious character flaws…In a world where a lot of voters have come to feel like neither party and almost no candidate is actually going to help them or improve their lives, then the main thing that they have left to vote on is basically, “Okay, well, if my life is not going to be meaningfully improved by these folks in Washington either way, then I can at least vote for the person who doesn’t hate me.”…That said, one thing you can clearly see in the polling is that a whole bunch of folks who drifted away from the Democratic party in recent cycles are now very frustrated with Trump. They still don’t hold the Democrats in high esteem, either. But it’s a two-party system, and Trump is the one in power, so if people are dissatisfied with the way things are going, that will probably benefit Democrats in these midterms.” More here.