Erin Doherty and Karen Wiederkehr write in “Poll: Working class voters are still up for grabs” at Politico: “Only one in four Americans who self-identify as working-class say politicians genuinely want to help them…That wariness comes as both parties increasingly see working class voters as key to their winning coalitions. But The POLITICO Poll results show both parties face serious challenges to doing so…Neither party does particularly well with Americans who identify as working class: 38 percent of them say Democrats best represent them, while 32 percent say Republicans. Americans, broadly, are almost identically split, with a 37 percent plurality saying Democrats best represent the interests of the working class, while 30 percent say Republicans…Democrats wrestling with how to win back voters who have drifted toward the GOP — as their coalition has grown increasingly dominated by college-educated Americans — are locked in an intraparty battle over which wing of the party, progressives or moderates, best speaks to these voters…“We’ve struggled with the working class for quite a while and it’s been a combination of being out of touch with working class values on a lot of culture issues and being seen as either not helpful or not helpful enough on economic issues,” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way.” More here.
From “The Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America share a problem. As organizations largely run by and involved with college-educated voters, they are physically and psychically removed from working people without four-year degrees. Both the Democrats and DSA claim they are speaking for the working class, but they are not, at present, political organizations of the working class…The Democrats have tried to avoid their working-class problem by embracing suburban Republicans and independents who have been repulsed by the GOP’s extremism. The Democrats’ embrace of Wall Street and Hollywood big money—and NAFTA—has pushed working people out of the coalition…For DSA, on the other hand, the easiest way to address the problem is to define it away. DSA uses a broad definition of the working class that includes underpaid college-educated graduate students, unemployed and underemployed college graduates, and a host of other college-educated workers who suffer from insecure jobs and the high cost of living. While these educated workers are sometimes financially akin to the working class, the majority of working people—nearly 60 percent—do not have four-year college degrees…And that’s the way the 2024 vote went. Trump had a 14-point advantage among voters without college degrees, while Harris carried college graduates, 56 percent to 43 percent. If DSA and the Democrats remain organizations largely of the highly educated, they will lose.” More here.
From “How Dems Can Win on Immigration in November” by Adrian Carrasquillo at The Bulwark: “IMMIGRATION WASN’T JUST ONE of the issues that secured a second term for Donald Trump—it was virtually the issue that launched his electoral career back in 2016. He said that Mexican immigrants were criminals and rapists, and he never looked back. But now he might want to. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll shows just 37 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, against 56 percent who disapprove. That’s a major opening for Democrats heading into the midterms—if they can exploit it without alienating the working-class voters they’re desperate to win back from Trump’s coalition…As Republicans prepare to dust off their rickety anti-immigration talking points ahead of the midterms, a memo from the Democratic-aligned group Winning Jobs Narrative Action, obtained exclusively by The Bulwark, argues that Democrats can message loudly on immigration and win in November—as long as their message is cast within a pro-worker, pro-immigrant narrative that avoids certain pitfalls Democrats regularly stumble into…One finding spelled out in the memo: As uncomfortable as it might be to hear, some of the messages and messengers that are most cathartic to Democratic voters—and familiar to regular readers of this newsletter—aren’t the most persuasive to former Trump voters. A good example of a losing message would be an immigration attorney and activist demanding an end to deportations in absolutist language, calling Donald Trump and his policies “un-American” and “unlawful,” according to the memo.” More here.
In “Texas and Georgia races show voters are finally sick of MAGA corruption. Jon Ossoff and James Talarico are polling well with a clean government message,” Amanda Marcotte writes at Salon: “It’s easy to see why Ken Paxton thought he could waltz right into the role of senator from Texas. Sure, the state’s Republican nominee and current attorney general is widely seen as one of the most corrupt men in politics, a man with so many scandals that even his fellow Republicans impeached him. (Sadly, the Texas Senate refused to convict him.) Still, Donald Trump won over 56% of the vote in Texas in 2024, despite the Jan. 6th riot and his felony convictions for fraud in New York, so it seemed voters don’t care about corruption. Paxton has been so sure it would be simple to beat his Democratic opponent, state Rep. James Talarico, that he even blew off campaigning over much of the summer in favor of a luxury European vacation with his alleged mistress, a conservative Christian influencer named Tracy Duhon…Now Paxton is starting to worry. He even brought Trump to Texas on Aug. 27 to lead a fundraiser for his campaign. Talarico is ahead in the polls, which hasn’t been true for a Democrat in a statewide race for decades. The Cook Political Report, which tends to be reluctant to buck historical trends, nonetheless changed the election rating from “leans Republican” to “toss-up” in late August. Perhaps even more shocking is that Talarico is pulling this off by making issues of character and corruption central to the race, positioning himself as a genuinely pious Christian, in contrast with Paxton’s seemingly endless hypocrisy and debauched behavior.” More here.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/expanded-child-tax-credit-economic-sentiment/?utm_campaign=Economic+Studies+Bulletin&utm_medium=email&utm_content=436217384&utm_source=hs_email&fbclid=IwY2xjawUE7fZwZG9mBWV4dG4DYWVtAjExAGJyaWQRMTVvYlZRS1RtU2YwZVcwQXhzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEewsKNBudp736RdawuiOnQQ9xhsGBnOeRnv3QUUsl5v8hRVX8QpbcpHR8R53s_aem_Jp1RdJA2m0V1FxQkNa4U9w
“The expiration of the expanded 2021 Child Tax Credit (CTC) in early 2022 sharply cut income for families with children—and left them much more pessimistic about the economy.
Each $1,000 in lost CTC benefits reduced consumer sentiment by about 1.7 points (2.4%), with the largest declines among lower-income families with three or more children.
These effects persisted through 2024 and extended beyond personal finances to households’ views of the broader economy and government policy.”
The whole framing of the immigration article clearly supports de facto open borders implicitly. The people cited all come out in favour of no enforcement and no restrictions.
It is simply not the case that all immigration is good for the economy.
Arguments based on contextless messaging is politically irresponsible.
Republicans will of course have a lot of counterarguments and counterfactuals to destroy the notion that immigration without restrictions or enforcement can be policy.
You’re assuming that there’s lots and lots of U.S.-born workers who will do sanitation, window-washing, and farm work for sub-minimum wage. I dunno. I find that unlikely.
As for the political aspects of this, John Fetterman is divisive in Pennsylvania even though based on the assumption that centrism gains votes, he should be a party switch away from a landslide victory.
https://yougov.com/en-us/topics/public_figure/John_Fetterman
Democrats barely oppose any longer subminimum wage work, lax labor enforcement or failure in raising the minimum wage or adopting differentiated minimum wages based on occupation or geography.
Democrats’ implicit argument is that there are only binary choices on immigration (including on how to handle theoretical labor shortages -why have they never ended even during years of almost unrestricted immigration?-).
The current political moment calls for radical pragmatism and honesty above all else. This isn’t coming from either the “center” (in neither its corporate, establishment or identitarian varieties) or the far left, or progressive or establishment liberals.
The blind spots, intellectual dishonesty, opportunism and lack of originality are rampant in politics and our infotainment society.
Not now. Not when a negligible number of anti-immigration voters are in play.
Think I’m wrong? The 2007 immigration reform package that a number of *Republican* leaders supported died in a Democratic Congress. In other words, there were plenty of anti-immigration Democrats then. But they lost their seats.
When it began in 2010, the excuse was Obamacare, despite many of the defeated Blue Dogs having voted against it. Yours today is that immigration is off limits for Dems today. tSee, every time moderates in one or both parties (as, I might add is usually the case) has taken a step backwards, there was always a situational explanation. For decades, the excuses would change, but the result would be consistent.
Perhaps it is time to admit that fundamentally immoderate polarization is the problem moderates have faced in the 21st century. I see this here in rural Georgia. You would not believe how many people I know are much more conservative across the board than twenty years ago.
Les Leopold argues that “In my opinion, the best way to reach the working class is to engage with people through their labor organizations. ” Yet, only 6% of private sector workers belong to unions. Most union members are government employees who already vote Democratic anyhow. We need to reach the majority of workers who do not belong to unions instead of the minority who do.