Excerpts from. “Working-Class Zeroes” by Jack Butler at The Wall Street Journal. Journal: “The best way for politicians to appeal to voters now, especially those considered “normal” or “working-class,” is apparently to assume the worst of them…The belief that voters aren’t merely tolerant of authenticity, even—especially—in the form of indecency, but actively seek it out, isn’t only held by Democrats. In an interview last week, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat challenged Vice President JD Vance on the Trump administration’s “tone of aggressive uncharity to people who aren’t on board with the administration’s policies.” Mr. Vance disputed this contention. “Tonal arguments are ways of, frankly, policing working-class ways of communication and covering them in elite preferences,” he said…In this understanding, only prissy establishmentarians object to coarse rhetoric, which is the true expression of both working-class policies and the working-class argot…Yes, there are people whose early and consistent obsession with the idea of wielding power drives them to a kind of ruthless box-checking and ladder-climbing that can seem robotic…It’s hard to think of a more egregious put-down of voters than that their leaders can better represent them by acting worse. Voters themselves can decide how they feel about this condescension.” More here.
In “Democratic insurgents are winning on economics, not culture,” David C. Barker writes at Brookings: “Some recent Democratic congressional primaries have led a segment of observers to conclude that, as one political observer noted, it’s “Bernie’s party now.” Despite the leftist-versus-centrist scorecard being muddled overall, with moderates scoring victories in several key contests, many Democratic Party stalwarts are wringing their hands at what looks like an unmistakable leftward trajectory…Indeed, candidates backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and other self-described democratic socialists—such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani—have racked up a string of successes. In June, a series of incumbent U.S. lawmakers were unseated by insurgent progressive challengers in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Denver…In the main, the 2026 primaries have not been a story of center versus left. They’ve been insurgent versus establishment, outsider versus insider, populist versus elitist, pugilist versus accommodationist. The winner in Pennsylvania is a firefighter. The winner in Ohio is an iron worker. The winner in Montana is a former smokejumper. Platner is an oyster farmer. All are fresh political faces. Across the country, the Democratic rank and file are exhorting their Washington wannabes to confront the conventional order, echoing, in form if not content, the populist clamor that has remade the Republican Party.” More here.
Bhaskar Sunkara writes in “Progressives are winning in American cities. Can they win rural voters too?” at The Guardian: “Andrew Mamo, a spokesperson for the centrist recruitment outfit The Bench, put a number on it: leftwing candidates have “a ceiling of 30% in swing districts”, even as they clear 50% in New York City…The easy reply is that DSA now has chapters in 47 states across the country and a few wins in the heart of Trump country. That’s true, and it isn’t enough, because even if we don’t trust Mamo’s number, the broader progressive movement is plainly struggling across much of the country…As Jared Abbott of the Center for Working Class Politics noted, of the nearly 100 members of the Congressional Progressive caucus in 2024, exactly one represented a mostly rural district: Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico…Bernie Sanders, the most successful socialist in American history, endorsed nobody like her in 2022. Rural and rural-suburban districts make up 41% of the House and a larger share of most state legislatures. Democrats have often figured out how to win a thin majority without them. They haven’t figured out how to keep one, and they won’t, because the system isn’t built for a party crammed into a dozen metros.” More here.
“As historian Michael Kazin has demonstrated in his party history, What It Took to Win, Democratic successes have mainly resulted from advocacy for the economic interests of the working and middle classes, and against opponents who champion the interests of the rich,” Harold Meyerson writes in “Encircling the Royalists: Democrats finally show up to the class war” at The American Prospect. When Democrats fail, it’s often because they’re reluctant, or simply opposed, to advocate against the domination of big money, which also weakens their standing as working-class champions… FORTUNATELY FOR DEMOCRATS, the very rich have been hard at work convincing the public to hate their guts. Where Steve Jobs was once hailed as an innovator providing smartphones to the world, with a personal profile that tended more toward asceticism than conspicuous consumption, the current crop of Silicon Valley billionaires are not only ostentatious in their spending but overtly hostile to employee rights, consumer interests, democratic forms of government, racial egalitarianism, and, at least in the case of Elon Musk, normal life. Through their indifference to the effects of social media on children (and the rest of us), and their huge investments in AI and the data centers required to power it, they’ve become the promoters of the most widely feared 21st-century phenomena. Not since John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Henry Clay Frick have we had such a crop of oligarchs. That the Musks and the Bezoses, the Zuckerbergs and the Brins, the Thiels and the Andreessens have turned themselves into the financial base of Trumpism—both the man and his madness—has likely created a reciprocal downward pull on the approval rating of both Trump and themselves…Democrats should be climbing over each other to welcome their hatred.” More here.
