The meltdown of Graham Platner’s campaign for Maine’s U.S. Senate seat now held by Susan Collins, in combination with the Supreme Court ruling, which “rolled back a longstanding restriction on the use of party funds to directly benefit candidates,” makes winning a Democratic majority of the U.S. Senate highly problematic at best and highly unlikely at worst. As Fredreka Schouten and John Fritze report in “How the Supreme Court’s campaign finance ruling gives Republicans a major midterm boost” at CNN Politics,”The Republican National Committee, for instance, entered June with more than $125 million in available cash and no unpaid bills. By contrast, the Democratic National Committee had a negative balance, with nearly $15 million remaining in its coffers but more than $18 million in debt…“The DNC is in an atrocious fundraising position,” Sean Cooksey, a former Federal Election Commission chairman who previously served as Vance’s chief legal adviser in the White House, told CNN. In a social media post earlier this month, Cooksey predicted a favorable ruling would leave Republicans “with nuclear weapons” and the DNC with “one of those Wile E. Coyote guns with a flag that says Bang!” Platner’s meltdown was just the icing on the cake. Even before he decided to pull out of the race, the Supreme Court ruling alone may have doomed Democratic hopes for a Sente majority. Still it’s not impossible that Dems can pull it off. But they have to run the best possible substitute for Platner.

At Axios, Josephine Walker reports “These Democrats could replace Platner in Maine’s Senate race,” and writes: “Former State Senate President Troy Jackson was the third-place finisher in Maine’s Democratic gubernatorial primary and is widely viewed as progressives’ preferred candidate…Jackson’s blue-collar background and existing statewide campaign infrastructure could ease a transition to a Senate campaign…Outgoing Gov. Janet Mills sought the Senate nomination before suspending her campaign as Platner surged in the polls.” However, “Mills has not committed to reentering the race. She is 78 and has said she would serve only one term if elected.”…Former gubernatorial candidate Nirav Shah is best known for leading Maine through the COVID-19 pandemic as director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention from 2019 to 2023…Jordan Wood is a former congressional aide who worked in Washington and later served as executive director of a pro-democracy organization focused on election integrity…Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows is coming off a failed gubernatorial bid, giving her an existing campaign organization, donor network and statewide name recognition…She was previously the Democratic Senate nominee in 2014, losing to Collins by over 30 percentage points…Dan Kleban is a political newcomer and the co-founder of Maine Beer Company…He says he relates to voters because of his working-class roots, student loan debt and describes himself as a pragmatic, “get-shit-done Democrat.” There was some buzz about actor Patrick Dempsey or political commentator Heather Cox Richardson entering the race, but both of them have said it isn’t going to happen.

In “Graham Platner and the Working-Class Fetish. This bloc won’t be wooed by cosplay and pandering,” Matthew Cooper writes at Washington Monthly: “One lesson: Do not fetishize working-class voters. Court them, of course. Obviously, this bloc has befuddled Democrats in recent years. But the idea that nominating a working-class Democrat would sway working-class voters was always reductionist and absurd. Democratic Brahmins like Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy did just fine with working-class voters. Sherrod Brown grew up in a comfortable home and went to Yale. He was elected to the U.S. Senate from Ohio three times in part because of his connection with working-class voters, and today he faces good odds of returning to the Senate from a Buckeye State that’s gotten tougher for Democrats. Working-class voters have supported Republican billionaires like the president and candidates such as Jim Justice, the U.S. senator and former governor from West Virginia who ran an inherited coal empire, for gosh sakes. The notion that they need to see someone like themselves in higher office is condescending…I don’t know the best way for Democrats to win enough working-class voters to take back the U.S. Senate and the presidency, but Platneresque pandering surely isn’t it. This magazine has presented a series of ideas as both good policy and good politics to woo these voters—vigorous antitrust enforcement, widespread broadband access, Medicare prices for all, outreach to rural voters, and avoiding cultural pitfalls such as the ungainly phrase “LatinX,” among many others. But there’s no panacea. This huge and heterogeneous bloc will need to be wooed because there is no such thing as a white knight with a gravelly voice perfect for truck ad voiceovers. “Identity politics” is often a cheap and meaningless charge aimed at minorities or liberals. But in Platner’s case, identity really was everything. Biography was destiny. The personal was political.” More here.

You want some good news? Try Emily Singer’s “Here’s another sign that Democrats are building a blue wave” at Daily Kos, which includes these observations: “Historic trends and current polling have shown that November’s midterm elections are very likely to be a blue wave, with Democrats favored to win control of the U.S. House, flip multiple gubernatorial mansions and state legislatures, and possibly even take back the Senate…For the third month in a row, Democrats gained more new voter registrants than Republicans, according to pollster John Couvillon, who has been tracking party registration data for years…Couvillon found that Democrats added 83,000 new registrants in June, while Republicans added 64,000…Democrats out-registering Republicans reverses what had been a bad trend for the party, as the Democratic Party had seen membership dwindle since 2020…In fact, the Democratic voter registration slide was one of the early signs that the 2024 election was not going to go Democrats’ way. That year, according to Gallup, more people identified with Republicans than Democrats…But now that trend is flipping… Even more promising for Democrats is that new Democratic registrants are popping up in places that have competitive statewide contests…For example in Nevada—where Democrats are trying to win back the governor’s mansion this fall—Democrats added 5,020 new voters in June while Republicans added 1,820…In Iowa—where Democrats are looking to flip the governor’s mansion, a U.S. Senate seat, and as many as three U.S. House districts—Democrats added 25,245 new registrants in June while Republicans added 14,781…And in Nebraska—home to a sleeper Senate race and multiple competitive House contests—Democrats gained 559 voters in June while Republicans lost 126 registrants.” More here.

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.

Jared Abbott makes the case that “Yes, Workers Want Progressive Economics,” but warns in the article’s subtitle “But progressives need to be careful about how they pitch their appeals to workers” at Jacobin. An excerpt: “he basic wager of economic populism is that the far right can only be stopped in the long term by enacting epoch-defining changes to our economic system — changes that give all working people a shot at a stable, middle-class life. If progressives hope to build the durable majoritarian coalitions needed to make that happen, they will have to deliver material improvements to working people’s lives, so ordinary Americans will once again feel that their lives are better than their parents’ were. All of which means thinking big. Very big…But what if workers don’t actually want what progressives are offering? In a recent piece for the Conversation, Nicholas Jacobs argues the Democratic Party has moved so far left of working-class voters on economics that “on every major plank of the progressive economic agenda, Democrats are now substantially to the left of the workers they claim to champion.”…The Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) retested Jacobs’s economic claim using a much wider evidence base and distilled the results in two heat maps below…” More here.

From Chauncey DeVega’s “The white working-class myth that made JD Vance. From “Hillbilly Elegy” to “Communion,” Vance’s narrative is about power, not solidarity” at Salon. As DeVega writes, “Vice President JD Vance wants to be Donald Trump’s successor. As part of that quest, he has written the obligatory memoir and has embarked on a media tour…In his new book, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” Vance reflects on the culture wars, a need for moral renewal in America and his conversion to a conservative form of Catholicism. Predictably, he does not critically engage with how he can serve a wicked and ungodly president whose personal behavior and politics violate almost every core tenet of his professed Christian values. As Christian Paz detailed at Vox, “In the course of explaining how he came to serve God, he also shows how easy, if not necessary in modern America, it is for him — and for them — to subordinate that faith to politics.”…“Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance’s first book, which follows his journey from poverty to college, the Marines in Iraq, Yale Law School and success as an entrepreneur and beyond, was a cultural phenomenon. The memoir sold millions of copies, was published in dozens of languages and was adapted into a movie directed by Ron Howard…While “Hillbilly Elegy” was celebrated as a compelling story about the American Dream, the book was widely criticized for its stereotypical depictions of Appalachia, and for minimizing the role that structures and institutions such as the opioid crisis and deindustrialization play in poverty and social inequality…The years since the publication of “Hillbilly Elegy” demonstrated that Vance is, at his heart, an opportunist and a chameleon. Before entering politics, he publicly and privately condemned Trump, describing him as “America’s Hitler” and an “idiot.” More here.

In “Dem candidates form ‘Blue Collar Brigade’ to boost fundraising. Five candidates with blue-collar backgrounds are teaming up to boost their fundraising and their populist messaging ahead of November,” Lisa Kashinsky writes at Politico that “A group of blue-collar Democratic House candidates is teaming up to bring in some green…Five House candidates with ties to organized labor are launching a joint fundraising effort Tuesday to help bankroll their campaigns and amplify a populist, progressive message they believe can win back working-class voters frustrated by high costs, according to details shared first with POLITICO…They’ve dubbed themselves the “Blue Collar Brigade,” borrowing from a Time magazine headline on working-class Democratic candidates. The group includes Bob Brooks, a firefighter union chief running against GOP Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in Pennsylvania, and Randy Villegas, an educator and teachers’ union member who defeated national Democrats’ preferred candidate to take on GOP Rep. David Valadao in California. Both seats are top Democratic targets…Other members include ironworker and former union organizer Brian Poindexter, who’s vying to unseat GOP Rep. Max Miller in Ohio, and union leader and former smokejumper Sam Forstag, who’s running in an open district in western Montana — two blue-collar seats that President Donald Trump won by double digits in 2024. Minnesota state Rep. Kaela Berg, a flight attendant and former leader of her local union who’s locked in a competitive primary for an open Democratic-leaning House seat, rounds out the roster…They’re banding together to try to boost their combined fundraising and stay competitive in what’s on track to be the most expensive midterm cycle yet. These candidates, who come from atypical backgrounds, say they lack the access to deep-pocketed donor networks that their more traditionally connected colleagues and rivals can tap. Some of them are starting off the general election at significant cash disadvantages against their GOP rivals.” More here.

Also at Jacobin, Jake Triola explains how “Local Organizing Can Slow the GOP’s Rural Takeover,” and notes: “As Democrats struggle to rebuild their brandwith working-class and rural voters, new evidence points to a surprisingly effective way to increase trust and connection: rebuilding the nonpartisan community organizations that were once crucial for providing the party a solid anchor in rural and small-town America. Building on this work, and scaling it up dramatically, may make all the difference for the party’s prospects in red America…Over the past two years, the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative (RUBI), a group working to bridge America’s rural-urban divide, has used its Community Works program to unite working-class Americans to address what it describes as a “trust crisis” in the country. The program targets deep mistrust of liberals, Democrats, the “experts” of the managerial class, and government itself — and works to change the messaging that reaches these communities…Community Works acts as a kind of invisible hand in local collaborations on everything from road and river cleanups to “home repair, food distribution, diaper drives, kids’ crafts activities, hurricane relief, smoke alarm installations, IT, tax prep assistance, an Easter egg hunt, and a STEM summer camp.”…The program has led to a paradigm shift in rural communities, as evidenced by Heather Vaughn, of Appalachian Tennessee, who says of Community Works:” More here.

In “Are Democrats Finding Their Spines?,” Chris Lehman reports at The Nation: “The Open Markets Institute, a DC clearinghouse of antitrust policy and legal strategy, didn’t lack for ambition in drawing up its convocation this year of political leaders, regulators, and writers attacking the powers of economic concentration. The gathering, hosted at an event space across from the grounds of the Capitol, was called “The Next American Revolution: Breaking Oligarchy and Making a New American Democracy.”…As Institute director Barry Lynn welcomed the crowd to a daylong series of panels on the challenges of antitrust enforcement and its place in our political discourse, it soon became clear that the call for revolution was another invocation of the country’s 250th anniversary; Lynn, like many of the later speakers at the event, reminded the crowd that anti-monopoly sentiment was front and center in the colonial rebellion against the British crown…Still, events outside the room lent a fresh currency to the rhetoric. The night before, a slate of three democratic socialist candidates swept into victories over establishment-backed opponents in New York’s primary balloting, spurring pundit speculation over the rise of a “Democratic Tea Party.” More here.

Eric Blanc shares some “Thoughts on the limitations of DSA, the WFP, and our unions after Tuesday’s historic election. Let’s be honest: none of our organizations are anywhere close to being as deeply rooted in the working class as we need to (or aspire to) be” at Labor Politics: “Tuesday’s election made clear the limitations — strategically and organizationally — of New York City’s labor leaders…In the city’s two marquee congressional primaries, candidates backed by labor’s biggest names — 32BJ, 1199SEIU, DC37, the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, the United Federation of Teachers, and others — went down to defeat. In the first, Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair Adriano Espaillat, a corporate Democrat who racked up some fourteen union endorsements, lost his Upper Manhattan and Bronx seat to Darializa Avila Chevalier, a thirty-two-year-old democratic socialist insurgent backed by Zohran Mamdani, the New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA), and Justice Democrats…Delivering Avila Chevalier the biggest Congressional upset since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s win in 2018, a majority of District 13 primary voters showed that they no longer trust a Democratic establishment unable or unwilling to seriously challenge Trump and an oligarchic status quo. Yet most union leaders haven’t yet followed their lead. And it’s a sign of serious internal decay that these organizations, so powerful on paper, can now deliver so little in the way of actual votes. Far too often, union members have become disconnected from our organizations…We saw this same movie play out in early 2025, when most of the city’s union leadership lined up behind Andrew Cuomo — a serial harasser they’d demanded resign four years earlier — and watched Mamdani beat him anyway. (And in another, no less troubling form, we’ve seen how many unions across the country have struggled to convince their members to vote against Trump.)” More here.

“Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said Democrats can win back Trump-supporting Teamsters by embracing “economic patriotism,” arguing that a platform built around good jobs, lower costs, domestic manufacturing and national unity can reconnect the party with working-class voters,” Shomik Sen Bhattacharjee reports in “Ro Khanna Says Democrats Can Win Over Trump-Voting Teamsters By Building A ‘Bold, Aspirational Platform‘” at yahoo.com…”Democrats can win Trump voters who are Teamsters,” Khanna wrote Thursday on X. “A bold, aspirational platform of economic patriotism can inspire our nation.”…”I know that there are Trump voters out here and I know there are people who voted for Harris,” Khanna said. “But I want to say something to people who voted for Trump: we can’t go on in this country hating each other. We can’t go on in this country insulting each other.”…”My appeal to you is, let’s find a way to treat each other with respect again, to treat each other with dignity again, to build an economy for everyone and to make us proud of being American, we’re all team America,” Khanna added…The appeal comes as Democrats continue wrestling with a working-class shift away from traditional party strongholds. The Teamsters released polling in 2024 showing rank-and-file members backed Donald Trump over Kamala Harris, 59.6% to 34%, in a national electronic poll. More here.

At Mother Jones, Ari Berman reports “In a Rare Blow to Trump, the Supreme Court Just Saved Mail-In Voting—For Now,” and writes: “In a surprise victory for voting rights, the Supreme Court on Monday upheld a Mississippi law allowing mail-in ballots to be counted up to five days after Election Day, as long as they had been postmarked by the day of the election…The 5-4 decision by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, which was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices, averts a major election disaster that would have injected chaos into the midterms. Fourteen states have mail-in ballot grace periods on the books, and 30 states accept ballots from overseas and military voters sent before or on Election Day but only received after. The New York Times found that during the 2024 election “at least 725,000 ballots were postmarked by Election Day and arrived within the legally accepted post-election window.” Changing mail-in ballot deadlines months before the general election could have disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters who could have been unaware of the stricter rules, or have their ballots thrown out because of postal delays, or because they live in remote, rural locations in states like Alaska…Overruling the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Barrett affirmed that such laws are constitutional. “In sum, the election-day statutes require the electorate’s choice to be made on election day,” she wrote. “That occurs so long as election day is the deadline for individuals to vote—as it is in Mississippi. But the election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked before election day yet received afterward.”…In fact, every major study has shown that mail-in voting is safe and secure, but the fact that four justices signed on to Trump’s crusade to get rid of mail-in ballots is highly disturbing and could embolden the president to attempt to take even more drastic steps to make it harder to vote…Today’s ruling should also not distract from the damage the Roberts Court has already done to voting rights. Its decision in late April, effectively destroying the Voting Rights Act, gave Republicans just enough time to dismantle majority-Black seats held by Democrats in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama. That was followed by a series of orders by the Republican-appointed justices on the shadow docket that expedited the GOP’s efforts to erase Black representation and give their party additional seats before the midterms.” More here.

From “Congress passes the largest housing affordability bill in decades — and Trump cancels the signing” by Stephan Bisaha at npr.org: “If there’s room for agreement on anything in Washington, it’s that lawmakers need to do something to make homeownership more affordable. On Tuesday, legislators on both sides of the aisle clinched the final vote in the House to pass the largest piece of housing legislation in decades…The bill, called the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, passed 358-32 in the House. The Senate approved it Monday with similarly overwhelming bipartisan support…But that unity was threatened Wednesday morning when President Trump posted on social media that he was abruptly canceling a signing ceremony for the bill unless Congress passes a strict voter ID bill called the Save America Act…A number of factors have made homes out of reach for many U.S. buyers. According to the real estate broker Redfin, a family needs an income of about $117,000 a year to afford the typical home on the market, almost $30,000 more than what most U.S. households earn…But the main issue this bill tries to address is that the U.S. does not have enough houses to keep up with demand. Realtor.com estimated that last year the U.S. was short by more than 4 million housing units…Rather than making a single change, the bill is a hodgepodge of provisions designed to either encourage housing construction or make it easier for home seekers to buy. The flashiest part of the package is a ban that prevents corporate investors from buying up more single-family homes to rent out. If one of those groups already owns at least 350 houses, it won’t be able to buy others…this is still the largest housing affordability bill to come out of Congress in decades, and researchers and those in the housing industry say it could help make homeownership more accessible…Sen. Warren put it this way: “It has just been more than 30 years since the federal government has done anything but sit by and say, ‘Damn, the price of housing sure has gone up.’ Finally, we are actually moving.”

“New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani wasn’t on the ballot Tuesday, but he may have been the biggest winner of the night,” Averi Harper writes in “Mamdani won big, but it’s a mistake to think all Democrats swung left: ANALYSIS” at abcnews.com. “All three of the candidates he endorsed in New York City — Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Brad Lander — won their respective races. Lander and Avila Chevalier defeated better-funded incumbents with deep establishment support. Valdez overcame Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, the preferred successor of retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez…The victories show that Mamdani’s political influence extends beyond his own campaign, helping propel allies to victory. His endorsement is proving to be a meaningful signal to an energized progressive base. The results underscore his growing ability to shape the direction of Democratic politics in the nation’s largest city…The wins are especially notable because they came in races where Mamdani found himself at odds with some of the Democratic establishment, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Jeffries backed Reps. Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat, both of whom lost. Asked by ABC News Wednesday whether voters had sent him a message by rejecting candidates he supported, Jeffries declined to engage and instead pivoted to New York’s 17th Congressional District, where Democrats are hoping to defeat Republican Rep. Mike Lawler this fall…The New York City races were about affordability, but they were also flashpoints in some of the party’s biggest internal debates. Immigration enforcement, Israel and Gaza and ongoing frustration with the political establishment all played a role…Throughout the campaign, Mamdani and his allies argued that Democrats need to do a better job speaking to working-class voters struggling with the cost of living.”

After Tuesday’s victories, Mamdani framed the results as evidence that voters are hungry for politics that put working people at the center of the conversation.”…”At the same time,” Harper continues, “the broader primary results are a reminder that Democratic voters are not moving uniformly to the left…Just north of New York City, in the battleground 17th District, combat veteran Cait Conley won her crowded primary as a more moderate Democrat. On the campaign trail, she focused on national security and affordability, largely steering clear of some of the party’s biggest intraparty fights…And across the country in Utah’s newly drawn 1st District, former Rep. Ben McAdams, a centrist Democrat, prevailed over further-left progressives…Taken together, the results suggest Democratic voters are being highly pragmatic. In deep-blue districts, they’re embracing progressive candidates who promise dramatic change and are willing to challenge the party establishment. In swing districts and suburban battlegrounds, they’re continuing to gravitate toward candidates they believe can win competitive general elections…Democratic leaders around the country aren’t going to copy-and-paste New York City politics, but these results do reinforce that many Democratic voters are demanding a more aggressive message and messengers.”

In “Latino Voters Are Reconsidering. Many who supported Trump in 2024 are starting to voice their doubts,” Natasha S. Alford writes at The Preamble: “President Trump may be losing his touch with many of the Latino voters who once supported him. A recent poll by UnidosUS, a bipartisan Latino advocacy group, found that 25% of those who voted for him in 2024 say they’d make a different choice today…While Trump’s approval numbers overall have tanked to the lowest since he took office, the drop in Latino support is notable given the hoopla about how successfully he’d made inroads into Latino communities, who were once seen as Democratic Party strongholds…In 2016 during his first run for president, Trump had the support of just 28% of Latino voters. That number jumped up to 36% in 2020, even though Trump lost the general election. In 2024, the number of Latino Trump voters reached 48%, representing one piece of a racially and ethnically diverse coalition that handed him a second term…Latino voters who are now turning away from Trump explain the shift by pointing to the economy and unaffordable living costs, combined with harsh immigration policies and the Iran war. Leaders like Guesnerth Josué Perea of the Afro-Latin@ Forum have witnessed up close and personal the reality of Trump’s promises not matching the dream he sold to communities…“A church that I know very well, their voters were majority for Trump,” Perea tells The Preamble. “Then their church immediately after the inauguration had to create emergency response protocols for people being deported and wrongfully detained in the streets right outside near the church.”…According to recent estimates, ICE deported more than 540,000 immigrants in 2025 alone. Latinos accounted for 9 in 10 arrests made by ICE. Critics say the pressure to hit deportation quotas has led immigration enforcement to a “by any means necessary” approach, which has included rounding up community members, elders, and children everywhere from the halls of immigration hearings to graduations.” More here.

An excerpt from “Cracks are showing in Trump’s white, blue-collar base” by Steven Greenhouse at The Guardian: “If any demographic group was key to Donald Trump’s election victories in 2016 and 2024, it was white, blue-collar voters. But in perhaps perilous news for Republicans, Trump’s support from that group has plummeted – as many white, working-class voters have grown upset about everything from increased inflation and gas prices to Trump’s war against Iran. These glaring cracks in Trump’s blue-collar base point to big trouble for Republicans in this November’s midterm elections…In 2024, Trump won 66% of white voters without a college degree, but a new CBS News poll found that 54% of that demographic disapprove of his performance. That was up from 45% disapproval in February (before Trump began bombing Iran) and up sharply from 32% in February 2025…This shows severe cracks in Trump’s white, blue-collar base, a group that candidate Trump wooed by promising to crack down on immigration, to reduce prices on day one, to bring back manufacturing jobs and to not start new foreign wars. Many blue-collar voters see that Trump has failed to deliver on any of these promises except for his massive crackdown on immigrants – that crackdown has grown unpopular, however, after Trump’s masked agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis…Trump’s blue-collar base didn’t get the lower prices that he promised; instead, they face painful 4.2% inflation, the highest rate in three years. Trump has utterly failed on another important promise to blue-collar Americans: to increase manufacturing jobs. Ever since Trump returned to office, the number of factory jobs has declined by 68,000. As for Trump’s promise not to begin any foreign wars, many blue-collar Americans are furious that he launched his unsuccessful war against Iran, which, to their huge dismay, has pushed up gasoline and grocery prices.” More here.

In “Politicians have long misunderstood the ‘working class’. The rise of the far right shows how mistaken they have been,” David Peetz writes at The Conversation: “In many countries, the labour and social democratic parties are mere shadows of their former selves…Perhaps the labour parties mistook the decline in “blue-collar” (manual) jobs for the decline of the working class. In Australia, the blue-collar share of jobs fell from 44% in 1979 to 28% in 2025. It’s fallen in the UK, the US and elsewhere…Union membership, once a mostly “blue-collar” phenomenon, declined in most industrialised countries. It fell from an average of 30% of employees across the OECD in 1985 to 19% in 2005 and 15% in 2023. The fall was even greater in Australia…But these changes did not reflect how likely people were to identify as working class…In the US, where the phrase “working class” appeared absent from public discourse for decades until Trump, a differently worded question showed that in 1976, 51% of Americans thought of themselves as either working class or lower class. In 2006, the same survey showed 52% identifying as either working class or lower class. Within this period, numbers had fluctuated from year to year — but always between 48% and 55% expressed working or lower class identity…A Gallup poll added “upper-middle class” to the options, and the proportion claiming working or lower class status was only 39% in 2006. In 2024, that number was 43%…” More here.

Egberto Willies explains why “Platner’s Maine Victory Exposes the Democratic Establishment’s Blind Spot” at Daily Kos: “Graham Platner’s landslide win in Maine sent a message that the Democratic establishment and progressives must absorb quickly: working people are tired of consultants, triangulation, elite gatekeeping, and media-manufactured false equivalencies. Voters did not excuse every flaw; they rejected a political culture that treats personal imperfection and systemic harm as the same thing. Platner won because he centered the working class, spoke to economic pain, owned his past, and refused to let establishment narratives define the race. That matters because Americans increasingly feel the economy is crushing them while pundits and political consultants keep pretending averages, abstractions, and donor-friendly messaging tell the full story.

• Platner’s win showed that voters want candidates who understand working-class struggle, not polished politicians packaged by consultants.
• The mainstream media tried to create false equivalencies between flawed personal conduct and the deliberate policy violence of Trumpism and the Republican Party.
• The Democratic establishment should stop centering billionaire comfort and start centering workers, families, students, veterans, renters, and people crushed by debt.
• It is clear that economic inequality hides behind misleading averages while real people fall further behind.
• Progressives should learn the lesson: authenticity, accountability, and a working-class agenda can defeat establishment politics.” More here.

Kim Kelly reports on “Trump’s Latest Target: Coal Miners’ Safety” at In These Times. Subtitled “In one fell swoop, the Trump administration took an axe to the agency tasked with handling legal disputes around mine worker safety. It could signal even deeper cuts to worker protections coming down the pike,” the article may reveal a new midterm advantage emerging for Democrats in Appalachian congressional districts. Kelly’s article explains further, “As government agencies go, FMSHRC is about as apolitical as they get; miners and their advocates appreciate the work they do to help workers, and mine operators generally appreciate the agency’s ability to resolve issues like mine closures at an expedited pace. Even under a Department of Labor that has pushed a brutal anti-regulatory agenda, it’s unclear who the constituency for these kinds of deep cuts even is. ​“I wonder if there’s a list of agencies that the OPM (Office of Personnel Management) and the White House have been working down, and we happen to be near the bottom of that list, but they’re getting to us now,” a source with knowledge of the agency’s inner workings told In These Times. (The source requested anonymity out of concern for possible retaliation.)…Rather, their fear is that the gutting of the FMSHRC signals the administration’s potential appetite to go after MSHA and its ability to inspect mines for safety violations. Two of the FMSHRC’s three members, both appointed by Democrats, will end their terms in August, leaving one (appointed by a Republican) remaining, plus four empty seats. FMSHRC will now have to push forward with a skeleton crew, and if they’re unable to reach quorum, even less will get done.” More here.

Get ready for a growing drumbeat for Trump leaving office as a result of his disastrous Iran War settlement. What do the foreign policy experts see ahead for the U.S. as long as he stays? At Foreign Policy, Ian Bremmer and Firas Maksad make the case that “The Long Shadow of the Iran War: Trump’s Most Consequential Foreign Policy Mistake” in. Foreign Affairs. An excerpt: “After nearly four months of fighting, concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missile arsenal, and support for proxies across the Middle East remain largely unresolved. The regime that Trump set out to change is still standing, and it may now be set to receive economic relief in exchange for restoring free passage in a strait that was open before the war began. Iran has emerged from the conflict battered but in a stronger strategic position, with its regime and its ability to threaten the region intact. This outcome, after months of destruction and global economic disruption, is the greatest foreign policy failure of both of Trump’s terms. And the consequences of that failure will persist long after the war ends, making the United States’ growing strategic challenge in the Middle East even more difficult to address…The most likely outcome of this war is a more polarized and fragmented Middle East in which existing multilateral institutions weaken, rival coalitions harden, and outside powers compete for influence…Governments across the world are already acting on a shared diagnosis: the United States is no longer reliable, and reducing long-term dependence on Washington has become a strategic imperative. More here.

Just when you thought that Trump couldn’t say anything more damaging to his party’s prospects in November, Alex Woodward reports “Trump threatens to pull unemployment benefits from all states for the first time in history” at The Independent:”Donald Trump’s administration is threatening to withdraw federal funding for unemployment assistance in all 50 states as part of the president’s nationwide campaign against “fraud” in government spending.…In a letter to the governors of 53 states and territories, acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling warned that the federal government would use “every available tool” to combat “waste, fraud and abuse” within state-run unemployment insurance programs, including “withholding administrative funds from states” for the first time in history….There is no single national program for unemployment support, though the federal government partners with state agencies to support temporary financial assistance to out-of-work Americans. Nearly 2 million people are currently receiving those benefits, while roughly 229,000 people are filing initial jobless claims every week, according to the Labor Department.…But most unemployed Americans face bureaucratic hurdles to receive those benefits. Most states provide roughly six months of payments to qualified Americans. Those programs are typically covered by individual states through state unemployment taxes paid by employers, but the federal government provides support for administrative costs…Without that support, the loss in funding could force state-run systems to shut down…”We are officially putting governors on notice,” Sonderling said in a statement Wednesday.” More here.

Robert Kuttner’s “Trump Goes Postal” shares the following revelations at The American Prospect: “The U.S. Postal Service has proposed a rule to block delivery of mail ballots in states that have not complied with an executive order President Trump signed in March directing the USPS to halt election mail unless states hand over voter lists. One part of Trump’s March order directed the Postal Service to issue just such a rule. Several pending lawsuits contend that both orders amount to an illegal executive branch seizure of election administration that the Constitution reserves to the states…About 30 percent of all ballots are now cast by mail. The Postal Service is a potential choke point. The NAACP on June 3 filed a motion in federal court seeking to block the Postal Service’s proposed regulation. The NAACP points out that the proposed regulation violates a 2021 settlement agreement that requires timely delivery of election mail to all voters…The Justice Department has demanded that at least 48 states turn over voter files, as specified by Trump’s March executive order, and has threatened state officials who refuse with criminal prosecution. The DOJ has sued Washington, D.C., and 30 states for refusing to provide their statewide voter registration lists with driver’s license and Social Security numbers. But every case that has come before a judge—eight so far—has been dismissed…The more serious problem is that several red states are cooperating with Trump voluntarily. According to the Brennan Center’s tally, which is regularly updated, at least 16 states have either provided, or committed to provide, their voter registration lists, including driver’s license and Social Security numbers: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming…we can expect continuing trench warfare between defenders of the right to vote and the serial efforts of the Trump administration to suppress it. Given his deepening unpopularity, Trump and his allies in Congress survive politically only by undermining the most basic of democratic checks on autocracy.” More here.

From “Curing US Healthcare, Part III: The Future. What reform could look like” by Paul Krugman at his substack blog and writes in an unlocked repost that “US healthcare spending in 1980 was already higher than spending in other wealthy countries, but the gap was modest — about 1 ½ percent of GDP. By 2010, however, the gap had widened to more than 6 percent of GDP, although it has narrowed slightly since then…Moreover, if we look at spending per capita rather than spending as a share of GDP, the U.S. looks even worse, because US GDP per capita is higher than in the comparator countries…U.S. healthcare, then, has performed very poorly on a comparative basis, spending much more money than other nations yet delivering significantly worse results…It’s true that our relative performance improved after the enactment of the Affordable Care Act: The percentage of Americans without health insurance declined substantially, while the rate at which costs were rising slowed sharply..And now, under Trump II and Republican control of Congress, even the gains since 2010 are under severe assault…Looking forward, if MAGA is driven from power in 2026 and 2028, Democrats will have a chance to repair the damage. But times have changed: they should not settle for restoring the status quo as it existed in 2024. Post-MAGA, Democrats can and should aim for a more comprehensive healthcare reform with the aim of achieving universal coverage…it would be much less controversial, I believe, to offer a public option — allowing Americans, including employers providing insurance to their employees, to buy into a Medicare-type system. Many people surely would avail themselves of that option. And if they like what they get, which they probably would, we could transition over time to a single-payer system without forcing Americans into it.” More here.

From “Trump’s own pollster hits him with devastating prediction about key voting bloc” by David McAfee at Raw Story:  “One of President Donald Trump’s longtime pollsters is warning that the working-class white voters who built his political movement are turning on him — and that their disillusionment could cost Republicans control of Congress this fall…John McLaughlin, who has polled for Trump for years, told The New York Times that those voters are fed up with the Republican Party and may simply stay home in November. Getting them to the polls is critical, he said, before delivering a blunt prediction: “If they don’t, we lose the House and the Senate.”…The warning came in a Times analysis that traced a remarkable collapse in Trump’s economic standing with white voters who don’t hold a college degree — the demographic that has anchored his coalition since 2016 and broke for him better than two to one in 2024…On the eve of the 2018 midterms, the paper found, those voters approved of Trump’s handling of the economy by margins of 30 points or more. Today, polls show them disapproving by anywhere from 14 points to north of 30…Recent surveys put his economic approval with the group across the 30s and 40s: 33 percent in a Fox News poll, 39 percent at CBS News, 40 percent in the NPR/PBS/Marist poll and 43 percent at CNN. On the cost of living specifically, the Times found just 36 percent approved. Fox pegged approval of his inflation handling at 25 percent…Pollsters in both parties told the paper the slide is being driven by stubbornly high prices for gas and groceries, Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran.” More here.

In “Why Is Trump Tanking in MAGA Country? These Dems Found a Good Answer,” Greg Sargent reports any The New Republic: “We learned this week that the Democratic-aligned group American Bridge plans to spend $50 million to help the party’s congressional candidates in this fall’s elections. It’s a whopping sum and a big gamble. The group’s announcement of its targeted seats turned heads in Democratic circles: They include House districts in some pretty pro-Trump areas in rural North Carolina, central Pennsylvania, and Iowa farm country…All of which raises a question: Are these really plausible pickup opportunities for Democrats? The selection of these seats, it turns out, is backed up by some detailed internal polling and research. The findings shed light on the party’s perennial debate about how to win back various working-class and Trump-curious constituencies—and offer reasons for cautious optimism…The research into these places—which was conducted by the Democratic firm BlueLabs for American Bridge and described to The New Republic—tells a somewhat complicated story. To start with, the most eye-opening finding is that a lot of voters in these red places blame Trump and the GOP for their economic woes…To gauge this, American Bridge modeled a target universe of voters in these regions, using survey research, vote history, and other techniques. This voter universe includes people souring on Trump (they voted for him but now disapprove), people deemed highly persuadable (not rigid partisans), and people who describe themselves as in some sense economically vulnerable.”

Sargent continues, “The pollsters then asked these pools of voters if they see the economy worsening and who they blame for it. The answers they got back from four states are striking:…

• In Iowa, 58 percent of these targeted voters see the economy worsening and blame Trump for it, and 56 percent blame the GOP.

• In Michigan, 63 percent of these voters blame Trump, and 61 percent blame the GOP.

• In North Carolina, 51 percent of these voters blame Trump, and 48 percent blame the GOP.

• In Pennsylvania, 54 percent of these voters blame Trump, while 57 percent blame the GOP.

…Drilling down further, the findings are very similar among that pool of voter groups within the specific House districts (all of which Trump won in 2024) that American Bridge is targeting in these states. Among them: two in Iowa (the 1st and 2nd), two in Michigan (the 4th and 10th), one in Ohio (the 7th), one in Pennsylvania (the 8th), and four in North Carolina (the 3rd, 5th, 9th, and 11th)…So what do these voters want? Well, among the targeted constituencies in these districts, the testing found, a certain type of economic messaging resonates. It blames insurance companies and other conglomerates for high medical and prescription drug costs and hits big corporations for price gouging and tax avoidance. It blames Trump and Republicans for allowing these things to happen. And finally, that messaging vows that Democrats will crack down on them.” More here.

Sam Levine reports that “FBI raid of Ohio voting rights group stokes fear of pre-midterm crackdown” at The Guardian, and writes: “The FBI raided the office of a voting rights group in Ohio on Thursday, prompting immediate concerns the Trump administration is cracking down on such organizations ahead of the midterm elections…FBI agents raided the Cleveland office of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a grassroots group that does voter registration work, said Prentiss Haney, a board member of the group. Agents seized computers and phones, he said, and also showed up at homes of people affiliated with the group throughout the state and interviewed them…“This raid is a full-on coordinated assault weaponizing the justice department and DHS against people who are fighting for working-class voters and Black voters to make sure they have access to the ballot,” Haney said in an interview…The agents appeared to be examining accusations of fraud relating to the 2024 election, Haney said, but it was not immediately clear what the specifics of the investigation were beyond that. The FBI’s office in Cleveland did not return a request for comment. Trump won the popular vote in Ohioin 2024, delivering him 17 electoral votes, and Bernie Moreno, a Republican senator, unseated Sherrod Brown, a longtime Democratic incumbent, in an expensive race that helped deliver the Senate to the GOP. The partisan balance of Ohio’s House seats did not change.” More here.

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.

From “Democrats don’t get why they’ve lost most working class voters” by Nicholas Jacobs at The Conversation: “Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who has become the left’s latest blue-collar savior, put the theory in its most unguarded form…“We are in a form of class war,” he says. “And if the Democratic Party is going to have a future with working people, it needs to pick the side of working people.”…The theory is all the same: Somewhere out there is a latent working-class majority, held together by shared economic grievances, waiting to be politically reassembled to vote for Democrats. The New Deal did it – Democrats can do it again…Since the early 1950s, the American National Election Studies has asked respondents whether they think of themselves as members of the working class. This article uses my analysis of that data…While a larger proportion of the electorate has obtained a college degree and household incomes have risen, the share of Americans who consider themselves working class has remained remarkably stable: roughly 35% of voters for the past 70 years, 38% in 2024…Working-class identity is something more durable and culturally grounded than a description of who isn’t a billionaire. It is a specific way of looking at the world…There are conventional ways to define the working class, but they often miss how people understand their own place in society. In the 2024 American National Election Studies, for example, 21% of those who identify as working class have a college degree, only 5% belong to a private-sector union, and 37% own stocks. Conversely, most Americans without a college degree do not identify as working class…Working-class voters have not become Republicans. Only in 2020 and 2024 – the first time in the survey’s history – did more working-class voters identify as Republican than Democrat, and even then by narrow margins…The data shows a working class that is politically homeless: estranged from the Democrats, not captured by the Republicans, stuck in the middle with diminishing attachment to either party.”

Jacobs continues, “So what drove them out? A segment of the progressive left has a ready answer: Democrats abandoned working-class voters economically – on trade, wages and industrial policy. Working-class voters responded rationally. Fix the economics and the coalition comes back…Trade is where the argument is strongest. In 1988, roughly 74% of both Democrats and working-class voters groups favored limits on imports to protect American jobs…By 2024, only 26% of Democrats favored limits, while a majority – 54% – of working-class voters continued to do so…Unlike most Democrats, many working-class communities do not see globalization in their interest. Running alongside the trade gap is a widening divide over values that no tariffs can fix…In 1984, Democrats and working-class voters broadly agreed that treating people more equally would mean fewer social problems. A divergence opened after 2008 and accelerated after 2016, with Democrats now 28 points more likely than working-class voters to think we should worry more about equality…In 1986, half of mainstream Democrats and a slightly smaller percentage of working-class voters agreed with the idea that Black Americans don’t succeed because they don’t try hard enough. By 2024, Democratic agreement had collapsed to 13%. Working-class voters declined too, but to 32%…The gap that opened between them is not primarily a story about rising working-class racial resentment. It is a story about the Democratic Party’s rapid post-2008 shift toward a worldview that places far greater explanatory weight on structural barriersand far less on individual effort and personal responsibility…Working-class voters, who historically have understood their own lives through a framework of hard work and earned reward, did not shift so dramatically.”

Jacobs adds, “On cultural questions, the pattern persists: Working-class voters did not move right in reactionary revolt. Democrats moved left…In 1986, similar levels of Democrats and working-class voters agreed with the statement “This country would have many fewer problems if there were more emphasis on traditional family ties.” By 2024 a 25-point gap emerged…On whether religion is an important part of their life: a near-zero gap through the early 1990s, but 17 points by 2024. On abortion, a 3-point gap in 1980 became 30 points in 2024. Regarding whether immigration levels should be increased, the two groups were virtually identical in 2000 – around 8% support – but by 2020 Democrats were at 48%, working-class voters at 24%…But even where working-class voters nominally agree with a Democratic policy goal, they don’t trust the institution being asked to deliver it – a distrust decades in the making…In 2024, more than three-quarters of voters who identify themselves as Democrats, but less than half of working-class voters, agreed with the statement that the law should allow abortions “always as a personal choice.” The two groups’ positions used to be much closer…In 1958, working-class voters and Democrats were within 5 points of each other on whether government wastes a lot of tax money. By 2024 that gap reached 27 points – not because working-class voters lurched toward anti-government extremism, but because mainstream Democrats became dramatically more trusting of government as an instrument of social change…Working-class voters are 17 points more likely than Democrats to say people like them have no say in what government does. In 2024, 88% of working-class voters and 75% of Democrats said government is run by a few big interests. Both groups agree the system is captured…Yet the Democratic policy response, invariably, is to expand the system.”

Jacobs concludes, “On support for expanding government – from healthcare to jobs to environmental programs – Democrats and working-class voters have diverged dramatically since the 1980s. By 2024, there were approval gaps of between 20 and 30 points on providing government health insurance, environmental spending and a guaranteed jobs program…On every major plank of the progressive economic agenda, Democrats are now substantially to the left of the workers they claim to champion…Working-class voters have been telling pollsters for 60 years that the political system doesn’t hear them. Democrats, over the same period, have grown more comfortable with the institutions working-class voters have increasingly less faith in.This distrust is the accumulated residue of specific experiences: deindustrialization that happened on government’s watch, trade deals that economists endorsed and workers paid for, a 2008 financial crisis response that saved the banks and foreclosed on their homes, an opioid epidemic that regulators missed entirely…To be fair, this is precisely what the new crop of reform candidates say they want to fix. The argument that the right candidate can move the needle is not crazy. Candidate quality matters. Personal trust can substitute for institutional trust, at least at the margins…But economic grievance politics is a very small slice of what working-class voters are telling us. The data documents a comprehensive, decades-long divergence in how working-class voters and mainstream Democrats understand fairness, government, personal responsibility and social change…Reducing that to class war jams working-class voters into a prefabricated progressive agenda rather than taking seriously what they are actually saying.”