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Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

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Dems Pin Hopes on Trump’s Meltdown with Suburban Women

The 2024 Presidential campaign is still in the early stages. But the case for Democrats focusing strategy on winning suburban women keeps mounting, as Julia Manchester writes at The Hill:

Former President Trump increasingly looks like the favorite to win the GOP’s presidential nomination, but that strength masks what many Republicans see as a huge weakness against President Biden: Trump’s problems with suburban women.

All of Trump’s vulnerabilities with the key demographic were on high display during a rowdy town hall last week with CNN, where at one point the former president called moderator Kaitlan Collins a “nasty person.”

Trump also mocked a woman who won a civil lawsuit against him for sexual battery and defamation, and he dodged questions on abortion — a top issue that has increasingly been a strength for Democrats since the Supreme Court, which includes three justices who Trump nominated, overturned Roe v. Wade.

However, “The CNN town hall came just days after a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed Trump leading Biden in a general election, sparking worry among Democrats,” Manchester notes. “According to the survey, Trump leads Biden by 7 points in a hypothetical matchup.” Manchester adds,

….Suburban women voters have also largely turned their backs on Republicans since the former president was elected in 2016. According to CBS News exit polling from 2018, 53 percent of suburban women voters said they voted for Democrats in 2018, up from 47 percent in 2014 and 51 percent in 2016. In 2020, Biden won 54 percent of suburban voters in general, according to the Pew Research Center. And in last year’s midterm elections, suburban voters, including women in this group, helped deliver major victories to Democrats in key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia, with many of Trump’s endorsed candidates facing defeat.

“Many of those women the first time around they voted for him because he was a Republican, and we know that party is the best predictor of a vote,” Walsh said. “But the lived experience of Donald Trump turned them away from the Republican Party.”

“In the same way that he kept the Republican Party from winning big in the midterm elections this year, then he will make it difficult for the Republican Party in a general election,” she said.

On top of that, many have pointed to how the Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn Roe v. Wade — the 1973 landmark ruling that federally legalized abortion — swayed women voters in the midterms. According to the Brookings Institution, 47 percent of female voters felt angry about the decision, and 83 percent of those women voted for a Democratic candidate.

Nonetheless, says Manchester, “It’s still unclear and too far out to know what role abortion access will play in 2024. It’s also unclear what role the economy will play in voters’ decision-making because it’s normally a top-of-mind issue. Republicans have continued to hit Biden on this as inflation continues and interest rates rise. The Washington-Post ABC News poll also shows Trump dominating Biden on handling the economy, with 54 percent of Americans saying Trump did a better job of handling the economy than Biden has done in his term so far. Only 36 percent said they preferred Biden’s handling.”

Manchester concludes, “I know Biden’s poll numbers are not great, but at the end of the day, when you’re really looking at whatever we watch in this campaign, if it is Donald Trump, it may not be a vote for Joe Biden, but a vote just to please make it stop with Donald Trump,” Walsh said.”

Manchester didn’t probe the political fallout from the epidemic of mass shootings this year. But suburban women have to be worried about the GOP’s foot-dragging on gun safety reforms, as well as the party’s dependence on NRA contributions.


Why Dems Should Calm Down About Biden’s Age, Early Polls

Walter Shapiro has a zinger and insight-rich post, “Democrats, Don’t Panic! Seriously, Don’t”  up at The New Republic’s The Soapbox.

Shapiro argues that “Running protest candidates to act out policy frustrations is a luxury that the Democrats can ill afford at a time when the Republican Party has abandoned conservatism for trumped-up authoritarianism. A nomination fight against an incumbent president is an invitation to general election defeat, as Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush found out.”

“Immigration remains a can’t-win issue for the Democrats,” Shapiro claims. “Every president (with the possible exception of Trump) is blamed for failing to solve insolvable issues. And the crisis at the Mexican border defies workable and humane solutions. No matter how far Biden tacks to the right (and suddenly the buzzword of this administration is “enforcement”), Trump and the Fox News megaphone will demonize the issue and rail against “open borders.” Short of actually building Trump’s phantom wall, there is no plausible way for Biden to avoid being permanently on the defensive on immigration.”

In terms of his image,  Shapiro gets brutal: “Biden will never be a compelling candidate. That was not his persona when he limped through the 2020 Iowa caucuses (fourth-place finish) and the New Hampshire primary (fifth place). As Biden insiders will privately concede, the pandemic helped Biden in the 2020 general election since it gave him an excuse to limit public campaigning. President Biden, to be honest, is boring. Last Friday, he gave his first TV interview since declaring his candidacy in April with a three-minute video. His White House conversation with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle produced little news and less excitement….The combination of Biden’s workmanlike oratory and the unprecedented ability of Americans to change channels means that this president cannot command a national audience for anything less than a flying saucer landing on the White House lawn.” Further,

“Television ads, no matter how slickly produced, will not create a “morning in America” mood for Biden. A saturation ad blitz this early in the political season would require funds well beyond the current resources of the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee. And anything less than Michael Bloomberg–level spending will only be seen by hard-core viewers of CNN and MSNBC.” Also,

“Try as he might, Biden cannot defuse the age issue with a clever quip or a poll-tested boast. In his MSNBC interview, Biden argued, “I have acquired a hell of a lot of wisdom and know more than the vast majority of people. And I’m more experienced than anybody that’s ever run for the office.” The problem is that voters are not only judging the Biden of today but also imagining an 86-year-old Biden in the White House in 2028.”

Now for the good news: “But every election is a choice between two candidates, not a quest for a modern-day Pericles. And whether GOP voters choose Trump the Sexual Abuser or another candidate from the right-wing fever swamps, that nominee is going to come with more baggage than a 1930s movie star on a trans-Atlantic crossing.” In addition, says Shapiro,

“Unless the GOP miraculously picks someone like Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor and ardent anti-Trumper, the Republican nominee will find it impossible to locate the political center even with a guide and a compass. From abortion to book banning, the Republicans are saddled with the politically unpalatable side of almost every emotionally potent issue except immigration. And if the nominee is Ron DeSantis, he may never live down the Peggy Noonan line that he “carries a vibe … that he might unplug your life support to re-charge his cellphone.”

If the Trump resurrection lasts until the Republican convention, negative partisanship will become a powerful force for the Democrats. Biden may be old and boring, but he has not been judged by a civil jury to be a sexual abuser. Biden may be old and boring, but he is not facing indictment in New York or maybe soon in Atlanta. He simply has to ask voters, in Reaganesque fashion, “Do you feel better about Trump today than you did four years ago?” The question, for almost all the voters who handed Biden the 2020 election, will answer itself as they contemplate an unhinged president motivated only by ego and revenge.”

President Biden may not be Mr. Excitement. But given the flaws of most of his opponents, he is beginning to look like Mr. Sane and Stable – which is not such a bad image at the launch of his 2024 campaign.


A Cornerstone Issue for Dems

It ought to be obvious by now. But just in case it isn’t, Jeet Heer explains why “Democrats Should Make Abortion a Cornerstone Issue” at The Nation:

Ballot initiatives are the best electoral bellwether for where the abortion fight stands in the United States in the post-Dobbs era. There were ballot initiatives in six states in 2022 and they revealed a remarkable consensus that cut across the usual regional divides: The pro-choice side won not just in blue states like Vermont and California but also in purple states like Michigan—and even in very red states like Montana, Kansas, and Kentucky. In an otherwise polarized country, abortion has become the opposite of a wedge issue. It doesn’t matter if voters are Black or white, women or men, Democrats or Republicans, college-educated or high school dropouts: Overwhelming majorities of most major demographics support a woman’s right to control her own fertility as previously enshrined under Roe v. Wade. When given a chance to vote for it, they will vote for reproductive freedom.

Heer dissects the evolving Republican confusion and splintering on abortion rights, then says that “Democrats, however, face their own divisions on abortion.” Heer adds,

In a wide-ranging survey in New York, Rebecca Traister noted that the party is torn “between a calcified leadership that remains ambivalent about making abortion access truly central to a Democratic rhetorical and policy framework, and frustrated politicians who see the fight for reproductive autonomy as both a moral and strategic linchpin.” The main example of “calcified leadership” is Joe Biden, accurately described by Traister as “a Catholic boy from Scranton, first sworn into the Senate weeks before Roe was decided in 1973, who spent the early decades of his career as an opponent of abortion rights.” Over time, Biden has moved into line with his party’s position on abortion—but only half-heartedly and reluctantly.“Calcified leadership” can also be seen in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where the health problems of the octogenarian Dianne Feinstein have kneecapped Democratic efforts to rebalance the courts.

As opposed to this “calcified leadership,” Traister points to younger politicians like Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer who are pushing to make abortion a cornerstone issue.

Abortion rights may not be the issue of broadest concern for 2024 voters. It could be easily subordinated to economic trends, depending on how the economy performs over the next 18 months, or perhaps even gun violence. But abortion rights will likely remain the issue on which the Democrats have the largest advantage in polls, even in red states, and Democrats should not be shy about making the most out of their edge on the issue.


Why Biden, Dems Must Focus on Hispanic Voters

From “Hispanic voters have soured on Biden. Now he needs to win them back” by Marissa Martinez at Politico:

The stakes for Biden are high. As he launches his reelection, there are doubts about whether he’ll be able to replicate that multiracial excitement, even if he might face off against Trump again. His favorability has dropped across the board since last year, falling nearly 30 points among Latinos in some polling.

There’s evidence that Hispanic voters helped deliver Democrats big Senate wins of 2022 in Arizona and Nevada. A coordinated effort by Democratic groups focused on turning out more voters in a non-presidential election year and ramping up spending on Spanish-language advertising. By doing so, the demographic stretched several margins during the midterms, tipping the scale for Democratic senate and gubernatorial candidates. Hispanic voters are the second-largest voting bloc in the country, which means improving margins among this group can pay dividends in key states.

So what should Democrats do to hold a stable majority of Hispanic voters? As Martinez writes,

“They need to engage these voters more deeply, earlier, and focus on strengthening their economic message,” said Janet Murguía, president of Latino advocacy organization UnidosUS. “Not all of the achievements and outcomes and impacts that have resulted from the Biden administration’s proposals and policies are clearly understood to be connected to the president.”….Murguía said the party’s strategy should focus on touting Biden’s economic policies, consistently the top issue among Latino voters. The impact of the child tax credit and pandemic-era stimulus checks were important for financially boosting Hispanic households, she added. Though those policies are all in the rearview mirror. Officials close to the campaign said lower healthcare costs, job creation and decreasing unemployment rates will also be top messaging priorities this year.

It won’t be easy, as Martinez explains:

Though the Biden administration is less than a week into the campaign, some polls show the slight majority of Hispanic registered voters have a negative impression of the president. He has an average of about 35 percent favorability across the last three relevant Quinnipiac polls with Hispanic voters. That’s even with his performance among white voters, where he had a 36 percent favorability rate within the same period.

Those numbers among Latinos are a stark drop from a sweeping poll conducted by UnidosUS following the 2022 midterms that showed Hispanic support at a 64 percent approval rate compared to 42 percent of white respondents who approved of Biden’s performance.

However, “Favorability at this point doesn’t always track with vote share,” Martinez notes. “Former President Barack Obama’s approval fell to 49 percent at the end of 2011, though he rebounded to garner 71 percent of the Hispanic vote during his 2012 reelection.

Yet, Dems should keep in mind that unforeseen factors like a spike in inflation can sour voters of any and every community. There are encouraging signs that President Biden is prioritizing Latino voters, including his designating Julie Chávez Rodríguez, granddaughter of Cesar Chavez, as his campaign manager. And by now, we can hope at least that President Biden understands that it is not enough to propose and enact popular reforms and legislation; Dems have to remind voters that they passed all of these measures and their opponents tried to kill all of the reforms — and that’s what Republicans will do if voters let them.


Kahlenberg: Building a Working-Class Coalition Beyond Identity Politics

An excerpt from “Working-Class Politics. How to Get Beyond the Identity Trap to Bring About Big Social Change” by Richard D. Kahlenberg at The Liberal Patriot:

There’s been a lot of talk about Joe Biden’s promulgation of a “blue-collar blueprint” for America. The commitment is a natural for Amtrak Joe, who placed a bust of Bobby Kennedy, one of the last national Democrats to show strong appeal with working-class white voters as well as with black and Hispanic Americans, in the Oval Office.

But if Biden is serious about advancing a blue-collar agenda, he needs to do more than push a series of concrete ideas to improve the material conditions of working-class Americans—important as those programs are for people. He must also distance himself from the race essentialism on the far left that elevates racial disparities over economic inequality and pushes divisive ideas that alienate many working-class voters of all racial and ethnic backgrounds.

That’s the big takeaway message of a significant new book, No Politics But Class Politics, by University of Pennsylvania political scientist Adolph Reed and University of Illinois literary critic Walter Benn Michaels. Michaels and Reed argue that, “Racism is real and anti-racism is both admirable and necessary, but extant racism isn’t what principally produces our inequality and anti-racism won’t eliminate it.”

Reed, who is black, and Michaels, who is white, are leftists who are far more radical than Biden and most Democrats (or me.) But the series of essays and interviews compiled in their book has an important overall message: the fashionable views of highly-educated whites on how to address racial inequality are backfiring, particularly for poor black people.

Kahlenberg has lots more to say about the ideas in “No Politics But Class Politics,” and you can read it here.


Hasan: Dems Should Work on Emotional Appeals

From Salon.com: “When it comes to winning elections, #MSNBC journalist Mehdi Hasan says emotion is a far better motivator than facts. This is why Trump won in 2016 and it’s why many Democrats struggle to connect with voters. “I’ve never met anyone who goes into a voting booth based on having gone through all the policy documents,” Hasan said on “Salon Talks.” Instead, you have to talk to the heart. Watch more of Mehdi Hasan’s full “Salon Talks” episode to hear about his new book “Win Every Argument” and his strategies for fighting misinformation”: https://www.salon.com/tv/video/9fdfll


Dionne: How the GOP Became the NRA’s Gun-Worshipping Toadies

Some excerpts from E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s column, “Gun absolutists don’t trust democracy because they know they’re losing” at The Washington Post in response to the National Rifle Association convention in Indianapolis:

That the Republican Party is now wholly owned by the gun lobby was witnessed not only by the eagerness of Pence, Trump and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson to pander in person at the gathering self-described as “14 acres of guns & gear.” Other would-be 2024 GOP nominees — among them, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) — felt obligated to bow before the gun worshipers by video.

The nonsense floated in Indianapolis — based on the idea that our national addiction to high-powered weaponry has nothing to do with America’s unique mass shooting problem — speaks to a deep ailment in our democracy. It has both partisan and (perverse) philosophical roots.

Dionne argues that “The GOP’s conversion to gun absolutism is the heart of the problem. But politics doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It often follows from cultural and moral innovations.” He notes that the NRA became “engulfed by extreme ideologues” in 1977, and has since then taken America and the U.S. Supreme Court down “a dangerous new path.” Also,

For roughly four decades, American conservatism has identified firearms as a marker of a manly rejection of urban cosmopolitanism and gun ownership as a right more important than any other….It comes down to a variant of the old Maoist slogan: All liberty grows out of the barrel of a gun. When Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani told a White House rally before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, “Let’s have trial by combat,” he was speaking for a sentiment that runs deep in the gun rights movement….

Undercutting the ability of voters to cast ballots is another habit of those who privilege the Second Amendment over all the others. As Politico’s Kathy Gilsinan reported, Tennessee’s election laws allow gun permits as voter IDs but not college student identifications. There is no waiting time to buy a gun, but citizens have to register at least 30 days before an election. “It is absolutely easier to get a gun than to vote in Tennessee,” Democratic state Sen. Charlane Oliver told Gilsinan…

The good news in this story is that radical opposition to sensible gun laws is not embedded in the American character. It’s the product of an ideology that overtook a less dogmatic form of conservatism and seized control of a political party.

In his conclusion, Dionne writes, “With Americans increasingly angry over mass shootings — the latest outrage came Saturday with the killing of four at a teen’s birthday party in Alabama — the era of gun absolutism could finally be over, if the popular will on guns is allowed to prevail. But this depends on defending the democracy that so many, at the Indianapolis gathering and in Tennessee, deeply mistrust.”


Elizabeth Warren: Better Economic ‘Modeling’ Urgently Needed for Child Care, Social Investments

The following article excerpt by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is cross-posted from The American Prospect:

If you’re wondering why the U.S. has failed so miserably in developing a workable child care and early-childhood education system, consider the role of economic modeling.

In 2021, when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its much-anticipated score for the cost of the child care provisions in the Build Back Better Act, it produced one headline number: $381.5 billion. This was what CBO estimated as the amount of money the government would lay out for child care.

But that budget score badly missed the mark on the net cost of the program. It did not account for any of the savings predicted by reams of academic research on the long-term economic benefits of child care. Nothing about how kids with high-quality early care do better in school, stay out of trouble, and have higher lifetime earnings. Nothing about the increased tax revenues generated by mamas and daddies who could now work full-time. Nothing about the mountains of data that show that when mothers are held out of the workforce in their early years, their lifetime earnings and even their security in retirement are seriously undercut—something universal child care could reverse. And nothing about the impact of higher wages for child care workers—wages that would mean many of those workers would be paying more taxes and wouldn’t need SNAP, Medicaid, housing supplements, and other help offered to the lowest-paid people in the country. In other words, according to CBO, investing in our children and filling a wheelbarrow with $381.5 billion in cash (a big wheelbarrow) and setting it on fire would have exactly the same impact on our national budget and our nation.

To every CEO of a Fortune 500 company or owner of a small neighborhood restaurant, budget scoring like this must sound like a crazy way of doing business. After all, investments don’t just have costs—they also have benefits. That’s why companies invest in things like building factories, converting to green energy, or offering employee benefits, even if they have to book a big cost up front. Those corporate executives don’t take on big-ticket projects out of the goodness of their hearts; they take them on because they want to boost profits, retain workers, and improve the company’s long-term outlook.

(Click here for the rest of the article)


Is the Democratic Party Too Far Left? Hughes and Teixeira Debate Rep. Bowman and Garza

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from Intelligence2 Debates:

Is the Democratic Party Too Far Left?

I participated in an Intelligence Squared debate on this question. On the affirmative: me and Coleman Hughes. On the negative: Congressman Jamaal Bowman and Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter. See who you think won!

“Defund the police. Abolish ICE. Redistribute the wealth. These are but a few of the one-liners that have emanated from the liberal wing of the Democratic party in recent years. With the emergence of “The Squad” in 2018 – or what began as four Democratic congresswomen who sought to push their party further left – liberal lawmakers have grown more prevalent in recent election cycles. And with just a slim 51-49 Democrat majority in the Senate, progressives are now eyeing 2024 as a way to strengthen their broader influence. By doing so, some say, the party risks aligning itself with ever more extreme politics, alienating moderate voices, and straying from what made it successful in the past. When President Bill Clinton was in office, they note, only 25 percent of Democrats described themselves as liberal; another 25 percent called themselves conservative, while an overwhelming 48 percent were self-described moderates. The equating of liberalism with Democratic policies, they argue, is a recent and dangerous trend, which makes governing more difficult.

Others argue that the party is finally poised to make good what constitutes the reemergence of the political left, long stymied by the compromising influence of Washington and beltway politics. What’s more, they argue, this renewed focus on issues such as race, climate, income inequality has not only begun to address in earnest issues once paid only superficial notice, but is also electrifying the nation’s progressive base in ways that can win elections.

It is in this context that we debate the following question: Is The Democratic Party Too Far Left?
Arguing Yes: Coleman Hughes (Conversations with Coleman), Ruy Teixeira (American Enterprise Institute)
Arguing No: Congressman Jamaal Bowman (NY-16), Alicia Garza (Co-founder of Black Lives Matter)
Emmy award-winning journalist John Donvan moderates.”

Click on the Intelligence2 Debates link to hear the podcast.


Teixeira: Republicans Really Are the Party of the Working Class. Why Doesn’t That Bother the Democrats More?

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Republicans are, in a strict quantitative sense, the party of the American working class. That is, they currently get more working-class (noncollege) votes than the Democrats. That was true in 2022 when Republicans carried the nationwide working-class House vote by 13 points. That was true in 2020, when Trump carried the nationwide working-class presidential vote by 4 points over Biden. Moreover, modeled estimates by the States of Change project indicate that Trump carried the working-class vote in 35 out of 50 states, including in critical states for the Democrats like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as in states that are slipping away from the party like Florida, Iowa, Ohio and Texas.

Another way of looking at this trend is by Congressional district. Currently Democrats dominate the more affluent districts while Republicans are cleaning up in the poorer districts. Marcy Kaptur, who represents Ohio’s working-class 9thdistrict and is the longest-serving female member of the House in American history, says of this pattern:

You could question yourself and say, well, the blue districts are the wealthiest districts, so it shows that the Democrats are doing better to lift people’s incomes. The other way you could look at it is: how is it possible that Republicans are representing the majority of people who struggle? How is that possible?

How indeed. Kaptur has a two page chart that arrays Congressional districts from highest median income to lowest with partisan control color-coded. The first page is heavily dominated by blue but the second, poorer page is a sea of red. You can access the chart here. It’s really quite striking. Overall, Republicans represent 152 of the 237 Congressional seats where the district median income trails the national figure.

The same pattern of Republican domination of the working-class vote appears to be developing as we move toward 2024. The latest poll for which an overall college/noncollege split is available is the March Harvard/Harris poll. That poll, in which Trump has a small lead over Biden in a hypothetical 2024 matchup, has Trump carrying the working-class vote by 10 points. In a DeSantis-Biden matchup, DeSantis has a similar lead over Biden and an identical 10-point advantage among working-class voters. (There is a slightly more recent Quinnipiac poll that also includes these 2024 matchups, but the public materials only provide a white college/noncollege split.). Earlier polls from this year—where data are available—replicate this pattern of Trump and DeSantis leading Biden among working-class voters.

Why doesn’t this bother Democrats more? After all, they are America’s party of the left and were historically America’s party of the working class. I think part of the reason is that the largest part of the working class, the white working class, is now viewed quite negatively throughout much of the party. They can be put, as Hillary Clinton unforgettably phrased it, in a “basket of deplorables”—“racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic”—and therefore justly ignored by right-thinking Democrats.

Democrats also comfort themselves that they still have very strong support among the nonwhite working class. But of course strong support among a sector of the working class does not make Democrats the party of the overall working class, however much Democrats may wish that to be so. Moreover, in recent elections Democrats’ hold on the nonwhite working class has also been slipping, which is contributing to the Democrats’ widening deficit among the working class as a whole.

In addition, the very supposition that lies behind the dismissal of the white working class is itself suspect. A recent column by Tom Edsall highlights the work of political scientists Justin Grimmer, William Marble and Cole Tanigawa-Lau on estimating the contribution of voting blocs to Trump’s support in 2016 and 2020. In a recent paper, they write:

Decomposing the change in support observed in the ANES [American National Election Study] data, we show that respondents in 2016 and 2020 reported more moderate views, on average, than in previous elections. As a result, Trump improved the most over previous Republicans by capturing the votes of a larger number of people who report racially moderate views.

Grimmer expanded on this point in Edsall’s article:

Our findings provide an important correction to a popular narrative about how Trump won office. Hillary Clinton argued that Trump supporters could be placed in a “basket of deplorables.” And election-night pundits and even some academics have claimed that Trump’s victory was the result of appealing to white Americans’ racist and xenophobic attitudes. We show this conventional wisdom is (at best) incomplete. Trump’s supporters were less xenophobic than prior Republican candidates’, less sexist, had lower animus to minority groups, and lower levels of racial resentment. Far from deplorables, Trump voters were, on average, more tolerant and understanding than voters for prior Republican candidates.

To say this is not how most Democrats think about the Trump-voting white working class is to considerably understate the case. Yet that is what the Grimmer et. al. data say. Notably, the other academics canvassed by Edsall can find little fault with their analysis, despite the post-2016 role of political science in cementing the conventional wisdom on racially resentful Trump supporters. One might summarize their reaction as “now that I think about it, these guys are probably right.” Better late than never I suppose.

All this suggests the Democrats should not be quite so blasé about no longer being the party of the American working class. That they are not represents a real failing on their part, not a noble stand against the barbarians at the gates. Much in American politics going forward will depend on whether Republicans can further strengthen their hold on the working class or whether Democrats can reclaim some of their lost support and become, once again, the party of America’s working class.

Consider what might happen if Republicans do make further progress among working-class voters. Between 2016 and 2020, the Democratic advantage among the nonwhite working class slipped quite a bit while the Democratic deficit among white working-class voters actually improved slightly. But what if both parts of the working class moved in tandem against the Democrats in 2024 and beyond?

This can be tested using States of Change data. Working-class preferences by detailed subgroup (race, gender, age) nationally and within states for 2020 were estimated and then moved toward the GOP by 10 margin points (+5 Republican/-5 Democratic). These preferences (with all else from 2020 held constant) were then applied to the projected structure of the eligible electorate in 2024 and subsequent elections.

In 2024, this shift toward Republicans among the overall working class produces a solid 312-226 GOP electoral vote majority. The states that move into the GOP column are Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada by 3 points, Arizona and Georgia by 4 points and Wisconsin by 5 points. Republicans also carry the popular vote, albeit by just a point.

Thereafter, the GOP starts to lose the popular vote but continues to win the electoral vote through 2040. If that doesn’t concentrate the mind among Democrats, I don’t know what will.