Opinion: Democrats have a 2028 problem: 'Left-behind' Americans feel abandoned by them [View all]

(Atlanta Journal-Constitution) -snip- Over the last 50 years, Democrats have increasingly supported policies “compensating losers” to mitigate economic harm to the working class and the poor who frequently live in these “left-behind” communities.

Democrats strongly advocated redistributive policies — higher taxes for the rich to pay for health care or tax credits for the poor and working class. In a paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, authors Ilyana Kuziemko, Nicolas Longuet Marx and Suresh Naidu, however, found that this approach is more favored by college-educated voters than by poor and working-class voters without a college degree.

Non-college-educated voters prefer pre-distribution policies that support unions, a more worker-friendly trade policy and higher wages.

https://www.ajc.com/opinion/2025/08/democrats-have-a-2028-problem-left-behind-americans-feel-abandoned-by-them/