What Working-Class Voters Really Want (in the Liberal Patriot) [View all]

Democrats appear to have rediscovered the working class in the wake of the 2024 election. Their dismal showing among these voters—both white and nonwhite—doomed Kamala Harris’s candidacy and got them, and the country, another term of Donald Trump. So now Democrats want those voters back, and they’re racking their brains trying to figure out how to sell their party to the working class. All factions of the party—from AOC and Bernie Sanders to the Blue Dogs—are pitching their approach as the way Democrats can bring these voters back into the fold.

But perhaps, instead of trying to message their way into the hearts of America’s working class, they should first ask: what do these voters really want? That’s harder than it sounds because it entails suspending your ideology—and any conception of what these voters should want—so that you can find out what they do want.

The point about ideology is very important. Right now, Democrats are dominated by the most ideological voters in the country—white college-educated voters. It’s no secret that Democrats have been doing increasingly well with white college-educated voters, even as they’ve been slipping with nonwhite and working-class (noncollege) voters. Between the 2012 and 2024 elections, Democratic performance among white college graduates improved by 17 points, while declining by 37 points among nonwhite working-class voters.

https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/what-working-class-voters-really