The White Working Class Is Not Sold On Biden, But Will It Abandon Trump In The COVID-Election?

Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg recently watched a series of focus groups of white working class voters in rural Wisconsin, the Mahoning Valley region in Ohio, northern Maine and suburban Macomb County, Michigan, all swing areas where Trump did well. Vote-rich Macomb County, for example, gave Trump a 53.6-42.1% victory over Hillary in 2016, after going for Obama both times he ran. Trump won the northern Maine congressional district, which also voted for Obama twice, by an astounding 10 points-- 51.4% to 41.1%. In 2018 though, the district ousted its Republican congressman and elected, Jared Golden, a Democratic state legislator in his place.

Greenberg wrote that what he watched told him that "the heartbreaking health care crisis that is ravaging working-class and rural communities threatens to cut short Donald Trump’s political career, and demands a forceful response from opposition Democrats. It will teach big lessons about how to reach working people who are struggling, regardless of color." He shared his findings with the American Prospect, noting that "In 2016, a white working-class revolt enabled Trump to win [working class] men by an unimaginable 48 points and women by 27. But disillusionment was real in the midterms: The Republican House margin dropped 13 points across the white working class. In the new poll, Trump lost a further 6 points with white working-class women, where Biden only trailed Trump by 8 points (52 to 44 percent). While Trump has been throwing a lot of red meat to his base, white working-class men have not been dislodged from their trajectory, as Trump’s margin eroded another 4 points."

These are mostly low-wage families, many with children raised by a single parent. They are consumed with rising opioid deaths and disabilities and a deadly expensive health care system. That was a big part of why they voted for Donald Trump in 2016: so he could end Obamacare and its costly mandate, and deliver affordable health insurance for all. When he failed to do so, many voted against the Republicans in the midterms.

But the pandemic was the perfect storm. I have never seen such a poignant discussion of the health and disability problems facing families and their children, the risks they faced at work, and the prospect of even higher health care and prescription drug costs. The final straw was a president who battled not for the “forgotten Americans,” but for himself, the top one percent, and the biggest, greediest companies.

That is why most in the Zoom focus groups pulled back from President Trump. Three-quarters of these voters supported Trump in 2016, but less than half planned to vote for him now. Even those who still supported him did not push back when other participants expressed anger with his doing nothing about health care, fostering hatred and racism, dividing the country, siding with the upper classes, and having no plan for COVID-19. This is a life-and-death issue for them, as much as nearly any other group in American society.

The same voters were still very cautious about Joe Biden, who seemed old and not very strong, but most importantly offered the prospect of only minor changes to the health care system and seemed unlikely to challenge the power of the top one percent. Like lots of other working people, they are looking for a leader who will make big changes in health care, fight for working people over big business, and unite the country to defeat the current economic and public-health crisis.

Working-class anger with the establishment after the financial crisis of 2008 ran deep into the Democratic base of Blacks, Hispanics, unmarried women, and millennials, too. Many were not initially enthusiastic about the Affordable Care Act, and in election after election failed to rally fully for Democratic candidates until the 2018 midterms, when Democrats ran on “health care, health care, health care!” The pandemic may allow progressives to battle for working people, regardless of color.

In today's working-class and rural communities, health care is everything. In introductory remarks, participants in the focus groups went right to the personal health care crises they were facing every day.

“My wife is disabled,” said one man from Wisconsin. “My daughter has 30 percent immune system left so she’s bouncing around from doctor to doctor and the wife says don’t bring [the pandemic] home.” Another Wisconsin man spoke of his terminally ill seven-year-old son. A woman in Maine explained how she nearly bled to death and had a $24,000 medical bill “on my credit report for who knows how long.” One woman from Ohio had two kids with autism, and another had a grandson with allergies, requiring access to a lifesaving EpiPen. “I haven’t been able to get him one for the last three years, I can’t afford it... my insurance won’t cover it,” the woman said. Prices have skyrocketed for EpiPens and remain stubbornly high.

As I was observing the Zoom group, I initially wondered whether the focus group recruiter had used some specialized list to find the participants. But then I checked the census data on disabilities.

Across the country, 12.6 percent of the population has disabilities, rising to 15.1 percent in rural areas. Black and Native American populations are more likely to have disabilities than their white counterparts. The rate is over a quarter for those 65 to 74 years old and half of those over 75 years-- all groups that are overrepresented in these rural areas. And structural racism has played a powerful role here: 20 percent of Blacks with disabilities were employed at the beginning of this year, compared to 30 percent of whites and Hispanics with disabilities.

Then I looked at census data for the congressional districts where these sessions were being held. It was a new window into America in the pandemic. In suburban Macomb County, the disability rate looks like the rural areas, with 14 percent of both whites and Blacks disabled. In northern Maine, the numbers show one in five with disabilities, slightly more for whites. In Ohio’s Sixth Congressional District, both one in five whites and Blacks are disabled. And seniors in these areas are even more disabled than other rural Americans.



TRUMP KNEW IN FEBRUARY-- AND LIED TO THE PUBLIC


So COVID violently brought together the personal health crises of these people and the failed and corrupted government response, breaking their emotional bond with Trump.

Just throw out the words “health care,” and people relayed a train of horrors: a “$16,000 deductible,” employers throwing them off health insurance, “ridiculous” premiums, a $400 bill for their asthma medicine paid for out of pocket. They spoke of the frustrations of making too much money to be eligible for Medicaid but not enough to stay in the solid middle class. They explained how people avoid treatment because they can’t pay the associated costs. “The way we deliver health care is just unbelievable,” said one woman from Michigan, “the amount of waste and how much it costs to let people go bankrupt to pay for medical bills.”

Most of the respondents live on the edge in a virtual “minimum wage” economy, where companies don’t care about their employees and look just to enrich themselves. “You’re just a number now,” said one Ohio woman. They fight for every dime, as they are being overwhelmed by a health care crisis that they recognize Donald Trump has failed to fix. And importantly, for working families outside poverty, the health care reforms passed by the Democrats-- the Affordable Care Act and insurance on the health care exchanges-- just were not much help.

Discussion of the Affordable Care Act did not sound ideological, as they talked about their direct experience with insurance on the exchanges, which in the words of one woman “costs a lot of money and doesn’t pay for much of anything.” The health care system is failing them, and they want someone to fix it. And Joe Biden’s rhetoric has not been very reassuring that he would make big changes. “He’s been vague on health care,” one woman from Wisconsin said. “I want to know the specifics of what he’ll do to make it better.”

These working-class and rural swing voters voted overwhelmingly for Trump, but their response to him is now profoundly shaped by what has happened in the COVID-19 crisis. They think he failed to take the virus seriously and has just made a mess of it. They think he is failing at the most important issue for them.

What was striking is how the usual Trump deflect-and-blame strategy no longer works with these swing voters. “It seems like a lot of the stuff he’s saying could be proven wrong,” said one man from Wisconsin. “He just won’t admit where things are, he’s out of touch with reality,” said another woman. “It’s just embarrassing to have a country with the highest COVID cases, highest COVID deaths,” said a man in Michigan. “We’re supposed to be the leader in the world and we completely fumbled the ball on this.”

Respondents despaired about the lack of a national plan of action, with everyone “just left on their own.” Meanwhile, there was dismay that the president gave more care to his family’s businesses than the rest of the nation. One woman theorized that he didn’t shut down domestic travel “because he owns hotels.” These participants are paying a lot of attention to the position of Trump’s family in the administration and how the bailouts and loans are benefiting his family business, his cronies, and the top one percent.

At the same time, they are on a financial knife’s edge, worried about being one bad break away from being homeless. The focus groups happened after the $600 federal unemployment benefit ended, and those in the groups who were out of work despaired of getting by without that. Nearly all of them supported Trump in 2016 because he was a businessman who would grow the economy. But now they’re scared about the economic damage. Trump reminding these voters of his great economic successes before the pandemic fell flat. His economic bravado was not reassuring at a terrifying moment. “I remember my father watching the news and crying, and I find myself crying sometimes when I watch the news,” related a woman from Wisconsin. “And I think, oh god, I’m turning into my parents. You have no choice. The things you see are gut-wrenching.”

In emails we asked the participants to send to President Trump, you can feel that the spirit that led them to join the working-class revolt is just broken. While some hope he will get back in the right direction, most used their email to express their deep disillusionment. You can feel that they wanted a president who didn’t divide the country and make it a “laughingstock” (two writers used that exact word) internationally. They wanted a president who put the interests of the people, not just big business, first.

“I supported you in the beginning over Hillary but in the end unfortunately, you show me you’re just not for the people,” wrote one man from Wisconsin. “You lied to the American people about COVID,” wrote another. “You are everything that is wrong with America, you have effectively ruined this country,” added a woman from Ohio. “Congrats, you suck.”

It is critical to listen for what they did not say: “What an ass I was to vote for that guy in the last election.” They did not regret or say they made a mistake. All working Americans have been in financial trouble since the 2008 crash, and rising health care problems and disabilities, health care costs and deductibles, and empowered insurance and pharmaceutical companies were an explosive brew. It is why many working people voted for Trump in 2016. It is why many working-class Democrats of color and millennials failed to turn out and defend Obamacare in midterm elections and in 2016. All these voters had reasons for those choices.

COVID has shattered so many lives, but also seemingly insurmountable political barriers. The great majority of working people, regardless of color, are desperate for a government that stops taking direction from the pharmaceutical companies, and brings the boldest feasible changes to our health care system.

Western Riverside County (CA-42) is one of the fastest growing areas in southern California-- and one of the last southern California districts with a Republican member of Congress, in this case "Crooked" Ken Calvert. In 2016, Trump won the district, although by smaller margins than McCain or Romney. Still, his 53.4% to 41.4% win over Hillary was substantial. In 2018, the anti-red wave wasn't big enough to dislodge Calvert. This year, though, the Democrats nominated a better candidate, independent minded progressive Liam O'Mara. His district shares a lot of traits with the districts Greenberg was looking at. There is a white plurality and nearly 40% of the adults did not go beyond high school. About 21% are blue collar workers and 44% are sales and service workers. Liam had quite a lot to say about it, as you might expect. Please read it-- and then consider contributing to his campaign by clicking on the Bluer California thermometer below.

There is a lot of anger in the Inland Empire. The biggest challenges Democrats have faced out here have to do with the targets of that anger. Lacking the populist energy nationally to focus it on the élites who have kept wages low and costs high, too much of the population has been susceptible to fearmongering about immigration and crime. In election after election, Calvert has been all-too-happy to shift the blame for his policies onto working class brown and black people, maintaining a firm lock on the working class white vote in the district.

A couple of key factors now threaten that strategy, both in 2020 and long term. The first is demography. While white voters remain solidly in the majority for the district, they are not as monolithic in their views, with many more recent migrants from other parts of southern California attracted by lower housing costs. And the district is a lot more diverse than it once was, with large immigrant communities from Asia, and with Hispanic people making up more than a third of the total.

The other important change is to the national conversation on economics. It is true that Biden is exactly the kind of milquetoast neoliberal who has said he cares about the people but delivers mainly for the super rich, and he will not excite people at the polls. That he isn't Trump just won't be enough in this area, even with the pandemic raging. Bernie won the district by a very solid margin in the primary, and were he our standard-bearer, retiring Crooked Ken Calvert would be much easier. But the shift in policy emphasis matters still for our own race, and it is why we have drawn in so many new voters and historic independents this year.

Given the very real impact on ordinary people of rising costs and stagnant wages, this country needs to turn around. It elected Barack Obama because he spun a tale about hope and change that resonated with a country in the grip of recession. There was a historic opportunity in those first two years to realign the economy to favour growth for all, not just the one per cent. Alas, Obama failed completely to rise to the challenge of the day, preferring to bail out the people who caused the problem, not those who suffered its effects. At the end of the day, exactly the same people and ideas were left in charge. This is how we got Trump. And people really thought Biden was their best shot against him? For some reason, "It's the economy, stupid!" remains one of the hardest lessons for this party to learn.

If Democrats really want to win nationally, not just against Trump but consistently, and regain ground in the swing states, we must get back to our New Deal roots and tear up the nonsensical DLC crap that's driven the party since the 1970s. And a new batch of policy-driven challengers across the state and country give me hope that we're gaining ground at the grassroots at least. The Squad is already set to double this year, and there are a lot of great challengers running in red districts as well as the safely blue seats.

The purplish districts are where the real action is, in my view. If folks like Kara Eastman, Blair Walsingham, and I can flip red seats, or at the least improve upon past Democratic performance in these areas, we can show that populist issues resonate with a wider share of the population. That is the path back to the unchallenged dominance which the Democratic party enjoyed in the House thanks to the FDR to LBJ economic consensus. Since those days, we have lamentably allowed the fault lines to shift to racial issues and law-and-order dogwhistles, thanks to Republican strategy.

But we didn't need to fall for it! It's the same shit they pulled in the late 19th century against the populist movement of those days, disrupting solidarity with racism. And as I like to remind people, those who reject the lessons of history are condemned to repeat its mistakes. We need to get past the narrow focus on identity politics and work for all Americans again. Yes, the country is more diverse, and we should continue to embrace that diversity... but not at the expense of talking about the cost of living and the declining American Dream.

We need to be laser-focussed on the things that will get the attention of working people overall: The high cost of health care and housing, the unjust tax burden, the lack of affordable child care and elder care, the limited opportunities for education and business-creation, and the high crime rates caused by stubbornly-high poverty. We need to stop ceding the economy to the Republicans and the corrupt neoliberals, and start telling people that they can dream again.

I am running to lower the cost of living for working families, period. I don't talk about Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi because they have nothing to do with my race. I tell people that they'll have a fighter in me-- someone who will go to bat for them against anyone, of either party, who says they need to tolerate the poor conditions they face now. We deserve an economy that works for all of us, and that starts with replacing tools of the ruling class like Crooked Ken Calvert.

Are You Ready To See The Democratic Party Turn Its Back On The Working Class Entirely-- Without A Fight?

I can't believe what I'm seeing with my own eyes-- and it's playing out glacially-- but the Democrats and Republicans seem to be switching their essences again. Remember, from history books, when the Democrats were the bad guys defending slavery and the Republicans were the anti-slavery party? A 100 years later, the Republicans were the party of bigotry and racism and the Democrats were the aspirational party for people of color. But what I want to talk about-- think through really-- has more to do with class than race per se.

The a big giant chunk of the FDR coalition, basically shattered and buried by Bill Clinton and Obama, were working class voters. Unions were strong and they delivered elections to Democrats on every level. The Republicans were barely a serious party in the '30s and '40s and were busy being reborn during the '50s and '60s. Fortunately for them-- though not for the Democrats:

Pointed threats they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn

From the fools gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born

 Is busy dying

But, no, it wasn't alright, ma. The GOP gradually started reaching the white working class, while the corporate Democrats saw a "business-friendly" a better strategy, abandoning unions to the not so tender mercies of the Republicans, and paying less and less attention to workers and more attention to a new identity-oriented coalition they were stitching together of minorities, women, gays, wealthy people and suburbanites. Hillary's 2016 campaign was, in effect, the New Democratic Party. If it wasn't because the Kremlin fixed it, she lost Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Michigan because her outreach to the white working class was perfunctory and inauthentic. She seemed happy enough winning every Orange County district while losing traditionally Democratic white working class districts like ME-02, IA-01, WI-01, MI-11 and IL-17.

As I've mentioned before, when I was growing up, the Democrats used to be called the Santa Claus party-- because they gave things away, like Social Security, Medicare, food stamps-- while the Republicans were the Scrooge party. With Pelosi's lunk-headed announcement last month that one of her top 3 priorities when the Dems regain the House in January will be to reinstate the reactionary PAYGO, the 180 degree switch is now complete.

Just look at the midterm candidates the DCCC has recruited this cycle-- virtually NO WORKING CLASS CANDIDATES at all... instead all upper middle class corporate lawyers, business types and military-industrial complex goons. The few working class candidates who made it past the primaries often had to fight the DCCC every step of the way. The DC Establishment hates the working class and reacts to candidates who make living with their hands as if they were being invaded by aliens. It's their elite club and they do not want working class men and women in it. And it's not just the Republicans any longer. Pelosi's worth $16 million and there are so many millionaires in the Democratic caucus that it's no wonder they don't represent-- or even want to represent-- the interests of the working class anymore.

Did you read Ron Brownstein's report for CNN yesterday? He pointed out that this year Democrats' "opportunities in blue-collar and small-town districts appear to be stalled or even receding. Given Trump's continued strength with working-class whites, Democrats were targeting far fewer of these seats to begin with... If this pattern persists through Election Day, it would widen the trench between major metropolitan areas increasingly dominated by Democrats and less densely populated areas beyond them where Republicans still rule. "If you look back over 20 years, these alignments are very pronounced, as the Republican base has migrated from the country club to the country," says Tom Davis, a former Republican representative who served as chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee. "This is entirely consistent with a 20-year movement that Trump is putting an exclamation point on... [W]hile the blue-collar terrain remains rocky, Democratic opportunities seem to be expanding in white-collar seats."

As you might expect, Chris Hedges was far harsher in his American Anomie post at TruthDig! yesterday. "The belief," he wrote, "that if we work hard, obey the law and get a good education we can achieve stable employment, social status and mobility along with financial security becomes a lie. The old rules, imperfect and often untrue for poor people of color, nevertheless were not a complete fiction in the United States. They offered some Americans-- especially those from the white working and middle class-- modest social and economic advancement. But the capture of political and economic power by the corporate elites, along with the redirecting of all institutions toward the further consolidation of their power and wealth, has broken the social bonds that held the American society together. This rupture has unleashed a widespread malaise... The reconfiguring of American society into an oligarchy and the collapse of our democratic institutions have left most of the population disempowered. The elites, predatory by nature, have discarded all restraint."

The political process, as the research by professors Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page underscores, no longer advances the interests of the average citizen. It has turned the consent of the governed into a cruel joke. “The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.” This facade of democratic process eviscerates one of the primary social bonds in a democratic state and abolishes the vital shared belief that citizens have the power to govern themselves, that government exists to promote and protect their rights and interests.

The economic structures, like the political structures, have been reconfigured to mock the belief in a meritocracy and that hard work leads to a productive and valued role in society. American productivity, as the New York Times pointed out, has increased 77 percent since 1973 but hourly pay has grown only 12 percent. If the federal minimum wage was attached to productivity, the newspaper wrote, it would be more than $20 an hour now, not $7.25. Some 41.7 million workers, a third of the workforce, earn less than $12 an hour, and most of them do not have access to employer-sponsored health insurance. A decade after the 2008 financial meltdown, the Times wrote, the average middle class family’s net worth is more than $40,000 below what it was in 2007. The net worth of black families is down 40 percent, and for Latino families the figure has dropped 46 percent.

That's the very first meme I ever used-- actually I created it-- when writing about Randy Bryce for the first time. I noted that he used that messaging again in a new e-mail to his supporters yesterday." They think I'm unfit," he wrote. "I'm a father and a son. I'm a veteran and a cancer survivor. I've spent my career building things with my own two hands. I'll never quit fighting for what working families need because I'm a working person myself.

But according to the head of Paul Ryan's super PAC, I'm "unfit" to serve.

Instead, they think Bryan Steil, a corporate attorney and former Capitol Hill aide who literally spent his career outsourcing jobs from Wisconsin while he was hand-groomed by career politicians, is more qualified.

In Congress, I'll work to protect Social Security, to make Medicare for All a reality, to bring back good jobs, to protect workers with strong unions, to stand with women and families with access to reproductive care, and to make our children's future brighter by reinvesting in public schools. I'll fight for working people because I am one-- and I don't know about you, but I think that makes me pretty darn fit to serve.

I see that Ryan's corporately-funded SuperPAC has spent $1.8 million intensely smearing Randy. The DCCC's response? The DCCC isn't spending on working class candidates. They haven't spent anything, let alone $1.8 million, countering Ryan's SuperPAC. I should note, though, that the DCCC has reserved $3 million in airtime to defend multimillionaire lottery winner Gil Cisneros, a Republican who conveniently claims he's now a "Democrat" and who was recruited by the DCCC because they love multimillionaires who live in beachfront mansions. Iron-workers who didn't graduate from college but who have struggled the way ordinary Americans struggle... not so much.

You'd think the DCCC would be supporting Ammar Campa-Najjar, now that his opponent, Drunken Hunter, has been indicted for dozens of serious crimes. But if you did, you'd be wrong. Even though the two are tied 46-46% in the polls, the DCCC is not supporting him. My contention is that it's because he's another working class kid they don't want in their exclusive club. But a friend at the DCCC told me that's less a factor than the virulent racism that still infects the DCCC going all the way back to Rahm Emanuel and Steve Israel days. Hard to know. But there is a pattern-- two in fact. (And, remember Bryce is half Mexican too.) Other working class kinds the DCCC is shunning include J.D. Scholten-- no, the DCCC does not want to rid Congress of cash-cow Steve King-- Jess King and James Thompson. Interestingly, there's some correlation between candidates who back Medicare-For-All-- oposed by the DCCC-- and working class candidates. We'll talk more about this as the election proceeds and as it becomes more apparent which candidates the DCCC spends money on and which they grind into the dust.

The Democratic Party And Working Class Voters-- Post NAFTA

How can Democrats not CRUSH someone who voters describe this way?

The American Prospect published an excellent series of essays this week that should have been published by the DNC, DSCC and DCCC, three hopeless organizations refusing to pull their collective virtual heads out of their asses after a decade of letting down the American people while they concentrate of the mostly worthless careers of their own self-absorbed leaders. The one I was immediately drawn to was Democrats Need to Be the Party Of And For Working People-- Of All Races by Robert Griffin, John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira. If you're a regular DWT reader, their arguments should sound pretty familiar already. Short version: "Democrats need to reach out to all types of voters across a large swath of the country," not obsess over whether to prioritize "reach[ing] out more to white working-class voters, or appeal more to independent and conservative-leaning suburban whites." 

In 1980, the white working class (WWC) composed about 70 percent of the eligible voter population. As a result of the changing racial composition of the country and the rising rates of educational attainment, the next 36 years saw this group decline by 25 points-- down to 45 percent of all eligible voters. While the WWC is still the largest race/education group in the country, it ceased to be the majority of eligible voters around 2010.

...Clinton made gains among white, college-educated voters while Trump gained among white, non-college voters. Multiple sources of data and accounts confirm that, compared with Romney, Trump improved his margins within the WWC while losing ground with white, college-educated voters. According to the National Election Pool exit polls, these figures were just about a positive 14-point shift and negative 10-point shift, respectively.

...[R]ather than debating whether Democrats should appeal to white working-class voters or voters of color-- both necessary components of a successful electoral coalition, particularly at the state and local level-- a more important question emerges: Why are Democrats losing support and seeing declining turnout from working-class voters of all races in many places?

This is just a hypothesis, but in an era of widespread political cynicism, economic and cultural anxiety, and distrust of both business and government, the Democrats allowed themselves to become the party of the status quo-- a status quo perceived to be elitist, exclusionary, and disconnected from the entire range of working-class concerns, but particularly from those voters in white working-class areas. Rightly or wrongly, Hillary Clinton’s campaign exemplified a professional-class status quo that failed to rally enough working-class voters of color and failed to blunt the drift of white working-class voters to Republicans.

The Democrats’ strength on social and cultural issues helped them build a national popular-vote majority with high levels of support in deep-blue cities and states. But after eight years of Obama, Democrats were simply unable to make a credible case to working-class voters of all races, in the states and regions that mattered most, that they could deliver on working-class voters’ core economic needs or represent their values and concerns.

Donald Trump played this card perfectly, first taking over his own sclerotic party and then successfully stitching together a targeted Electoral College victory by promising serious change and embodying a completely different approach to politics than either traditional Democrats or Republicans could offer.

Examining the Center for American Progress’s post-election survey, a full 50 percent of Trump voters said the most important influence on their vote in 2016 was that they wanted “to vote for Trump and the chance to shake up the political establishment,” compared with 29 percent who voted mainly for the policy agenda of the Republicans and another 21 percent who said they voted mainly against Clinton. A similar percentage of Trump voters (50 percent) said they strongly agreed with the idea that “Ordinary people’s opinions are more honest and correct than those of experts in politics and the media,” compared with only 29 percent of Clinton voters. Although it’s likely these attitudes did not dominate other racial or economic considerations that drove people to Trump, the overall conditions for populist voting were clear throughout the entire primary and general election cycles.

Democrats can chew over tactical improvements to their campaigns and outreach, but in the absence of a broad party unifier like Obama, they desperately need to reexamine the public face, leadership, agenda, and ideological approach of the party, given this larger populist context. Voters are in no mood for traditional politics carried out by people they feel are out of touch with their everyday needs and values.

The party needs to rediscover its roots as a working-class party, one that was initially exclusionary of people of color but that today can and must represent the interests and values of working people of all races. As the party fights Trump and his brand of divisive right-wing populism, the party needs to bring in more working-class candidates and leaders who can credibly talk with their communities about common economic and social challenges, can forcefully take on the corporate interests that harm these communities, and who can be trusted to fight for the well-being and security of all working men and women.

If not, the Democrats risk ceding the mantle of political change, and possibly losing more elections, to a demagogic billionaire who talks about populist disruption while doing little to help workers and their families, and much to aid his wealthy cohorts.

That drew into the essay by Ed Kilgore in the same issue, The Outlook for 2018 and 2020, a look at "how the white working class figures in to the Democrats’ electoral prospects." Kilgore reminds us all that the results in the 2018 midterms and, obviously, the 2020 general elections "will determine whether the horrendous outcome of the 2016 elections represented a wake-up call for progressives, or a nightmare that has only just begun. If Democrats do not make significant gains in the states in these two elections, Republicans will dominate another decennial round of redistricting that could place not only state legislatures but also the U.S. House out of reach until 2032. The odds of Republicans earning a 'lock' on the House go up even more if Democrats don’t win a significant number of seats in the midterms and the next presidential year."

The 2018 picture for the House is immensely complicated, but it helps to understand that the racial and educational cleavages that were so important to the 2016 presidential election are crucial to the House landscape as well. A comprehensive demographic analysis of House districts by Ron Brownstein and Leah Askarinam provides some useful signposts:

From the presidency through lower-ballot races, Republicans rely on a preponderantly white coalition that is strongest among whites without a college degree and those living outside of major metropolitan areas. Democrats depend on a heavily urbanized (and often post-industrial), upstairs-downstairs coalition of minorities, many of them clustered in lower-income inner-city districts. They also rely on more affluent college-educated whites both in cities and inner suburbs.

Tellingly, Brownstein and Askarinam suggest that the presidential patterns in 2016 are actually converging with what we’ve been seeing in House races and were not some sort of anomaly attributable to the distinctive characteristics of the presidential candidates. Unfortunately, they note that Republicans have a congressional significant advantage:

[W]hites exceed their share of the national population in 259 seats, and Republicans hold fully 196 of those-- which puts them on the brink of a congressional majority even before they begin to compete for the more diverse seats. And there are 244 districts where the white share of college graduates lags the national average, and Republicans hold 176 of those. (Most of them overlap with the districts where the number of minorities is also fewer than average.)

Indeed, the Republican majority in the House now depends very heavily on overwhelming strength in the 176 districts with both low diversity and low levels of college education.

Back in 2009, when the Democratic caucus still featured a large number of rural, culturally conservative “blue dogs”-- like John Tanner of Tennessee, Ike Skelton of Missouri, and John Spratt of South Carolina-- Republicans held a modest 20-seat advantage in these districts. After the 2010 election, the GOP exploded their lead in the low-diversity, low-education districts to 90 seats. The gap widened again to 125 seats in 2014, and edged up to 128 after 2016. The Republican success in hunting the blue dogs nearly to extinction presaged the big margins Trump marshaled from small places, particularly in interior states, to overcome Clinton’s advantages in the largest urban centers.

It’s doubtful that many of these “lo-lo” districts have a sufficiently large Democratic voting base to make a Democratic comeback possible, even if the party’s performance among white working class voters improves significantly.

But Democrats have actually done better than they did in their last landslide victory year of 2008 in districts at the other end of the diversity/education spectrum:

Compared with the 111th Congress from early 2009 to early 2011, when Democrats last controlled the majority, the Democratic Party has actually widened its advantage in the districts high in both diversity and college-educated whites (from 50 seats then to 66 now). Since then, Democrats have lost ground modestly in the high-diversity districts with fewer-than-average white college graduates (from a 28-seat advantage to a 20-seat edge now). The party has also skidded somewhat more sharply in the districts with low diversity and large numbers of college-educated whites (from an advantage of 19 seats then to a deficit of five now).

The most obvious targets for each party in 2018 are House members in districts carried by the other party’s presidential nominee in 2016. These districts also tend to be “stragglers behind enemy lines” in demographic terms, as Brownstein and Askarinam put it.

Twenty-three House Republicans won in districts carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016. Barack Obama only carried about a third of them in 2012. These districts are characterized in an analysis by Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball as having “higher-than-average numbers of college graduates and/or are more diverse than the average district.” Fifteen of them are in the Sunbelt, seven in California alone. There are other districts that Clinton narrowly lost, but made big gains over Obama’s performance. One of them is GA-6, where a special election is being held to replace Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.

The districts represented by Democrats that were carried by Donald Trump, as one might expect, typically have less diversity and a less educated white population. Half are in the Midwest; three in Minnesota.

An improved performance among white working class voters would obviously help Democrats minimize their losses in these twelve potentially vulnerable districts, and could also be pivotal in what might be close races in the districts where the big push will be among higher-educated white voters. In the end, a vote is a vote, but while an exchange of “straggler” districts would give Democrats a net boost, it would not be enough to gain control of the chamber.

From a macro point of view, Democrats will struggle to win the House so long as their performance among white working class voters remains as disastrous as it was not only in 2016 (a 35-point loss), but in the midterms of 2010 and 2014 (both were 30-point losses). These voters do not vote at as high a rate as college-educated white voters in either presidential or midterm elections, but they represented 36 percent of the electorate as recently as 2014. Yes, they are declining as a percentage of the population, but not fast enough to make losses on the levels Democrats suffered in 2014 and 2016 sustainable without favorable shifts elsewhere.

...The X-factor in 2018 will be turnout patterns. A Trump presidency in alliance with a GOP Congress could be the one thing that diminishes or even reverses the midterm “falloff” in participation by two groups that have recently become central to the Democratic electorate: young and minority voters. This year’s special and off-year elections could be a leading indicator of what might happen in the midterms.

The incessant intra-Democratic arguments over the catastrophe of 2016 don’t often pay enough attention to the future. But obviously a Democratic presidential win in 2020 is essential to avoid a catastrophic long-term decline of government as a positive force in national life. A GOP victory could produce a very conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court for decades to come; and (assuming Donald Trump or someone much like him is the GOP nominee) a Republican flirtation with serious authoritarianism and the massive disenfranchisement of Democratic voters. The very gradual demographic drift towards higher levels of Democratic-leaning demographic groups will inevitably continue, but just as in 2016, such trends cannot be relied on to produce victory.

The most plausible way to feel optimistic about the 2020 presidential race is to look at the positive popular vote totals from 2016, and the roughly 80,000-vote margin in three states that gave Trump his electoral college majority, and then to focus on simple ways to use party and candidate resources better to reverse this outcome. Certainly Democrats in 2020 are not likely to suffer from over-confidence, or from voters’ misapprehension that Trump is free from corruption or corporate influence.

But down-ballot races in 2020 could be just as important as the top of the ticket. It will be a precious opportunity to create a governing “trifecta” by winning the White House and both houses of Congress in one fell swoop. If as expected Democrats make gains in the House in 2018, another push in 2020 could get them over the top, particularly since presidential turnout patterns are normally more beneficent than midterms to Democrats. After the dreadful Senate landscape of 2018, Democratic will get a break in 2020, when two-thirds of the seats up are currently held by Republicans (though only two of them are in states carried by Hillary Clinton last November).

Perhaps most importantly, 2020 will be the final chance for state-level gains before the next decennial reapportionment and redistricting process kicks in. As with the House, the hope is that marginal gains in 2018 will be a springboard for improvements that bring Democrats near parity, especially in the states (e.g., Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas) where GOP gerrymandering has been so egregious in the recent past.

In terms of the white working class vote, improvements over the 2016 performance are to be expected, if only because four years of broken Trump promises to his supporters in this demographic group, along with favoritism towards the very elites he claims to despise, should have an impact if Democrats are minimally competent in publicizing these developments to working Americans.

If everything goes well for the Donkey Party in 2020, perhaps progressives will return once again to speculating about the sufficiency of youth and minority votes for the future. But even in that happy contingency, white working class voters will have a moral hold on Democrats that is just as important as their political value. It is to be profoundly hoped that Democrats never again need to be reminded of that fundamental fact as they were in 2016.

The most important of the essays I read was by Celinda Lake, Daniel Gotoff and Olivia Myszkowski, Absent a More Progressive Economics, the Democrats Will Lose. "The staggering results of last November’s election," they began, "should be a reminder to Democrats that the racially diverse, young, educated, unmarried (women), and urban voters who comprised a significant portion of the Obama coalition do not constitute an inexorable path to Electoral College victory for Democrats. In 2008 and 2012, Barack Obama consolidated the Rising American Electorate (RAE), but also captured critical majorities in places like Sawyer County, Wisconsin; Luzerne County, Pennsylvania; and Macomb County, Michigan-- all home to significant numbers of white working class voters. These were just three of the 219 counties that flipped from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016."

White working class voters have felt abandoned by the policies of politicians from both parties pushing a corporate globalization agenda that has devastated their economic well-being. Traditionally, Republicans have always been willing to trade American jobs for corporate profits made on the backs of cheap overseas labor," by gradually-- especially with the election of Bill Clinton and the rise of Rahm Emanuel and the New Dems-- Democrats were doing the same thing. Suddenly "their" party was more interested in rewarding wealthy campaign benefactors and the industries and interests they represent, than in helping ordinary Americans. That's betrayal-- and last year they took it out of the obvious target, Mrs. Bill Clinton.

To meaningfully re-engage the white working class with the Democratic Party’s agenda, a compelling narrative about how our platform provides genuine solutions to the growth of an American plutocracy is of critical importance.

Indeed, a CNN/ORC poll conducted in February of 2016 showed that the vast majority of Americans believe that the U.S. economic system generally favors the wealthy (71 percent) instead of being fair to most people (27 percent). The idea that income and wealth should be more evenly distributed among Americans has won the support of 60 percent or greater since 2012, but Americans are skeptical that government officials will act to protect their best interests. According to a 2015 Gallup report, 75 percent of Americans perceive corruption as widespread in the country’s government.

Not only have Democrats presided in Washington for significant stretches while these trends have developed; they have, in visible ways, exacerbated those trends, through, for instance, global trade deals enacted in the 1990s and the repeal of Glass-Steagall. This is certainly not to blame the Democratic Party for all the ills that have been inflicted on the country over the past 40 years, far from it. But too many times, our party has been guilty not just of sins of omission-- failing to stand up to the Republicans on critical issues, or even providing the GOP cover in some cases (as when some congressional Democrats supported the Bush tax cuts and the war in Iraq)-- but of commission, too. The Obama administration’s embrace of the financial industry early in his first term, combined with its decision not to prosecute any of the individuals and institutions responsible for the economic collapse of 2008, led to a new low point in the Democratic Party’s credibility as a check on Wall Street. In the 2010 midterm elections, voters who blamed Wall Street for the country’s economic problems preferred Republican candidates by a margin of 16 points, despite the Democratic Party’s efforts to deliver a message against Wall Street special interests.

Given this reality, it is not particularly surprising that the party has yet to articulate a clearer, more credible, and more commanding vision for the economic revitalization of the country, the middle class, and, more specifically, the hollowed-out communities in which many white working class voters struggle. The white working class’s sense of its economic isolation is compounded by a gap in cultural sensibilities: White working class voters, particularly baby boomers and older, tend to be less liberal on social issues than their more educated (and more urban) counterparts, whose support has been nurtured by the Democratic Party for the past several election cycles.

In a political environment where Republicans have shifted the terms of debate to stoke racist biases (nearly half of Trump’s supporters describe African Americans as more “violent” than whites) and sexist inclinations (67 percent of Trump supporters deny the role of sexism in America), the need for a forceful, serious, policy, and values-driven Democratic platform has never been greater. To be sure, Democrats have increased their support among college-educated whites: Hillary Clinton trailed Trump by only 4 points among these voters in 2016, whereas Obama lost this group by 14 points to Mitt Romney in 2012. But that gain was overwhelmed by Clinton’s abysmal performance within the white working class.



Far from being a call for Democrats to moderate their stance on such issues as a woman’s right to choose, gun safety reforms, and equal protection of civil rights for all Americans, our point is that when Democrats fail to offer a compelling economic vision and agenda, the opposition not only benefits from that failure, but is allowed the opportunity to shift the debate to areas where it enjoys greater advantages over Democrats.

Recent face-to-face conversations with working class voters in Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania conducted by Working America in the weeks following the election underscore the intense economic anxiety that pervades their communities and their lives. Working-class Trump and Clinton voters alike reported that they wanted the president-elect to address jobs and the economy first, with Trump voters expressing more urgency (37 percent said that the economy and jobs are the most important issue, compared to 21 percent of Clinton voters).

For some white working class Trump voters, their perception of the candidate’s focus on bringing jobs back to their communities took priority over their serious misgivings about him. As one white working class Trump voter from the Pittsburgh area told Working America: “Trump’s an asshole. But sometimes you need an asshole to make things better and shake things up.” Both Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2016 tapped into an intense desire for change and spoke to pervasive economic anxieties; this thematic commonality helps to explain the crossover appeal of two otherwise completely different politicians for some white working class voters.

For the last several election cycles, we have urged Democrats to develop a vision for the American economy that addresses the deep-rooted concerns of the working class and provides solutions to the scope of the challenges we face. Trump’s ascent to power on the strength of a white working class supermajority, though he was the most disliked presidential candidate in history, reminds us that this economic message and policy agenda is more important now than ever.

Given the Democratic Party’s historic deficits with this demographic group, it is unlikely-- and unrealistic-- that Democrats will be able to make up all the ground that has been lost with white working class voters by 2018 or even 2020. As such, the Democratic Party’s efforts should be structured specifically to engage the white working class voters that Obama won in 2008 and 2012 that Clinton then lost in 2016-- the voters living in swing counties like Sawyer, Luzerne, and Macomb. Such efforts must not come at the expense of (re)engaging the sometime voters among minorities and the young—significant swaths of the country who do not regularly turn out to vote, whose patterns of voting are irregular, or who no longer feel a sense of loyalty to the Democrats; we look forward to that discussion as well.

According to estimates by the New York Times and the New Republic, the election was lost for Clinton by between 77,000 and 110,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Making up this difference will be key if the Democrats are to build back from what is a historic nadir of political power at all levels of government.

The Democratic Party will require a robust economic vision that appeals to the appetite for populist reform; a forceful push-back against Trump policies that hurt working Americans; and a commitment to campaign-finance reform and removing the influence of big money in elections, which voters believe is the first step to implementing economic-- and other types of needed-- change.

Economic proposals will not be enough. The Democratic Party’s historic strength, dating back to the New Deal, has been to offer a vision of government that actively works to protect working people and makes their lives better. A central appeal of the current economic populist agenda focuses on the importance of limiting the power of big money in politics. Especially in the aftermath of the Citizens United ruling, Americans of both parties wish to restrict the political influence of the hyper wealthy. A February 2016 poll conducted by Rasmussen Research found that 76 percent of Americans believe that the wealthiest individuals and companies have too much power and influence over elections-- a majority that holds across gender, age, race, and party lines.

Our own research in 2011 found that, above all other regulations, voters are interested in government oversight of the relationship between special interests and politicians (77 percent). A populist economic message is especially powerful when it hinges on a greater push for reform; by utilizing this frame, the Democratic Party should be able to draw contrasts that blunt the appeal of populism on the right.

Now that Trump is president, with policies favoring the plutocrats, the Democrats should be able to turn his populist message against him. Part of that pushback should be grounded in clear, broadly disseminated articulations of how his administration’s actions are hurting all working-class Americans. It will be especially important for the party to gain an edge from his administration’s inability to deliver on promises for a better economy with good-paying jobs.

Additionally, the Democrats face the real challenge of embodying the values of working Americans through their candidates, their professed values, the scope of their policy agenda, and their commitment to action. A crucial step in this process must be purposefully cultivating and supporting candidates who resonate with working class Americans, even if they lack the financial heft that has characterized the prototypical Democratic candidate in recent years.

In our post-election work, we’ve found that even Clinton voters have struggled to identify the Democratic Party’s vision for the country’s future. Formulating such a vision shouldn’t be all that difficult. A national survey conducted in 2015 for the Progressive Change Institute explored the public’s appetite for a number of far-reaching economic reforms and bold policy ideas, and found strong enthusiasm from the majority of voters. A proposal to institute fair trade that protects workers, the environment, and jobs enjoyed the support of 75 percent of voters. Similarly, more than seven-in-ten voters (71 percent) supported a Medicare buy-in for all Americans; a Full Employment Act (70 percent support); a Green New Deal and major infrastructure jobs programs (70 percent support each); taxing the rich at the same higher rate that President Reagan did (59 percent support); and breaking up the big banks (59 percent support). Our own research has shown that support for strengthening-- and expanding-- Social Security and Medicare will also be particularly important, especially giving the relatively advanced age of the 2018 midterm electorate.

The support for such economic reforms (the aforementioned are but a handful of examples) is buttressed by similarly widespread public backing for policies aimed at giving ordinary Americans a voice in their government again: a proposal to end gerrymandering receives support from 73 percent of voters; public matching for small dollar donations receives support from 57 percent of voters, and full disclosure of corporate spending on politics and lobbying receives support from 71 percent of voters. A laundry list of popular policy prescriptions do not a winning economic message make, yet these results suggest that the time has come to structure the Democratic Party’s agenda around robust reforms-- on dimensions of significant economic and political change.

Building political support is party the work of effective messaging. Our polling has shown that when we describe economic conditions through the lens of lived experience-- “can’t make ends meet” or “can’t pull ahead no matter how hard they try”-- instead of through abstractions, voters listen and often move to our side. Being explicit about causes of economic harm by referring to CEOs and other leaders provides clarity and generates support for our message, as well.

In many ways, the path forward for rebuilding the Democratic Party’s relationship with the white working class was articulated best by Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. Sanders’s message centered on unabashed economic populism and a commitment to remove the influence of corporate money from our politics—and hence, our government. This message has also been championed by Elizabeth Warren, Elijah Cummings, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus as well. Indeed, the latest GWU Battleground Poll suggests that Senator Sanders remains well positioned to serve as a source of strength and leadership. A solid majority (56 percent) of voters hold a positive opinion of him-- a higher favorability rating than those of the other national leaders tested in the poll. Sanders and Hillary Clinton are virtually tied in terms of favorability among Democratic women, and African American and Latino voters are warmer to Sanders than they are to Clinton. While non-college educated white voters are split in their view of Sanders (40 percent favorable, 39 percent unfavorable), he far outperforms the Democrats’ 2016 presidential nominee as well as the image of the party as a whole among those voters. Again, we must remind ourselves that the (near-term) objective is not to win over majorities of these voters; it is to improve-- and measurably so-- on their declining support for Democrats in recent elections.

Sanders’s primary election successes in the states and counties that flipped from Obama victories in 2012 to Trump victories in 2016 further underscore the appeal of his progressive message, especially as we look toward targeting these swing votes in upcoming elections. In Wisconsin, for example, 21 counties that Barack Obama won in 2012 voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Every single one of those 21 counties were won by Bernie Sanders in the April 2016 Wisconsin Democratic Primary, which Sanders won handily.

In the Michigan Primary, which Sanders won narrowly, nine of the 12 counties that flipped from Obama to Trump were won by Sanders as well. Obviously, there are numerous problems in comparing white working class Democratic primary voters to white working class general election voters. Yet, this is far from the only evidence pointing to Sanders’ appeal among white working class independents, many of whom he successfully encouraged to join the ranks of the Democratic Party by participating in the 2016 primaries. In a head-to-head matchup between Sanders and Trump in our own April 2016 Battleground survey, Sanders bested Trump 51 percent to 40 percent. Among white non-college graduates, Trump beat Sanders 49 percent to 41 percent, but that margin is far smaller than the 39-point margin that Trump racked up over Clinton in November.

While Sanders’s personal popularity and influence is an important takeaway from these data, the more salient point is that the Democratic Party stands to gain politically when it returns its focus to issues of class, including the substantial and ongoing challenges of income inequality and the negative influence of corporate special interests on the lives of working-class Americans of all kinds.

Effectively engaging the white working class is an essential task for the Democratic Party, but we must also acknowledge that this work will go to waste if we ignore our base. The approaches outlined here can serve to energize the base as well as engage the white working class. By moving forward with an agenda that explicitly continues our commitment to racial and gender justice and opportunities for all, including immigrants, we will work to ensure that our base ratifies our message in future elections.

The path forward will not be easy, but neither is it as mystifying as some may imagine. A sweeping platform of economic and political change resonates powerfully with white working class voters and the young, diverse, educated, and urban voters whom Democrats must nurture and energize if it hopes to be successful in the 2018 midterms. Embracing this change will require not just political smarts, however, but political will. Democratic activists will need either to convince the party’s establishment of the necessity of this approach-- or failing that, actively work to replace it. For the Democratic Party, the stakes have never been higher and the challenges have never been clearer.

Iron worker Randy Bryce, the likely challenger to Paul Ryan in 2018, told us today that there's "no doubt about it-- working people are not getting adequate representation." He continued:

The major reason why we aren’t getting it is because WE aren’t making the decisions! Which one of your neighbors would vote to remove pre-existing medical conditions in order to be able to allow billionaires the ability to keep more of their taxes? If I’d ask any of my neighbors, they’d laugh at me.

What we have going on right now is an auction of the United States government. Actually, that which has not already been bought off is up for auction.

Ugly fact: Elections are almost always won by the candidate who raises the most money, not, by the person with the best ideas, or, who will make their decisions on what is best for working people.

Not only is it bad enough that decisions are being made that are speeding along the destruction of the American Working Class, but, those who are making the horrible decisions are hiding from those who voted them into office.

It’s been over 600 days since Paul Ryan has held a town hall! We the people of the 1st CD had to ask a neighboring Congressman (Rep. Mark Pocan) to attend an event in order to find out exactly how badly this new Ryancare health spectacle is going to hit us. (It’s worse than you think.)

Bottom line is that they don’t care. As long as those in office keep kissing corporate rings, they’ll get their blood money to keep a job.

The time is now to demand that working people are heard. Tomorrow may very well (literally) be too late.

Please. Be heard.

Together our voices can not be ignored.

Together, they will find that they have no place to hide.

This country is overdue to have “them” be comprised of “us.”

Who better to represent you than one of you?

Join me.

So Were The Trump Voters Just Deplorable Racist Pigs... Or Economically Distressed Americans Desperate For Change?

Sean McElwee and Jason McDaniel, writing for The Nation this week lean towards the oinkster theory in their data-driven piece, Economic Anxiety Didn't Make People Vote For Trump, Racism Did. Emma Green, writing for The Atlantic backs them up, referring to Trump voters' "cultural anxiety." She wrote that "a new study finds that fear of societal change, not economic pressure, motivated votes for the president among non-salaried workers without college degrees." Voters from the white working class gave Trump a 2 to 1 advantage over Clinton.

In the wake of Trump’s surprise win, some journalists, scholars, and political strategists argued that economic anxiety drove these Americans to Trump. But new analysis of post-election survey data conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic found something different: Evidence suggests financially troubled voters in the white working class were more likely to prefer Clinton over Trump. Besides partisan affiliation, it was cultural anxiety-- feeling like a stranger in America, supporting the deportation of immigrants, and hesitating about educational investment-- that best predicted support for Trump.

This data adds to the public’s mosaic-like understanding of the 2016 election. It suggests Trump’s most powerful message, at least among some Americans, was about defending the country’s putative culture. Because this message seems to have resonated so deeply with voters, Trump’s policies, speeches, and eventual reelection may depend on their perception of how well he fulfills it.

...[T]hree factors stood out as strong independent predictors of how white working-class people would vote. The first was anxiety about cultural change. Sixty-eight percent of white working-class voters said the American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence. And nearly half agreed with the statement, “things have changed so much that I often feel like a stranger in my own country.” Together, these variables were strong indictors of support for Trump: 79 percent of white working-class voters who had these anxieties chose Trump, while only 43 percent of white working-class voters who did not share one or both of these fears cast their vote the same way.

The second factor was immigration. Contrary to popular narratives, only a small portion-- just 27 percent-- of white working-class voters said they favor a policy of identifying and deporting immigrants who are in the country illegally. Among the people who did share this belief, Trump was wildly popular: 87 percent of them supported the president in the 2016 election.

Finally, 54 percent of white working-class Americans said investing in college education is a risky gamble, including 61 percent of white working-class men. White working-class voters who held this belief were almost twice as likely as their peers to support Trump. “The enduring narrative of the American dream is that if you study and get a college education and work hard, you can get ahead,” said Robert P. Jones, the CEO of PRRI. “The survey shows that many white working-class Americans, especially men, no longer see that path available to them… It is this sense of economic fatalism, more than just economic hardship, that was the decisive factor in support for Trump among white working-class voters."

While the analysis pointed to some interesting patterns around economic status, more research is needed to confirm them. The findings contrast with much of the coverage of the election: People who said their finances are only in fair or poor shape were nearly twice as likely to support Clinton compared to those who feel more economically secure.

...Nearly two-thirds of the white working class say American culture has gotten worse since the 1950s. Sixty-eight percent say the U.S. is in danger of losing its identity, and 62 percent say America’s growing number of immigrants threaten the country’s culture. More than half say discrimination against whites has become just as problematic as discrimination against minorities.

I'll bet the picture that emerged of the white working class from the PRRI survey would be similar to a look at French voters in the only two departments that went from Le Pen, rust-belt areas in the northeast near the Belgian border, Pas-de-Calais and Aisne. These are the Americans:

• Nearly two-thirds (65%) of white working-class Americans believe American culture and way of life has deteriorated since the 1950s.
• Nearly half (48%) of white working-class Americans say, “things have changed so much that I often feel like a stranger in my own country.”
• Nearly seven in ten (68%) white working-class Americans believe the American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence. In contrast, fewer than half (44%) of white college-educated Americans express this view.
• Nearly seven in ten (68%) white working-class Americans—along with a majority (55%) of the public overall—believe the U.S. is in danger of losing its culture and identity.
• More than six in ten (62%) white working-class Americans believe the growing number of newcomers from other countries threatens American culture, while three in ten (30%) say these newcomers strengthen society.
• Nearly six in ten (59%) white working-class Americans believe immigrants living in the country illegally should be allowed to become citizens provided they meet certain requirements, while 10% say they should be allowed to become permanent legal residents. More than one in four (27%) say we should identify and deport illegal immigrants. Notably, support for a path to citizenship is only slightly lower than support among the general public (63%).
• More than half (52%) of white working-class Americans believe discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities, while 70% of white college-educated Americans disagree.
• Fewer than four in ten white working-class Americans report they are in excellent (5%) or good shape (33%) financially, compared to six in ten who say they are in fair (35%) or poor shape (25%). White working-class Americans about as likely to say their financial situation has diminished (27%) as they are to say it has improved (29%). White college-educated Americans, in contrast, are about three times as likely to say their financial circumstances have gotten better than gotten worse (41% vs. 14%, respectively).
• A majority (54%) of the white working class view getting a college education as a risky gamble, while only 44% say it is a smart investment.
• Six in ten (60%) white working-class Americans, compared to only 32% of white college-educated Americans say because things have gotten so far off track, we need a strong leader who is willing to break the rules.

McElwee and McDaniel aren't shy about diagnosing the affinity for Trump as a manifestation of racism, while asking "how the racial resentment that powered Trump’s ascent differed from the support for Republican candidates in prior elections? And what was the relative importance of economic peril to voting in 2016 compared to several different types of racism and racial animus exhibited by voters?... Trump," they wrote, "accelerated a realignment in the electorate around racism, across several different measures of racial animus-- and that it helped him win. By contrast, we found little evidence to suggest individual economic distress benefited Trump. The American political system is sorting so that racial progressivism and economic progressivism are aligned in the Democratic Party and racial conservatism and economic conservatism are aligned in the Republican Party."

In our models, racial attitudes towards blacks and immigration are the key factors associated with support for Trump. The way that these variables impact Trump support can be seen in the charts below. Both racial resentment and black influence animosity are significant predictors of Trump support among white respondents, independent of partisanship, ideology, education levels, and the other factors included in the model. The results indicate a probability of Trump support higher than 60 percent for an otherwise typical white voter who scores at the highest levels on either anti-black racial resentment or anti-black influence animosity. This compares to less than 30 percent chance for a typical white voter with below average scores on either of the two measures anti-black attitudes. There is approximately a 10 percent probability of a Trump vote for an otherwise typical white voter at the lowest levels of racial resentment.

The effect of immigration attitudes for white people is even stronger than anti-black attitudes. The results predict an approximately 80 percent probability of voting for Trump for an otherwise average white person with the most anti-immigrant attitudes, compared to less than 20 percent for a white person with the most pro-immigrant attitudes. To put these results in context, the magnitude of the effects of each of the three variables-- racial resentment, black influence animosity, and immigration attitudes-- is comparable to the effect of partisan identification. The change in probability of a Trump vote for a white person with the highest to the lowest levels of racial animus is similar to changing their party identification from Republican to Democratic.

...It’s likely that political elites (party leaders, activists, media organizations) will continue on the current path and the issue of identity will fully map onto the current political divides. Economic conservatism and white nationalism will become more fully intertwined for Republicans, as will racial and economic equity for Democrats. Republicans have shown little interest in attempting to hold back Trump’s openly racist rhetoric. On the other side, few Democrats have proposed abandoning civil rights (and those who have met intense backlash). Democrats may press forward with an economic, racial and gender progressive agenda, while Republicans continue to tie economic conservatism to white identity politics.

Another possible outcome would be for economic issues to simply further fall off the political map, with identity becoming the central battleground in American politics. This would involve Democrats reducing their commitments to economic equality, while Republicans embrace a sort of ethnonationalism. For instance, Trump could try to follow the pathway of Viktor Orban in Hungary, nationalizing industries to lower consumer prices while also spouting xenophobic rhetoric. Another model would be the Law and Justice party in Poland, which has melded anti-Semitism and a populist agenda including child tax benefits. Trump has made signals in this direction-- for instance his push for a big infrastructure bill.

However, so far, nothing like this has materialized, and powerful interests within the Republican Party would strongly oppose any action in this direction. For this reason, we think this realignment is unlikely with the current status quo--Trump has expressed no interest in attempting to make it happen, nor has any Republican statewide elected officials.

Though such a realignment is unlikely, progressives should be concerned about such an outcome for two reasons: First, the confluence of racial and economic inequality in the United States means that there are more poor whites than rich non-whites available to migrate between party coalitions-- a fact that may have been overlooked by the Clinton campaign. Second, without economic redistribution, progressive goals on LGBT rights, racial justice, and gender equity are unattainable. Civil rights without economic redistribution will leave many behind, from transgender homeless kids to home healthcare workers.

The right, however, has powerful incentives to continue increasing the salience of identity, which will mask their regressive politics.