Democrats, next time try fighting for the working class
Al JazeeraA week before the election, my dad was visiting and talked to me about his gut feeling that former President Donald Trump might win. My father would never dehumanise and scapegoat transgender people, immigrants, or anyone else, but he understood a key ingredient of Trump’s rhetorical strategy: When Trump punches down at vulnerable groups of people, he presents himself as punching up at condescending cultural elites – the kind of elites strongly associated with the Democratic Party. Because it’s clear as day that if Democratic Party leaders could swap the party’s historic base of working-class voters for more affluent voters and still win elections, they would. Three years later, in March 2021, Republican Representative Jim Banks sent a strategy memo to House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, arguing that the Republican Party had become “the party supported by most working-class voters”. Ultimately, it means confronting and reversing the central crisis underlying the “populist moment” we live in – runaway inequality – by delivering big for America’s working class.
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