Blue Collar Blues

In an article at Jacobin, Matt Karp reminds us that whereas Joe Biden won voters of higher income brackets by 13 percentage points in the 2020 election-- compared with Barack Obama's 2012 performance in which he lost the same group by 10-- with Blue Collar voters, who Biden also won by 9 points, his performance represented a decided step down from the halcyon days when Obama defeated Mitt Romney in 2012 by 22 points among the working class.  Obama's success in that group came after 40 years in the wilderness marked by open Democratic hostility to workers, never more than the NAFTA pushing Clintons in the 90s. Obama's was the Democrats' best showing since  Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford in 1976 by 24 points among the working class. (Obama's hostility was less in the open, and it was overshadowed by the disconcertingly non-human Romney being caught on tape openly disparaging workers to a roomful of wealthy donors.).  In contrast, Carter lost to Ford among higher income voters by 24 points.  In this light, Biden's 2020 performance with both groups, while decisive in the election, strongly reflects 2 long term trends -- the shift toward Democrats of the wealthy and toward Republicans of the working class.  

As Karp notes: 

. . . however you slice it, the essential trade-off comes down to the same constituencies Chuck Schumer called out in his famous dictum: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia.” 

Attitudes like Schumer's-- along with fondness for trade deals, a predilection for hobnobbing with billionaires at Davos and Silicon Valley TED Talks, deadly effectiveness at promoting austerity while mouthing platitudes about education and innovation-- have driven Blue Collar voters into the ranks of the Republicans who are the only party that seem to get how obnoxious woke identity politics in the boardroom, virtue hoarding, and the fetishization of exotic causes are to those who actually work for a living in this country.  Meanwhile, with their growing (yet-- importantly-- increasingly atomized) base of lower income workers, Republicans are free to implement policies even deadlier than the benignly neglectful policies of the democrats for this expanding segment of their constituency.

What is to be done?

One could always do nothing, which seems to be the strategy of Democrats, who have been courting higher income voters for decades while actively as a matter of faith taking their lower income constituency for granted. However even the staunchest most centrist Democratic strategists must concede that in terms of electoral politics in this economy, the Rich are a minimal growth quadrant of the electorate.  Without working class and lower income voters, no party can expect to remain at the top forever. Nevertheless, in the current environment of Democratic politics, the ability to wield politics that do not alienate workers, let alone those that rally them to the cause, has atrophied for 40 years to the point where it is no longer second nature.  If working class politics is music, the current crop of Democratic strategists have tin ears.

It seems that in order to begin to get political outcomes to the benefit of the majority of Americans who are not in the highest income brackets, it will remain to the Left to mobilize Blue Collar workers and allies into a movement.  Separately at Jacobin, Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano, and Thomas Piketty editors of 2021's Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities emphasize the importance of economic issues to the Blue Collar vote.  The way to fight anti-woke, anti-elitist messages is with anti-austerity, pro-worker politics according to the authors.  Of course it is!  But the left itself, being centered increasingly among higher income, higher education, lower muscle professionals and academics has lost touch with its working class roots and needs its own seat of the pants mobilization.  If you've been reading between the lines at this very site this fact cannot have escaped your attention.

I repeat, What is to be done?

Clearly the answer will come from a leftist economic movement of some kind, regardless of its origin and center of momentum.  Will it be based in an upstart wing of the Democratic Party?  It has certainly been tried, promisingly, by the 2016 and 2020 primary campaigns of Bernie Sanders.  Unfortunately, the Democrats-- with their minions in the mainstream press-- have become practiced at squelching it.  What about a third party?  Setting aside the Green Party-- the ever stagnant, ever frivolous and futile outlet for the disgruntled who feel they must still vote--  what hope do we have for building a working people's party that is serious about winning and stands a chance of success at the polls?  That is the question that many on the left are hopefully asking themselves.

But there is another possibility that I modestly hope some out there are giving their consideration.  What if the upstart movement originated where working voters increasingly are-- within the Republican Party itself?  What if, having been driven together under the republican tent by a mass fatigue at the pointless rich people problems of the Democratic elites, some within the tent began the call for economic reforms that actually benefit working people?  What if a contingent of leftists strategically and subversively-- but without subterfuge or compromising principles-- joined Republican ranks* en masse (preferably without alienating others in the process).  What if subversive candidates across the country ran as Republicans to push such reforms as Medicare for All, the end of anti-worker Trade Agreements, higher wages, an end to corporate welfare and a renaissance of pro-Union policies.  What if it became a thing for Republican anti-candidates to forgo the anti-woke talk in favor of pro-worker policy?  Would the Republican Machiavellis who had the foresight to harness blue collar blues have the power to stop the monster of their own making?

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* And, who knows, sizable numbers of willing left-identifiers were moved to re-locate their lives to the beautiful lands between the coasts where Red State politics are dominant, even to the point of helping to reverse the demographic hollowing out that 40 years of neoliberal policies have engendered there.