12/11/2024
US working-class voters have sent a clear message to Democrats. Running as a centrist and governing as a leftist is not acceptable. Will Democrats listen and learn?
There are many lessons to be learned from this most recent US election and many contributing factors for the Democratic loss: the communication ecosystems are thriving on the right; misinformation through social media platforms is rampant; there was a lack of vigour in pursuing accountability at the Department of Justice; and perhaps some minor but cumulatively important tactical missteps in a very well-run Democratic campaign. All of these issues and more led to a decisive loss for the Democratic Party.
The most important lesson, however, is the one that working-class voters are teaching us. There is a real danger that the Democratic Party will misunderstand the lesson and fail the test in future elections. We have already heard from very loud voices on the far left that Democrats were not far left enough. Bernie Sanders has made his case for this perspective and is getting some traction for this opinion. Working-class voters decisively voted for Trump, a man who explicitly rejects almost everything that Senator Sanders stands for. Somehow, Sanders now argues that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working class by not giving them more of what they just voted against.
Joe Biden ran his 2020 campaign as a pragmatic, pro-worker, pro-energy, down-to-earth Democrat. Americans knew Senator Biden as a centrist Democrat who could work with Republicans and get things done. This was a welcome relief from a chaotic Trump administration. Once elected, and with much praise from the left, Biden filled the ranks of the White House and the administration with a host of left-leaning, Elizabeth Warren devotees. This intellectual foundation coloured nearly every policy that flowed from the Biden administration.
If one wonders why the working class feels ignored by the Democratic Party to such a degree that they chose a convicted felon over a continuation of the status quo, consider this short list of high-profile policies from the Biden administration:
- Student debt relief: The Biden administration proudly gave out over $400 billion in student loan debt relief to college-educated Americans. Non-college working voters did not get cheques for tens of thousands of dollars. They got a message that those with college degrees matter more. There is much to say about the merits of this programme and the disastrous problem of ignoring the underlying issues that continue to inflate already expensive US college tuition, but there is no question about the message received by the working class.
- Energy: Biden ran as an advocate for an all-of-the-above US energy strategy, notably making one of his final campaign stops in October 2020 in Pennsylvania to promise that he would not ban fracking. Biden presided over four years of record US energy production, including enough liquified natural gas (LNG) exports to keep the lights on in Europe after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. He also passed the most sweeping and ambitious green energy policy in US history, committing billions of dollars for research, innovation and deployment. Instead of championing these victories, the Warren/Sanders faction of the administration enacted a pause on the build-out of future LNG export facilities as a reaction to a threat of an environmental sit-in protest. This pandering sent an ominous message to our allies, potentially exacerbated the global emissions from coal burning, and was a betrayal of the Pennsylvanians to whom Biden had made a promise.
- Immigration reform: Immigration has been a long-time concern of many Americans, and particularly working-class voters. The Biden administration failed to address this issue until the last six months of his tenure. The paralysis on this issue springs from the far left’s refusal to acknowledge the problem at the border. The left’s proposed solutions are seen by many Americans as an open-border policy – for example, Warren’s proposal to decriminalise border crossings. Once there was a realisation that Democrats could not win the White House without addressing the border issue, a compromise bill was hammered out and nearly passed. President Biden clearly showed that he could find a bipartisan solution through engagement and compromise with both parties. It was, unfortunately, too late. The time to show seriousness on this issue was years ago, but the far left was unbending in its denial of the real issues of immigration. Working-class voters do not want an open-border policy, but they perceived the lack of a clear and coherent alternative to Biden’s policy as being the Democratic position. They chose the only alternative on offer.
As the Democratic Party studies the lessons from this campaign, it is crucial that it takes the clearly delivered message from voters. Democrats cannot run as centrists and then govern as leftists and hope to maintain any trust. Voters have decisively rejected that governing strategy. Democrats are not listening to working-class voters, not responding to their needs, and enacting policies that are overtly dismissive of their concerns.
The Democratic Party must learn to listen. Working-class voters do not want a patronising, college-educated, urban-elite Democratic Party telling them that they just don’t understand what they need. If that is the perceived offering from the Democrats, voters will, unfortunately, choose almost anyone else.
Photo credits: Shutterstock.com/Tada Images
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