To win back the working class, Democrats must adjust their aim

It’s been a dreary political winter for President Joe Biden. He’s buried under an avalanche of adverse polls showing perilously low public approval ratings as well as scant enthusiasm even among loyal Democratic voters.   

The blizzard of bad news, however, doesn’t mean Biden will lose his job next November. That’s especially true if his opponent is the rabidly divisive Donald Trump, who is kryptonite to American democracy.  

But the president’s consistently poor job performance numbers and the fact that he’s trailing Trump in many polls reflects a general Democratic failure to consolidate and expand the anti-Trump majority Biden assembled in 2020. 

Over the past three years, Democrats have made little headway on their top strategic imperative: winning back working Americans. On the contrary, Trump has expanded his already enormous margins among white working-class voters even as Democratic support among Black and Hispanic non-college voters continues to erode.  

It turns out that Biden’s policies and major legislative accomplishments are far more popular with progressive activists and college-educated cosmopolitans than with working-class voters. Democrats have been pitching their political message to the wrong audience — in effect, preaching mainly to the choir — and need to adjust their aim.   

That starts by understanding what non-college voters actually want from their political leaders, rather than what those leaders think they should want. To that end, the Progressive Policy Institute, where I am the founder and president, recently commissioned a major YouGov survey of working-class attitudes nationally and in seven key 2024 battleground states. 

Working Americans are acutely aware that the last 40 years have not been kind to people like them. Two-thirds say they are worse off and economic pessimism is even higher in the critical swing states of Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania. 

The high cost of living is overwhelmingly (69 percent) their top economic worry. And little wonder: The economist Robert Shapiro reports that the average annual wage income of working Americans, corrected for inflation, has declined by more than three percent compared to real wage gains of 4.1 percent under Trump. 

Asked why prices have risen so much, 55 percent of these picked “government went overboard with stimulus spending, overheating the economy” over the impact of the COVID recession and supply chain bottlenecks as the economy recovered. 

The Biden administration has laid heavy emphasis on reviving U.S. manufacturing. These voters no doubt would like to see that happen, but they are looking elsewhere when it comes to opportunities for their children.  

Their top choice (44 percent for all voters and 57 percent for Hispanics) was the communications and digital sector; only 13 percent saw their kids working in manufacturing. These findings are consistent with other PPI research that suggests many Washington policymakers have a skewed mental picture of America’s working class. 

The iconic blue-collar workers in manufacturing and construction constitute only a third of today’s non-college workforce, notes PPI’s Ed Gresser. There are many more workers — and women — in health care, retail, hospitality and personal services. 

That likely helps to explain why these working-class voters don’t see a strong connection between union membership and their upward mobility. Just 6 percent say joining a union would be the best way to acquire a good job and career, and only 15 percent saw a “federal push for stronger unions” as important. 

Another progressive priority that Biden unfortunately has championed — college loan forgiveness — misfires badly with these voters, even though many of them report some college. A mere 11 percent favor the plan, while a whopping 56 percent (including 59 percent of independents and 51 percent of Hispanics) say paying off this debt isn’t fair “to the majority of Americans who don’t get college degrees.” 

Only 9 percent believe a college degree would help them most to get ahead. What they want, instead, is more public investment in apprenticeships and career pathways (74 percent) plus “affordable short-term training programs that combine work and learning.” 

Our survey confirms that Democrats have forfeited their title as the party of prosperity for average working families. 

Working-class voters trust Republicans more to manage a growing economy, promote entrepreneurship, keep the debt and deficits under control and handle crime, immigration and national security. The GOP also has the edge on some important cultural or values dimensions: protecting personal freedom, strengthening private enterprise and respecting hard work and individual initiative.  

Democrats are trusted more to combat climate change, manage the clean energy transition and protect reproductive freedom. They have a disconcertedly narrow lead (five points) on respecting democratic institutions and elections. 

The survey also suggests that Democrats would be wise to temper progressive enthusiasm for a more powerful federal government committed to wealth distribution and economic equality.   

Just 19 percent of non-college voters favor that position. Thirty-four percent embrace the conservative goal of a small government that spends and taxes less. Most (47 percent) choose a pragmatic middle option: a federal government that actively steers the economy but mostly by promoting and protecting free markets.  

More hopefully for Democrats, the survey finds that on three staples of cultural war politics — immigration, crime and gender — more working-class voters gravitate to center-ground solutions than extreme ones.  

For example, on immigration — a top concern for these voters — the progressive left’s open border position gets support from only 15 percent, while 32 percent back the populist right’s demands to shut down the border. A majority (53 percent) embrace the pragmatic position that reform should reduce illegal entry and increase legal immigration to help our economy grow.  

Our poll also has bad news for red-state Republicans pushing universal voucher bills that give parents public subsidies to send their kids to private and religious schools. Only 34 percent of working-class voters supported this approach; 60 percent want tax dollars to flow only to public schools. 

Since 2016, Democrats have been assiduously wooing young activists and college-educated professionals. The result is a smaller, more left-leaning coalition. To prevail against Trump and right-wing populism, they’re going to need a bigger party.  

Will Marshall is the founder and president of the Progressive Policy Institute.