College-Educated Voters Are Biden’s Wild Card

The title of this post may seem a little odd, given that my previous post centered around the need for the Democrats to turn from focusing on their current base, to making a serious effort at attracting working-class voters.

So let me explain my reasoning here, and why I think it will work. It begins with the understanding that while the Democrats’ progressive college-educated voters are often viewed as being at the extreme end of the woke/antiwoke continuum, that is not necessarily true. In fact some recent numbers show a much different picture.

Because while many college-educated voters are at the far left end of the political spectrum, a recent article in

The Liberal Patriot

points out that college-educated Democratic voters are more pragmatic than their working-class counterparts. And as a result, they are far less concerned with adhering to a standard set of issues than they are with winning elections – especially ones against Donald Trump. 

As the article points out:

[W]hile 82 percent of Democrats support taking moderate stances to beat Trump, the number is an astronomical 93 percent among college-educated Democrats.

In other words, nearly all of their college-educated voters are perfectly willing to subordinate their personal political needs, to the more pressing need of defeating Donald Trump. Which tells us that college-educated voters are much more practical, not to mention much less partisan, than the screaming headlines might lead us to believe.

Which in turn means that college-educated voters are an even more valuable asset than generally thought. Because, in poker parlance, they are wild cards. They can turn a losing hand into a straight flush, or five of a kind, whatever it takes to beat Donald Trump. And that gives the Democrats a whole lot of leverage and flexibility.

It also means that strengthening the base is not nearly as valuable for Democrats as current orthodoxy might suggest. Which means expanding their base, rather than solidifying it, might be a much better strategy than previously thought. It also means that those college-educated Haley voters could be a lot more getable than once believed, especially those who voted against Trump as opposed to for Haley. And there are a lot of those, as ABC News reports:

Super Tuesday exit polls in California, North Carolina and Virginia found that between 80 percent and 95 percent of Haley primary voters in those states would be "dissatisfied" if Trump won the nomination. And an early March survey by Emerson College found that 63 percent of Haley backers preferred President Joe Biden over Trump in a general election match up, compared to 27 percent who preferred Trump.

But perhaps more importantly, the flexibility of their college-educated voters gives the Democrats the freedom to go after working-class voters in a much more clear and vigorous way. If those college-educated voters are likely to stick with Biden in order to defeat Trump, they will not be as turned off as some Biden staffers might suggest, at seeing ads which target working-class men and their issues – so long as those college-educated voters are in the loop and understand the overall objective.

And that is an important caveat. But convincing them of the practicality of that strategy should not be difficult. For one thing, these voters are generally on the more informed side of the low information/high information voter spectrum. Which also helps explain why they are so strategic in their voting. Because they are much more likely to see the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Or is it the orange-colored sunset that looms if they fail?

But even taken as a whole, the Democratic base is highly agreeable to the party moderating its stance in order to defeat Trump, with 82% feeling that way – an overwhelming majority.

In fact according to The Liberal Democrat article’s author,

Sean McElwee

it is actually progressive, college-educated staffers who are the problem. They are the ones who are most strident in their views and in arguing that their college-educated cohort would not be willing to cut Biden that kind of slack. Which tells me they are the real obstacle to the Democrats expanding their base.

That also tells me how out of touch Biden’s campaign is with the real American electorate. And that may tell us why the campaign is having such difficulty getting off the ground in a way that would allow them to make significant headway with uncommitted voters.

But what really riles me and makes this whole issue so disturbing, is that at a time when Biden’s cognitive powers and general ability to campaign are under relentless attack, his campaign is subordinating, if not outright eliminating, his one truly marketable asset as a campaigning politician – his natural affinity with working-class voters, especially older men. And what makes that even more short-sighted, is the well-established fact that those voters are much more likely to vote than the younger voters his staffers seem to be salivating over.

Plus I would be willing to bet that talking to those voters is the one thing President Biden would dearly love to be doing on a consistent basis. If you want to see a vigorous President Biden, put him face-to-face with working-class voters. If his campaign were to do that, we would see as energetic a Joe Biden as we are ever likely to see in this election cycle. And contrast that with the Biden his campaign seems to prefer us to see, on TikTok of all places, where he winds up looking like a confused old man totally out of touch with the world around him.

So instead of that, I say give the voters working-class Joe from Scranton PA. Because that’s who he really is. And my guess is Biden is eager to let that Joe out of suffocating cage his ultra-woke progressive staffers have stuffed him into.