The Democrats Won’t Beat Trump in November – Whether Biden is On the Ticket or Not
And they will continue to lose to Trump, unless they stop ignoring (not to mention disparaging) a critical voter block
The Democratic Party has a real problem, one it has been reluctant to address. It has a problem with a critical segment of the electorate that has been its bread and butter for decades – working-class voters. And that is especially true of working-class men. In fact the main reason Joe Biden is now losing to Donald Trump, is that for the last few years he and his party have been hemorrhaging those voters.
As The Liberal Patriot puts it:
In the July New York Times/Siena poll, Biden is losing to Trump by 23 points among working-class likely voters… this is a massive shift from the 2020 election where Trump carried these voters by only 4 points and mostly explains why Trump is running ahead this year.
As I’ve stated repeatedly and at length, this is a trend that has been long in the making. And the fact that Working-Class Joe has been unable or unwilling to reverse that trend, speaks volumes about the current shape of the party, and of Biden’s candidacy. It may also explain why Biden is reluctant to leave the race, and seems to feel he can turn his campaign around.
Because that segment of the party’s base has always been the core of Scranton Joe’s Democratic voters. And the fact that his numbers are cratering with them, suggests that either he is too disabled as a politician to make an effective appeal, or that he is being held back by his campaign staff, who, to put the sharpest possible point on it, may be afraid that appealing to white working-class men would turn off black college-educated women (a group which has continued to hang with him).
From the party’s perspective, this state of affairs is further complicated by the fact that, other than perhaps Bernie Sanders, there is not another prominent Democrat on the party’s supposedly large bench, who would have so natural an affinity with those voters. And the possibility of octogenarian Sanders replacing the aging Biden is not being seriously considered, for obvious reasons.
Which means that even if the Democrats are able to find a way to replace Biden at the top of the ticket, it is unlikely to have much impact on the presidential race. Though it might have an effect on down-ballot races, where it now appears the Democrats are poised to lose both the house and senate. Which is why at-risk members of congress are the most vocal in “encouraging” Biden to step aside.
But the bad news on the presidential-demographics front got even worse with the pick of J.D. Vance as Trump’s vice presidential running mate. While Vance offers little that would generally be expected from a VP – like improving the likelihood of winning a critical state, or growing the size of the tent by helping to add a new segment of the electorate, he does shore up Trump’s support among working-class voters. His entry also means the loss of those voters is going to be a long term problem for the Democrats, and will persist long after Trump has exited the scene. So they’d better figure out how to deal with it, and they’d better do that soon.
But that would mean finding a way to understand these voters, especially in terms of why they are abandoning the Democratic Party. And that needs to start with the realization that the primary complaint these voters have, is that the party’s approach to politics, has made them feel left behind and left out of the political debate – and in the process shoved aside by the party. And that is in part because, thanks to influence of the party’s progressive elite, the Democrats are creating a world from which these voters feel entirely excluded.
In their view, every few months a new hot-button issue or category of disadvantaged peoples is introduced to the political and cultural landscape, leaving them with another strange new name or acronym or cultural debate to come to terms with. And every time that happens, they are left feeling more anxious and confused about how they should talk about this new group or issue, or whether they are allowed to talk about them at all. And that leaves them walking on eggshells every time they try to express their feelings about the changing state of the world – whether that is on social media or around the dinner table.
Call it wokeism or DEI (Diversity Equity and Inclusion) or political correctness gone wild. But it is dumbfounding and isolating and downright exasperating to many members of the electorate. Which makes them feel they are being excluded for reasons they have no way of understanding. And that seems largely because they are made to feel that way, purely because they are not up on the latest jargon. In fact to some, that appears to be the whole purpose of wokeness – to make others feel inferior, simply because they are not familiar with the latest trend in the culture wars. And they are highly resentful of where that places them in the social order of things.
And this is especially true of the more socially aware and culturally sensitive among them. And not being inclined to be cultural warriors themselves, they have no real defense against their feelings of “otherness” that kind of politics brings. So they don’t say anything. They just quietly walk away from the debate, and politics in general… and from the Democratic Party in particular – without ever explaining why.
And that helps explain why this massive shift in the political culture doesn’t necessarily show up in the polls. Which also explains why the political elite have been so baffled buy Trump’s insurgence – especially during the early years. That lack of accurate polling likely comes down to the fact that these voters are reluctant to express their concerns about political correctness, even when talking to strangers over the phone.
But how could such a profound pattern of resentment not show up in some form or other? People do not like to feel they are being shut out or shut up. They will find some way to express their feelings, especially when those are feelings of resentment. And in politics they tend to do that through their stances on the issues, even while those views may also be an expression of much deeper concerns. And Trump gives them a ready vehicle with which to voice those concerns, primarily because he does not engage in the kind political correctness they resent (to state the obvious).
So their support for him may show up on specific issues – such as concerns about illegal immigration and the crisis at the border – a view that is bolstered by the fact that massive illegal immigration allows cheap labor to enter the country, labor which they feel lowers their wages – while allowing coastal elites to have their landscaping done and their children nannied on the cheap. Similarly, many globalist policies allow these same elites and their corporations to have their products made in China – at similar slave-labor-like wages. Which floods the market with cheap-labor-produced goods that put workers who produce competing American products out of work. And then there’s addressing climate change, and the way that is making their lives more difficult, by causing job losses in the energy and other sectors, while raising prices on energy, transportation, food and other consumer goods – thus pushing many folks further down the economic ladder.
So Biden and the Democrats can scream all they want about January 6th and fascism and democracy and 34 felony convictions. And they can continue to tell voters that they “don’t get it, don’t get how good they have it, don’t get how good the economy is, don’t get what a threat Trump is to the country.” And they can continue to bash their heads against the MAGA wall until their heads cave in. But these folks aren’t listening and are never going to listen. At least not until the Democrats start talking to them directly – in their language, about their issues and about the world as a whole – in ways that will make them feel welcome in the Democratic Party.
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The Contrarian Candidate is a high-stakes political thriller about our fraught and turbulent times, and undermining and defeating an unapologetic narcissist like Donald Trump.
Bartholomew St. James is a one-time political operative who’s turned his talents to reporting on the politics of our day. And he’s done it with fiction, because he feels that’s the best way to tell the story of a deeply divided nation and the challenges that presents.
He’s also the author of The Progressive Contrarian on Substack: Providing common sense answers to complex questions, by seeing the world through contrarian eyes.