Both Parties Ignore the Working Class Down the Stretch
Both Parties Ignore the Working Class Down the Stretch
The final week of the election comes down to culture wars and a fight over democracy, not working-class economic needs.
In the end, Democrats and Republicans decided to fight it out one last time over culture war abstractions and democracy—not the economy. Trump’s final messaging centers on Harris’s support for transgender surgeries for prisoners and open immigration, along with a head-scratcher MAGA rally featuring unsavory characters saying dumb things that his campaign had to walk back. Harris’s final campaign message is all about Trump’s threats to democracy and his supposed “fascism,” along with a head-scratcher gaffe from Joe Biden insulting voters that the White House and campaign had to walk back.
These aren’t unimportant issues in the election. Character, culture, and democracy will clearly play some role in the final outcome, and voters on all sides have legitimate concerns about both candidates in relation to these matters.
But with less than a week to go in the election, what’s missing? The economy, the single most important issue for most Americans—particularly working-class voters.
Both campaigns of course have advertising and “plans” talking about the economy. Still, you don’t hear either Trump or Harris, or their surrogates, saying much if anything in the final days about what the two presidential candidates really want to do on economic security, jobs, benefits, costs, and other basic material needs that occupy the minds of normal voters.
Trump and Harris are far more concerned with elevating fear and disdain for the other side than with making a case for their own economic policies. Consequently, the lack of an economy-focused campaign centered on the working class from either camp explains a lot about why the race is neck-and-neck with no obvious winner to predict a week out.
To help understand this dynamic, a new research project conducted earlier this month in Pennsylvania by Jacobin, the Center for Working-Class Politics, and YouGov provides some fascinating data on how the election is breaking out among working-class voters—using a more comprehensive examination of class than is typically employed—and examines the utility of various campaign approaches to these voters.
The table below shows the Trump and Harris vote along occupational, income, and education lines (which are traditionally used by researchers to indicate “working-class” due to years of comparative data on voting based on non-college and college-educated status.)
Looking at traditional education cuts, Harris enjoys a big lead in PA with college-educated voters (+11) and a smaller lead among those with some college education (+8), while Trump holds a similar lead among those with a high school education or less (+8).
Perhaps more interesting are the findings by occupation and income. Trump holds a whopping 20-point lead with manual workers and is tied with Harris among managers and business owners. In comparison, Harris enjoys a small 6-point margin with service and clerical workers and a slight 2-point lead with professionals. Trump also enjoys narrow leads in PA with middle-income voters in the $30k to $100k range and with the richest voters earning more than $200k per year. Harris, in contrast, is up by 15 points among the lowest income voters and ahead just slightly among the upper-middle and professional classes with earnings of $100k to $200k annually.
Notably, the study also tested a full menu of campaign messages articulated by Harris and Trump over the past few months. What did the researchers uncover? Economic populism works better with PA working-class voters than right-wing culture wars and left-wing democracy messaging.
Some key findings from the report are listed below, followed by a chart showing the relative strength and weaknesses of different approaches (messages tested are listed in the back of the report):
All populist and economic-centered messages outperform those that focus on immigration and abortion, and they dramatically outperform messages foregrounding Trump as a threat to democracy. These results hold across partisan lines and largely across class lines, measured by occupation, education, and income…
Messaging around Trump as a threat to democracy underperformed all other Harris messages among virtually every group. Overall, Strong Populism and Progressive Economics outperformed Democratic Threat messaging by 9 and 8 points, respectively [see chart below]…
The “enemies” typically identified in right-wing populism—media organizations, universities, and unions—are not as broadly disliked as economic and political elites, including large donors and lobbyists. This underlines the electorate’s receptiveness to left-wing populist messaging.
Obviously, the groups sponsoring this research favor a more economic-focused, populist approach to organizing blue-collar and other working-class voters.
Regardless of this preference, it’s striking to find that the core messages of both campaigns at the end of the 2024 cycle—Harris’s message about fascism and democratic erosion and Trump’s smorgasbord of anti-elitist, anti-woke charges—essentially play to their respective partisan bases rather than target the all-important bloc of persuadable working-class voters.
It’s too late now to do much about this. The time for persuasion is over with only GOTV and vote counting left to do in the final days.
But looking at these numbers, whichever candidate ends up on the losing side in Pennsylvania next week may come to regret their decision to downplay working-class economic policies in favor of the partisan cultural obsessions of college-educated voters.
I believe this has been the most vile, fact-free campaign season in my lifetime, and I've been around since FDR/Dewey. Of course, I wasn't taking notes at the time, being just eight months old, but I remember Eisenhower/Stevenson and all the elections thereafter. I can't remember any previous campaign claiming that its opponent presented an existential danger to the Republic, unlike both of the current campaigns -- and although pandering in the form of uneconomic tax cuts and impossible promised benefits aren't new, the scale and gaudiness are unprecedented.
Buckle up, America. It's been a bumpy eight years, and it's going to get worse.
If there is one thing both political parties might agree on in this dismal Election 2024 it is this: Avoid talking about the tough stuff.
So, yes, mention the high price of groceries and make stupid, unachievable promises about outlawing "price gouging." But be careful not to touch the substantive third rails like the actual causes of inflation, life runaway government spending leading to record deficits which will shape worse times ahead for Americans for years to come. And definitely make no promises like cutting spending in an election year. Trump has the better argument here in his pro growth, reduced regulation promises, but has failed to seal the deal by relating how economic dynamism lifts all boats, including government revenue sources. President Clinton spent like a drunken sailor, but the booming dot.com economy of the 1990s allowed him to do so and still balance the budget, the only time in the past half century.
No doubt in a time of deep and serious border and national security jitters most Americans might have liked to hear the specifics for what the candidates would do to keep Americans safe. That both candidates have records that clearly benefit Trump leaves unanswered what they will do and how they will address these security crises growing rapid worse and more ominous by the day.
This may not be the worse of times in American history, but it will become that in short order without some needed competitive straight talk specifics from the wannabe leaders of the free world.