The GOP’s Big Working-Class Bet

It just might work.

The GOP seems to be leaning into its emerging identity as a working-class party. It’s pretty standard now for Republicans to do better than Democrats among working-class (noncollege) voters while trailing the Democrats substantially among the college-educated. This is both because of massive Republican margins among white working-class voters and reduced Democratic margins among nonwhite working-class voters.

That was the case in 2020 and judging by this year’s campaign Republicans intend to deepen their roots in America’s working class. The party platform was recently released and was discussed in a Guardian article, “The Republicans’ new party platform is scary—because it can win”, by two labor-oriented socialists, Dustin Guastella and Bhaskar Sunkara. They point out:

In addition to the ex-president’s signature anti-immigrant positions, consider the following changes: the drafters have dropped the party’s longstanding commitment to cut “entitlements” and now say that Republicans “will not cut one penny” from Social Security or Medicare. The platform also does not mention reducing the national debt, opting instead for vague language about slashing “wasteful spending.” The platform endorses an industrial policy to make the U.S. the “Manufacturing Superpower.” The platform rails against the “unfair trade deals” and politicians who “sold our jobs and livelihoods to the highest bidders overseas.” And there is a new commitment to “rebuild our cities and restore law and order.”

Most strikingly, the platform does not mention any national abortion ban, only opposition to “late-term abortion.” The platform describes itself as “a return to common sense”…

Data on the views of working-class voters indicate that this approach will play very well indeed with them. That includes on abortion, where working-class voters are moderately pro-choice and very much not interested in a nationwide abortion ban.

Then there is the RNC itself. The first day included a fire-breathing speech by Teamsters President Sean O’Brien denouncing big business and corporate lobbies for “waging a war on American workers” and calling for labor law reform and other pro-union measures. Not the usual fare for Republican conventions. And of course the selection of J.D. Vance as Trump’s running mate fits right into a populist working-class orientation.

Vance rose from a hardscrabble and highly dysfunctional white working-class background to serve in the Marines, graduate from Yale Law School and, famously, wrote the best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy (still worth reading if you haven’t). After a successful, but relatively brief, law and business career, he moved back to his home state of Ohio, eventually running for and winning a seat in the US Senate.

In the process, Vance as a Republican has been persistently heterodox in his approach to economics, ostentatiously breaking from what he regards as free market orthodoxy. As Zaid Jilani notes, he has pushed a wide variety of populist policies with matching pro-working class rhetoric:

·  He co-sponsored a bill with Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) to lower the price of insulin.

·  He backed legislation with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to claw back executive pay when big banks fail. 

·  He spearheaded legislation with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) to regulate the rail industry following the disaster in East Palestine.

·  He worked with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) for drug price transparency and to promote greater credit-card competition.

·  He introduced a bill with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) to battle corporate mergers.”

And Vance in his speech to the RNC accepting the vice-presidential nomination said:

This moment is not about me. It's about all of us and it's about who we're fighting for. It's about the auto worker in Michigan wondering why out of touch politicians are destroying their jobs. It's about the factory worker in Wisconsin who makes things with their hands and is proud of American craftsmanship. It's about the energy worker in Pennsylvania in Ohio who doesn't understand why Joe Biden is willing to buy energy from tin pot dictators across the world when he could buy it from his own citizens right here in our own country…

As always, America's ruling class wrote the checks, communities like mine paid the price for decades. The divide between the few with their power and comfort in Washington and the rest of us only widened from Iraq to Afghanistan. From the financial crisis to the great recession, from open borders to stagnating wages, the people who govern this country have failed and failed again…

We're done, ladies and gentlemen, catering to Wall Street. We'll commit to the working man. We're done importing foreign labor. We're going to fight for American citizens and their good jobs and their good wages. We're done buying energy from countries that hate us. We're going to get it right here from American workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio and across the country. We're done sacrificing supply chains to unlimited global trade and we're going to stamp more and more products with that beautiful label made in the USA. We're going to build factories again, put people to work making real products for American families made with the hands of American workers. Together, we will protect the wages of American workers and stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens together.

In short he is a “different kind of Republican” and different in a way that leans heavily into the GOP’s evolving turn toward the working class. This is of significance both for this campaign and, even more so, for the trajectory of the GOP in coming years.

However, some political observers plausibly point out that, whatever his working-class credentials, he may bring little to the table in a short-term electoral sense. His home state is not in play and his populist image may even hurt with persuadable suburban moderates who are considering Trump.

Democrats go farther. They dismiss Vance as just another MAGA guy, a despicable opportunist who once denounced Trump and now embraces him. He is an authoritarian zealot and ex-venture capitalist who only poses as a working-class advocate for political gain. There is no need to take him seriously, other than as a Trump acolyte.

This is probably a mistake. Democrats seem inclined to believe that the GOP’s big bet on the working class—of which the Vance nomination is surely a part—cannot possibly pay off due to the party’s obvious hypocrisy, incoherent policy ideas, and traditional business-oriented commitments. Therefore, the GOP’s latest moves will be of little consequence.

Here’s the problem: not only could the GOP’s big bet on the working class pay off—it already is paying off. Let’s go to the tape.

In the July New York Times/Siena poll, Biden is losing to Trump by 23 points among working-class likely voters. In their June poll, which was closer to the running average of the polls, Trump led by 17 points among working-class likely voters. Either way, 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.

New York Times/Siena also did two July state polls in Pennsylvania and Virginia. Pennsylvania is generally viewed as being the “tipping point” state in this election—the state that, if carried by Trump, would tip the electoral college in his favor. In the Times Pennsylvania poll, where Trump’s lead over Biden is the same as in the polling averages, Trump is carrying likely working-class voters in the state by 18 points. That’s double his 9 point lead among these voters in 2020, according to States of Change data.

Even more striking, in Virginia, a state Biden carried by 10 points, the Times poll has Biden ahead by just 3 points (shockingly, the state is now tied in the RCP running average). In the poll, Trump is carrying likely working-class voters in the state by 24 points. That compares to a mere 6 point margin for Trump among these voters in 2020 and can account for why the state is now so close.

It appears that the GOP’s big working-class bet has been a good one. And we should not rule out that it just might get better. That’s why Democrats need to stop assuming that bet will flop and figure out instead how to make their own bet on the working class. It seems increasingly doubtful that “democracy is on the ballot” will do the job. As Nate Silver points out, “that..message mostly resonates with high-engagement, college-educated voters, which is basically the only group that Biden hasn’t lost ground with since 2020.”

Indeed, whatever one’s political persuasion it would appear we’ll all have to deal with what we might call “the working class question” as we move into the latter part of the 2020’s. As conservative Matt Continetti, no fan of either Trump or Vance, remarks:

The nomination of [Trump’s] new apprentice suggests that the Trump style, the Trump policies and the Trump appeal to non-college-educated voters of every race and ethnicity will rule the Republican Party for decades to come.

Just so. Whatever course one might wish for US politics in the future, that is a reality that must be reckoned with.