From day one of his presidential career, Donald Trump made it clear that he was fighting for the Forgotten Men and Women of America. His opponents have become laser-focused on their big corporate backers who want to flood the country with cheap foreign labor and on the pseudo-intellectuals churned out by the Ivy League schools who couldn’t even condemn calls for genocide against Israel on their campuses. With a platform so biased against the American worker and American values, is it any wonder Harris is losing the working class? In City Journal, Fred Bauer discusses blue-collar disenchantment with the Democrat Party and Harris herself. Bauer writes:
“I love McDonald’s. I love jobs,” Donald Trump said over the weekend as he visited a Pennsylvania franchise of the iconic fast-food brand to sling fries and pose for the cameras. The former president’s affection for the Golden Arches has generated many viral social-media moments, and the campaign stop highlighted Trump’s cultural and economic outreach to working-class voters.
While Kamala Harris claims to have worked at McDonald’s in her youth, her support among union and working-class voters seems relatively soft. In a break from tradition, the International Association of Fire Fighters recently announced that it would not endorse a candidate for president. The firefighters’ union endorsed Joe Biden last time around and has backed a Democrat in almost every presidential cycle for the past 40 years, the only exception being 2016—a parallel that might provoke dread in some Democrats. The IAFF isn’t the only union sitting on the sidelines this year. After commissioning a poll and learning that its rank and file prefer Trump by a considerable margin, the Teamsters decided to stay out of the presidential race, too.
To some extent, these two organizations are labor-movement outliers; Harris has secured endorsements from many other unions. But polling also suggests that Harris is struggling with blue-collar voters. As part of a secular shift within American politics, working-class voters are migrating from their old base in the Democratic Party to join the Republican coalition.
This blue-collar disenchantment with the Democratic Party has laid bare the gap between unions as a political bloc and the interests of working-class voters themselves. Like Biden, Harris has catered to the demands of union leadership. She has endorsed both the PRO Act, which would expand the power of unions and weaken right-to-work laws, and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, which would allow public-sector workers to unionize across the country.
But the demands of the union power brokers on 16th Street, N.W., in Washington, D.C., might differ from the rank and file on Main Street. Inflation has ravaged the pocketbooks of many working families. According to federal data, inflation-adjusted median household income has risen over the past year but remains lower than it was in 2019. The border crisis—stoked by the policies of the Biden administration—has strained communities across the country. In climate and energy policy, too, some progressive ideologies are at odds with worker interests. In fact, Harris herself cosponsored a bill that would mandate that all new cars be “zero emission” vehicles by 2040—a policy that would essentially ban the manufacture of conventional automobiles, shred the American manufacturing base, and likely give a considerable strategic advantage to the People’s Republic of China, which has in place a massive infrastructure for producing battery-powered cars.
This economic track record highlights how the priorities and cultural values of progressive elites have become increasingly estranged from those of working-class voters. A 2023 poll from the Progressive Policy Institute found that non-college voters gave Republicans a healthy advantage over Democrats on handling crime and illegal immigration. Only 25 percent of those polled backed Biden’s unilateral use of executive power to liquidate student loans; 56 percent thought that this policy was unfair to Americans who didn’t go to college. The imperious managerialism of “woke” social policies is at odds with the “leave us alone” ethos of many working-class communities.
The GOP has been well-positioned to exploit this fracture in the Democratic coalition. Its more populist approach to economics has removed many potential deal-breakers with working-class voters. For instance, economically vulnerable voters view federal entitlements as a vital safety net, and fears of cuts to these programs made many suspicious of Republicans. In his 2012 reelection campaign, Barack Obama (who did well with working-class voters compared with recent Democratic nominees) bludgeoned Mitt Romney over entitlements. The Republican Party under Trump has instead emphasized keeping much of that safety net intact, and there’s a kind of internal logic to its combination of tight borders, family subsidies, federal entitlements, and cheap energy as a backstop for working Americans.
This economic evolution has allowed Republicans to use cultural issues to peel away additional working-class voters from Democrats. Trump’s combative public rhetoric may alienate some college-educated Americans, but many voters who feel left behind like his style. Beyond taking shifts at the fryolator, Republicans more broadly have tried to reach out to labor. One of the Senate’s leading populist Republicans, Missouri’s Josh Hawley has joined picket lines for striking workers, as has J. D. Vance. In terms of policy signals and political aesthetics, today’s GOP is certainly more attuned to working-class voters.
Action Line: The party of Kamala Harris doesn’t stand for the working class. Her focus is not on winning the union workers and laborers across America. Look at the Teamsters’ refusal to endorse Harris after endorsing the Democrat Party nominee for decades. It’s a sign that she has already lost the Forgotten Man. Click here to subscribe to my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter.
E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy
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