People talk about the working class like it is some kind of monolith.
The Democrats can try to appeal to working class with policies that would positively affect them (and some will buy it), but there seems to a be a large segment of the working class that cares more about retribution against immigrants, "woke society", and the "deep state".
So the question is, how do Democrats appeal to that large segment of working class without having to out-Trump Trump? This is a formula that has worked for the Republicans in 2 of the last 3 federal elections, and I don't see them backing down. If people believe immigrants are the problem, that the deep state is controlling the country, and that wokeness is a threat to their traditional values, how do you convince them otherwise? Or do you just adopt some of those same methods?
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The two most important things Dems need to do going forward:
1. Nothing. Just wait. They'll probably win 2026 and 2028 simply by not being the incumbents.
2. Lie. Significantly more than currently. It's a post-truth world, honesty isn't important anymore, selling narratives, true or not, is.
I wouldn’t say “lie” necessarily. But it wouldn’t hurt. But selling a narrative is a big deal. Part of the whole “abandoning the working class” thing is very much about how they abandoned crafting a narrative that speaks to and appeals to that class.
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Yeah, it's kind of funny. Democrats lose the Presidency by maybe 1.5 points and the house by a few seats in a worldwide climate where incumbents are getting tossed out left and right. And the response is "tear it all down, they've completely abandoned the working class, etc.".
Meanwhile the Republicans lost the 2020 election by nearly 6 points and their candidate tried to overthrow the democratic process to stay in power. Then they just run the same guy again 4 years later and win.
Clearly the Democrat answer is to run Biden in 2028 or perhaps get Hillary Clinton back for another run, maybe she is due!
Don't change a thing. Status quo. Everything is ok, these stats say so. Low unemployment, record high stock market. Life is good in America. Democrats should have won handily and should be voted in again.
It's ironic that the voices of reason in this thread right now are traditionally progressive socially minded posters like PepsiFree, iggyoi who voiced problems and concerns with the Democrats and their policies, while the more 'moderate' liberal posters are outright losing their minds and making every excuse they can to not change a damn thing and the other side is evil, while even turning on said progressives. It took an atrocious pandemic response and unprecedented turmoil and anger for Trump to lose in 2020. The warning signs were still very apparent that Trump or a Trump like Republican could win back the presidency without major changes.
2024 and supposedly democracy is on the line and the world has supposedly never been better outside of democracy being on the brink, Democrats gets 10 million votes less than 2020 giving an electoral college landslide win for a convicted felon, Democrats also lose the House and the Senate in the process, and we have posters downplaying and rationalizing it down to incumbent-phobia / racism / sexism / everything but Democrats and it was a squeaker of a loss.
The whole 'incumbent are losing around the world' is such a cop out narrative to avoid facing justified criticism.
Maybe if the Democrats were more like Nazis they'd win some elections? Is that the correct takeway here?
The takeaway should be that feelings matter, nothing else. Stop worrying about policy, fairness, equality, none of that #### matters. Figure out what your voting base is most angry about, craft some simple slogans that feed that anger, and then lie through your teeth anytime journalists or the opposing side question you. That's how you win modern elections
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I'd say the lesson they should learn is: Don't completely ignore about 25% of the population.
While I don't think Scott has the answers to everything, he does make a pretty good point. When you ignore and seem to shun such a large voting pool, it's tough to win. Show the white male population there is a space for them under your tent and why everything else shouldn't be [that] scary for them.
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This is wild to me, people are holding the Biden Harris administration accountable to the Clinton and Obama Administrations, while Trump can't even be help to responsible for his own promises, let alone record or proven criminality. And Biden actively tried to do more but we constrained by a divided government.
Being the most favourable means a lot when you are comparing it to the least favourable since Reagan.
I actually do get why people felt squeezed, particularly in '22/'23. But real wages were up, manufacturers were hiring. It's objective truth that everything these people say they want Biden made better, and Trump made worse.
I honestly think the Democrats biggest flaw was ever letting people know they did anything, because the average person is better off now then they were 4 years ago, but these are small changes on a personal level that aren't strongly felt. And when they hear these changes look big in aggregate they assume somebodies life got a lot better and they missed out, instead of understanding that a lot of peoples lives got a little bit better (which is really the best you can hope for in a 4 year span, especially with a divided congress and captured courts actively trying to make things worse.).
A lot of people’s lives got better, but it wasn’t the people at the very bottom of the economic totem pole. They make up a large portion of the country and they’re the ones the democrats need to be helping the most. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that the republicans are going to be helping them either but most voters who feel that their lives aren’t getting better are going to vote for change for the sake of change.
The EPI definitely has a slant, but their data is from the US Government's Current Population Survey. And looking at the raw data in the CPS survey, it seems to check out based on a quick glance.
Thanks for linking - a good read. My confusion came from the years they are using and that you were quoting, as it looks like they are including 2019. And if you include 2019, most of that real wage growth is actually coming from 2019 to 2020, which are actually pre-Biden years and based on how they're structuring the data, pre-pandemic, so I don't think your point holds true. In fact, according to the chart in the appendix, real wages for all groups other than the bottom decline have stagnated or decreased since 2020.
Democrats won the higher level of education folks, but there are far more Americans that don't have degrees who largely favoured Republican
Most Americans see themselves as moderate versus liberal or conservative, or independent versus Democrat or Republican.
Family income under 100k (60% of the population) favoured Republican while family income over 100K favoured Democrat
Folks who viewed the economy as great overwhelmingly sided with Democrats, while folks who viewed the economy as bad or poor sided with Republicans.
It wasn't always like this. Look at the numbers under Obama and they are very different. Note how strong Obama did with income under 100K compared to McCain.
Same thing with 2012. in fact it was even more pronounced, with Republicans being the party of elites handily being favoured by the elites over 100K, yet Obama won handily under. Democrats also scored higher with folks without a degree.
This clear paradigm change and lack of understanding its own base is precisely why Democrats failed. They choose to fight the wrong battles when it was always a class inequality issue. In the process they bled out costly votes from key demographics as they virtue signaled their way out of the graces of the working class while Trump and MAGA resonated with the working class, a class that was largely Democrat in the past.
If these stats aren't a wake up call to Democrats, I don't know what is.
Thanks for linking - a good read. My confusion came from the years they are using and that you were quoting, as it looks like they are including 2019. And if you include 2019, most of that real wage growth is actually coming from 2019 to 2020, which are actually pre-Biden years and based on how they're structuring the data, pre-pandemic, so I don't think your point holds true. In fact, according to the chart in the appendix, real wages for all groups other than the bottom decline have stagnated or decreased since 2020.
True, but 2020 data suffers from the massive changes in workforce composition that occurred as a result of pandemic restrictions. Lower wage people (and this would even apply within the quintiles) were far more likely to lose their jobs than higher wage people, which naturally pushes the median wage of the remaining workers upwards, even if wages stay the same. Then when they return to work in 2021 and after, the median would tend to drop back down.
That's what happened generally, and it was almost wholly due to labor force composition, and not people actually getting their pay cut. So the growth in 2020 was more or less artificial and not a reliable measuring stick. That's why they use pre-pandemic as the baseline, as it has a similar unemployment rate to 2023/24. And because we're talking about real wages, the deflationary period in 2020 also created an artificial boost to real wages in 2020 that didn't last.
To be fair, I'm not saying low wage workers should necessarily feel that much richer. Massive growth in asset values has largely left the working class behind, and that's why they generally feel worse off. However, the magnitude of real wage growth compared to the rest of the last 45 years among the low-to-middle income group is definitely worth highlighting. Their real wages were virtually stagnant for 4 decades until the pandemic.
True, but 2020 data suffers from the massive changes in workforce composition that occurred as a result of pandemic restrictions. Lower wage people (and this would even apply within the quintiles) were far more likely to lose their jobs than higher wage people, which naturally pushes the median wage of the remaining workers upwards, even if wages stay the same. Then when they return to work in 2021 and after, the median would tend to drop back down.
That's what happened generally, and it was almost wholly due to labor force composition, and not people actually getting their pay cut. So the growth in 2020 was more or less artificial and not a reliable measuring stick. That's why they use pre-pandemic as the baseline, as it has a similar unemployment rate to 2023/24. And because we're talking about real wages, the deflationary period in 2020 also created an artificial boost to real wages in 2020 that didn't last.
To be fair, I'm not saying low wage workers should necessarily feel that much richer. Massive growth in asset values has largely left the working class behind, and that's why they generally feel worse off. However, the magnitude of real wage growth compared to the rest of the last 45 years among the low-to-middle income group is definitely worth highlighting. Their real wages were virtually stagnant for 4 decades until the pandemic.
I don't disagree, I just think your post was misleading when you compared to "pre-pandemic" and referenced "the last four years", implying that the policies of the Democrats the last four years had led to that wage growth, when the data doesn't support that conclusion. Or at least that conclusion ignores the significant wage growth immediately preceding the pandemic and pre-Biden.
A lot of people’s lives got better, but it wasn’t the people at the very bottom of the economic totem pole. They make up a large portion of the country and they’re the ones the democrats need to be helping the most. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that the republicans are going to be helping them either but most voters who feel that their lives aren’t getting better are going to vote for change for the sake of change.
The thing is on a statistical level you're wrong.
I think people feel that gains were disproportionately stilted against them, because they kept hearing that the the economy was good, and the lost accesses to those great support cheques. They were very much feeling that they had earned the gains that they did make, and inflation was eroding away much of those gains. Most people don't actually view their own income gains as part of a macro story even when they are, they have a self conception of themselves as unique and special, so when they have wage gains, they assume they have done something unique and special to earn position in society in a sense, and when society moves with them if violates that view.
But the statistics are clear, under the Biden administration, on average, the worse off you were the more likely you were to see improvements relative to others.
Cumulative % Change in Real Hourly Wages 2019-2023
Clearly the Democrat answer is to run Biden in 2028 or perhaps get Hillary Clinton back for another run, maybe she is due!
Don't change a thing. Status quo. Everything is ok, these stats say so. Low unemployment, record high stock market. Life is good in America. Democrats should have won handily and should be voted in again.
It's ironic that the voices of reason in this thread right now are traditionally progressive socially minded posters like PepsiFree, iggyoi who voiced problems and concerns with the Democrats and their policies, while the more 'moderate' liberal posters are outright losing their minds and making every excuse they can to not change a damn thing and the other side is evil, while even turning on said progressives. It took an atrocious pandemic response and unprecedented turmoil and anger for Trump to lose in 2020. The warning signs were still very apparent that Trump or a Trump like Republican could win back the presidency without major changes.
2024 and supposedly democracy is on the line and the world has supposedly never been better outside of democracy being on the brink, Democrats gets 10 million votes less than 2020 giving an electoral college landslide win for a convicted felon, Democrats also lose the House and the Senate in the process, and we have posters downplaying and rationalizing it down to incumbent-phobia / racism / sexism / everything but Democrats and it was a squeaker of a loss.
The whole 'incumbent are losing around the world' is such a cop out narrative to avoid facing justified criticism.
You're talking to the wrong guy. I've consistently said the Democrats would likely lose the election for the last 1-2 years because of Biden and Harris' unpopularity, big declines in life expectancy in the US, and the fact that people in swing states have seen relatively poor real wage growth.
However, that doesn't change the reality that the electorate swings back and forth in times where they're unhappy and that's going to benefit the Democrats in the relatively near future even if they do nothing. There's a reason why incumbent parties have just lost 3 straight Presidential elections for the first time since the 1800s. Suggesting that Trump is going to be the one to turn things around and make everyone happy again is a pretty bold proposition. He never cracked a 50% approval rating in his 1st term and averaged a 41% rating; and based on exit poll data, that's unlikely the change in this term.
And you realize they're still counting votes, right? The "10M drop" in Democratic votes is going be more like 5M with a Trump +1.4 victory by the time they're done counting. Hardly end of the world stuff.
I don't disagree, I just think your post was misleading when you compared to "pre-pandemic" and referenced "the last four years", implying that the policies of the Democrats the last four years had led to that wage growth, when the data doesn't support that conclusion. Or at least that conclusion ignores the significant wage growth immediately preceding the pandemic and pre-Biden.
Those were two different things. The pre-pandemic reference was talking about real wage growth in the bottom 40%, while the last 4 years was talking about a recession/post-recession cycle. For that latter, yeah, I guess I should have said 4.5 or even 5 years to be totally accurate.
For the wage growth in the bottom 40% though, yeah you can't necessarily chalk that all up to Democratic policies, but I think arguing that there was strong organic real wage growth in 2020 with the huge unemployment that was happening is a tough to case to make.
And you also have to consider monetary policy. The massive injections of cash into the economy in 2020 will show up in wages a lot faster than they will in inflation. So 2020 wages got the benefit of the huge growth in money supply, whereas 2021 and beyond are where that was felt in terms of inflation, which reduces real wages.
Again, that's why comparing to pre-pandemic is a better measure because it accounts for all that. If Biden gave everyone in the country $10K each a year ago, wage growth would have been exceptional and the annual inflation rate probably wouldn't have gotten too out of control right away. But eventually inflation would skyrocket and depress real wages in 2025 and beyond. Only looking at 2024 in that instance would be misleading.
The massive injections of cash into the economy in 2020 will show up in wages a lot faster than they will in inflation. So 2020 wages got the benefit of the huge growth in money supply, whereas 2021 and beyond are where that was felt in terms of inflation, which reduces real wages.
Again, that's why comparing to pre-pandemic is a better measure because it accounts for all that. If Biden gave everyone in the country $10K each a year ago, wage growth would have been exceptional and the annual inflation rate probably wouldn't have gotten too out of control right away. But eventually inflation would skyrocket and depress real wages in 2025 and beyond. Only looking at 2024 in that instance would be misleading.
The direct government transfers and subsidies in 2020 improved the sense of prosperity of many voters, making the inflation of the next 3 years feel even worse in comparison.
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If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
I'd say the lesson they should learn is: Don't completely ignore about 25% of the population.
While I don't think Scott has the answers to everything, he does make a pretty good point. When you ignore and seem to shun such a large voting pool, it's tough to win. Show the white male population there is a space for them under your tent and why everything else shouldn't be [that] scary for them.
Wow, that 'Who we serve' link is a major symptom of the problem with the Democratic Party.
What's worse is that Scott's estimate of how many Americans it fails to capture is probably undershooting the real amount of people who feel none of those categories really have anything to do with them even if they do technically fit. If I lived in the US (or if you replace the word 'Americans' with 'Canadians'), I seriously wouldn't see myself included in any of those listed demographics, and it could be argued I would fit into at least two or three of them:
- Asian Americans -- Pakistani is part of this classification but -- considering I'm only half on my mom's side -- I really don't regard myself as Pakistani in any meaningful or practical way.
- Ethnic Americans -- This almost feels like a meaningless catch-all category.
- Young People -- Okay, I'm kidding; no matter how youthful I feel, I'm 39 years old now and 'young' went out of the window when I became eligible to rent a car without paying an age surcharge.
I think people feel that gains were disproportionately stilted against them, because they kept hearing that the the economy was good, and the lost accesses to those great support cheques. They were very much feeling that they had earned the gains that they did make, and inflation was eroding away much of those gains. Most people don't actually view their own income gains as part of a macro story even when they are, they have a self conception of themselves as unique and special, so when they have wage gains, they assume they have done something unique and special to earn position in society in a sense, and when society moves with them if violates that view.
But the statistics are clear, under the Biden administration, on average, the worse off you were the more likely you were to see improvements relative to others.
Cumulative % Change in Real Hourly Wages 2019-2023
