What Do Dems Have To Do To Start Winning Back The Working-Class Voters Who Have Strayed To The GOP?

Unions fought against this-- Democratic elites ignored them

The Democratic Party’s connection to the working class was once unshakable. From the New Deal through the Civil Rights era and into the postwar economic boom, Democrats were the party of labor unions, factory workers, minorities and those who saw government as a tool for leveling the playing field. But by the time Bill Clinton took office in 1993, the party had already begun abandoning the economic populism that defined its 20th-century heyday. Clinton and his New Dem policies greatly accelerated that trend.

The unraveling began in the late 1970s, when corporate interests launched a sustained counteroffensive against the New Deal order. As organized labor declined— thanks in part to bipartisan policy decisions and aggressive union-busting by employers— Democrats increasingly turned to Wall Street and affluent professionals to fill their campaign coffers. The party’s leadership began talking less like FDR and more like Milton Friedman. Clinton’s presidency was the watershed moment: NAFTA gutted industrial communities, welfare “reform” shredded the social safety net and deregulation of the financial sector set the stage for the Great Recession. And there was Rahm Emanuel suddenly in decision-making positions. The message to working-class voters— especially white ones— was clear: the party once committed to protecting their wages and jobs now catered to global capital and technocratic elites.

Culturally, the party also drifted into a posture that alienated many working-class communities. Democrats began speaking a language of cosmopolitan liberalism that didn’t always resonate outside college towns and urban centers. This wasn’t about “wokeness,” as the right claims, but about a broader sense that the party’s leadership had stopped listening. When voters in deindustrialized towns looked to D.C., they didn’t see champions of labor anymore; they saw Ivy League consultants, hedge fund donors, and political operatives who thought Uber and charter schools were solutions to systemic collapse.

The tragedy is that working-class voters didn’t abandon Democratic values; the Democratic establishment abandoned working-class voters. And now, the party finds itself desperately trying to rebuild trust in communities ravaged by policies their own leaders helped enact. The question now isn’t whether Democrats can win back the working class… it’s whether they’re willing to confront the corporate power structures that cost them that trust in the first place.

A genuine working-class agenda, the kind championed by Bernie, AOC and this bunch, doesn’t mince words about the need to confront corporate greed and economic inequality head-on. It means unapologetically fighting for Medicare for All, a living wage, expanded union rights, universal childcare, well-paying jobs in a green energy economy, affordable housing and tuition-free public college. It means breaking up monopolies, taxing billionaires and investing in a Green New Deal that creates millions of union jobs while transitioning us off fossil fuels. This isn’t some fringe wish list— it’s a return to the idea that government should serve ordinary people, not donors, lobbyists and other DC careerists. It’s also the clearest path to winning back the trust of voters who’ve seen their jobs outsourced, their rents skyrocket, and their communities hollowed out while both parties bowed to the gods of the market. For Democrats to become the party of the working class again, they have to prove— not just say— that they’re willing to fight like hell for them.

It helps to run authentic working class candidates as well— like Randy Bryce in southeast Wisconsin. “There’s one day,” he told me earlier, “when the poorest American is just as powerful as the wealthiest. Election Day. Imagine if everyone voted. Why don’t they vote? Biggest reason is people don’t feel heard or feel like that their voice is meaningless. Nothing could be further from the truth. I used to feel that way when I worked on a construction site. People don’t like being talked down to. One thing that I’ve found out is that the people who are elected aren’t any better than the rest of us. Wouldn’t it be great if electeds actually lived the same kind of lives that most of us do? There’s one way to make that happen. We need more of us to run. The Democratic Party needs to return to it’s roots— not find an easy way to get money. There’s always something attached to money. With the peoples’ support all you need is to tell the truth. Join me.”

Yesterday, Jessica Piper, Elena Schneider and Holly Otterbein reported on how the GOP’s big ugly bill— with its devastating cuts to Medicaid and SNAP— fits into this dynamic. And if you’re one of those people who dismisses this because you think the overwhelming majority of Medicaid recipients are Democrats… that may have been true in 1965 when Democrats pushed it through as part of LBJ’s Grat Society, but it sure isn’t true any longer. 49% of Medicaid voters pulled the lever for Señor  TACO, as opposed to just 47% for Kamala, who was spending way too much time listening to Reid Hoffman instead of Bernie and AOC.

Medicaid first passed the House on April 8, 1965— 313 to 115. It was opposed by most Republicans (70 to 65) and 45 conservative Democrats. Three months later the Senate passed it 68 to 21, with 11 members not voting. 55 Democrats ands 13 Republicans were in favor and 7 Democrats and 14 Republicans voted against it.

Piper, Schneider and Otterbein reminded their readers that “Republicans used to cheer the possibility of Medicaid cuts. Now, as the GOP advances Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ that would reduce Medicaid spending, they’re rebranding it as making the program stronger. The shift reflects the striking new politics of Medicaid— and how dramatically the GOP’s coalition has changed under Trump. Now Democrats are hoping Medicaid could be the issue that exposes the cracks in the Trump coalition. They have seized on a nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimate that the bill would cause 7.8 million people to lose access to the low-income health insurance program. At stake is whether Democrats can start to win back working-class voters who have shifted toward the GOP over the past decade.”

Medicaid provides health insurance for nearly 80 million people but was long the electoral forgotten sibling of Social Security and Medicare.

… Congressional Democrats have seized on the issue, with moderates and progressives alike speaking in defense of the program. The party’s House campaign arm is prioritizing Medicaid in swing-district messaging. And TV ads mentioning Medicaid have already run in more Republican-held districts this year than they did all of last cycle.

Republicans are cautious, with an ideologically diverse group of senators wary of cuts and poised to exert significant influence over the bill. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who warned that cutting the program would be “both morally wrong and politically suicidal,” said last week that Trump had promised him no cuts to benefits.

GOP lawmakers have largely rallied around Trump’s bill by arguing the House legislation protects Medicaid by only removing people who do not deserve it in the first place. That careful messaging is a stark difference from a decade ago, when congressional Republicans explicitly prioritized cutting Medicaid and governors blocked its expansion.

One reason for the turnaround: A series of red states expanded Medicaid by ballot initiative between 2017 and 2020— largely with backing of Democratic-aligned groups— and GOP voters defied their state and local political leaders in large numbers to support the program. Nationwide, enrollment for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program rose from just shy of 70 million in 2014 to nearly 79 million at the end of 2024.

And at the same time more people were entering the program, including Republican voters in red states, an electoral realignment was shifting working-class voters toward Trump.

“Medicaid has a broader and broader appeal the more people that are on it, and the more people who know someone who’s on it. That’s incredibly powerful politically,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which backed state Medicaid referendums.

The makeup of Medicaid users was changing— and so were its politics.

For a long time, the program has been relatively absent from federal races. Even in the 2018 midterms, when defending the Affordable Care Act was central to Democrats’ midterm messaging, only 30 TV ads across all congressional elections mentioned Medicaid, while nearly 500 mentioned Medicare… 

[C]uts to Medicaid or reductions in eligibility could now pose a political risk for Republicans. People who could lose benefits would not just be Democratic voters in blue states, but Republicans in red states and swing districts who supported Trump last year.

…A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Friday found a plurality of Republicans, 42 percent, believed the Trump administration’s policies would strengthen Medicaid, with only 22 percent believing the program would be weakened. But Republican Medicaid enrollees were more split, with 35 believing Trump would strengthen the program and 34 percent saying he would weaken it.

That is where Democrats see an opening. A nonprofit affiliated with Democrats’ House campaign arm is already targeting swing-district Republicans with digital ads accusing members of cutting Medicaid to pay for tax breaks for the rich. And a flurry of other liberal groups have purchased TV or digital ads and planned billboards and other activist campaigns.

“To the extent that this is becoming a bigger political issue, it’s simply because their efforts to destroy Medicaid are fundamentally more dangerous and more real than ever before,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), whose PAC is helping fund a group that opposes Medicaid cuts. 

As the bill currently stands, the Medicaid work requirements would not go into effect until the end of 2026. That means Democrats largely won’t be able to point during their midterm campaigns to people who have already lost access to Medicaid.

Instead, they may rely on voter trust on an issue that has historically worked for them. While polls have found voters consistently prefer the GOP more on issues such as the economy and immigration— which helped propel Trump’s win last year— health care has remained a rare bright spot for Democrats.

“If there is a debate or chaos or uncertainty about Medicaid cuts, then I think Democrats stand to benefit from that because of the brand advantage on health care,” said Democratic pollster Zac McCrary. “One of the few places where we have maintained an edge.”

In their political report a few days ago, The Great Un-Awokening—Democrats eyeing a presidential bid in 2028 scramble to move to the center, Adam Wren and Elena Schneider profile corporate careerist whore after corporate careerist whore sounding like they’re singing from the GOP hymnal about Democrats. Except it’s Rahm Emanuel, Gavin Newsom, Elissa Slotkin, Pete Buttigieg  smearing progressives with Republican talking points while looking for their own Sister Souljah moments.

“Each of these candidates are, either deliberately or tacitly,” wrote Wren and Schneider, “countering a perceived weakness in their own political record or party writ large— Emanuel, for example, has called the Democratic Party ‘weak and woke’; Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) has said the party needs more ‘alpha energy’; others like Newsom are perhaps acknowledging a more socially liberal bent in the past. On diversity, equity, and inclusion, some in the party are also sending a signal they’re no longer kowtowing to their left flank. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg removed his pronouns from his social media bio months ago, and questioned how the party has communicated about it. ‘Is it caring for people’s different experiences and making sure no one is mistreated because of them, which I will always fight for?’ he said in a forum at the University of Chicago earlier this year. ‘Or is it making people sit through a training that looks like something out of Portlandia, which I have also experienced,’ Buttigieg said. Buttigieg added, ‘And it is how Trump Republicans are made.’” Conservative careerists, corporate whores, genocidists each and every one of them and Wren and Schneider allow them to get away with calling themselves “moderates,” which they aren’t. True though is that “there is a cadre of consultants and strategists ready to support them.”

One thing that isn’t going to win back working class voters is neoliberal bullshit like the abundance agenda. Yesterday, former state Rep Aaron Regunberg, writing for The Nation, explained why the GOP-lite “abundance agenda” is lethal for the Democratic Party.  “[M]any Democratic elites still oppose any attempts to identify billionaires and corporations as villains. These groups and individuals come from or get paid by these same billionaires and corporations, and they are terrified of the prospect of a populist takeover of a party— their party— that has for decades served as a comfortable partner to oligarchy. We’ve seen this pushback come in various forms. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) called for Democrats to stop using the term ‘oligarchy’— a word she has regularly used to describe Putin’s billionaire allies in Russia— because, according to Slotkin, regular Americans don’t understand the concept. (Recent polling shows that majorities of Democrats and independents can define oligarchy and believe it describes the current situation in the United States.) Matt Bennett, cofounder of the centrist think tank Third Way, similarly complained that ‘demanding economic populism is its own form of purity test’ and argued that Democrats should stop using a ‘fighting the oligarchs’ message. Groups like Third Way, which are largely funded by billionaires and corporations, have been major boosters of the abundance framework, as have other key pillars of US oligarchy, including crypto, Big Tech and Big Oil. These interests have a clear vested interest in derailing the growing Democratic turn toward economic populism.”

New Labour, New Dems, old style corruption dressed down in shorts & tennies

Abundance proponents are extremely influential within the Democratic Party; just this week a group of centrist Democrats launched an Abundance Caucus and [Ezra] Klein briefed Senate Democrats at their annual retreat. That’s particularly concerning given that taking on oligarchy-aligned Democratic elites was already a herculean task. Abundance, and the permission structure it offers Democrats who’d rather not alienate their Big Tech/Big Oil/Big Money donors, could be the margin that pushes a populist renaissance for our party out of reach.

The fight for that renaissance is one we can and must win. But to do so, we have to be forceful about addressing the obstacles in our path. One of these obstacles is the abundance agenda and the well-funded apparatus that has emerged to promote it. When we respond aggressively to abundance— describing how it reifies Trump’s deregulatory messaging, naming conflicts of interest among its backers, pushing back on nonsensical claims that it provides an electorally compelling program— it’s not because we’re overreacting to proposals to make building easier in blue cities and states. It’s because we have an analysis of the role of abundance in today’s Democratic Party that I would argue is “more sophisticated and has more explanatory power” than the one held by many of abundance’s defenders.