The myth of working-class economic populists
And why the Left will never understand the actual working class.
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For the last 60 years, the Democratic party has hemorrhaged electoral support from working-class voters. For a long time, this was almost exclusively among the white working-class voters, but the last ten years have seen the trend emerge among hispanic and black working-class voters.
While from 1930 until about 1965, the Democratic party won strong support from working-class voters, since that time it has been on an uneven decline. Every time a Republican presidential candidate performs well in elections, political reporters and pundits suddenly rediscover this trend.
The elections of 2016 and 2024 are just two examples of this. 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1994, and 2000 are some more examples of elections where political reporters and pundits suddenly discover the phenomenon of “working-class populism.”
Unfortunately, rather than trying to understand the actual beliefs of the American working class, political pundits typically just shove the phenomenon into their pre-existing ideological assumptions of how the world works. Typically, their analysis is only deep enough so that they can say “See, I was right. If only the Democratic party believed what I believe, then working-class voters would vote for the party.”
Understanding economic populism
For my entire lifetime, I have heard something like the following “For the Democratic party to win back working-class voters, they need to emphasize economic populism.” Typically, the person making the statement is very vague as to what “economic populism” actually means, but it typically consists of:
Playing on resentments against rich people during the campaign
Focusing the campaign on Rust Belt cities with once great but now declining manufacturing sectors
Increasing income and wealth taxes for rich people
Increasing government regulations to balance the power of the rich
Using the extra revenue to finance increased spending for social programs to benefit the poor and near-poor.
Perhaps the clearest example of this type of politics is Senator Bernie Sanders, who ran two credible Presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020. Sanders's core support is not the working class, however, but young white Leftists. Few of those young white Leftists have ever held a working-class job in their entire life. Many of them, likely the vast majority, have two parents with four-year college degrees and grew up in comfortable white suburbs.
Yes, those young white Leftists have lower incomes, but that is because young people always have lower incomes than middle-aged people. In other words, the Bernie Bros are not poor or working class. They are just starting out in their lives. Most likely, a large percentage of them will join the college-educated professional class.
The typical Bernie Sanders supporter is not the slightest bit representative of the broader American working class. They are just the latest flavor of affluent Leftists who like the idea of being seen as defenders of the working-class or protetariat. Whenever those activists are forced to choice between their own ideological views and the actual views of the American working class, they will abandon the working class and likely feel smug about it.
See also my other articles and podcasts on Ideology:
Why Ideologies Threaten Progress (Part 1 of 3-part podcast series)
Why ideologies fail (podcast)
Descent into a man-made Hell: Understanding modern Totalitarianism
You might also be interested in reading my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
What is working-class populism?
The reality is that typical working-class voters are nothing like what young Leftist activist think they are.
Working-class voters typically want economic performance so they can go on with their lives. As they are not economists, working-class voters do not know how to get that economic performance, but they know (or think they know) when their economic and political leaders are doing a bad job. Complaining about poor economic performance is not populism.
Working-class populism tends to focus on their rage against:
Incompetent elites who govern without accountability or demonstrated results.
Governing elites who ridicule traditional working-class values (particularly patriotism, religion, community, and family).
Cultural outsiders, particularly Leftists and illegal immigrants, who are perceived as undermining traditional American values.
Working-class resentment of rich billionaires is largely focused on those billionaires who openly support the above. Rich billionaires who largely focus on getting rich by hard work or openly side with working-class politics are not resented. In fact, many of them are revered, or at least respected.
Working-class populism sees a cabal of political and economic elites who undermine and denigrate their lifestyle and use the poor, racial minorities, and immigrants to impose elite values on the majority. That has nothing to do with economics.
So who supports economic populism?
Economic populism is actually concentrated among white college-educated professionals who already reliably vote for the Democratic Party. And youths whose parents are members of that class are particularly likely to subscribe to economic populism. In other words, they are members of the upper class though they do not realize it.
These economic populists typically believe that they are more intelligent and more moral than billionaires, and they resent that their moral inferiors have more money than they do. These “economic populists” do not resent billionaires who openly declare their shared ideological values. In fact, many of them are revered.
So Leftists who say that the Democratic Party should embrace economic populism to win back working-class voters are deluding themselves. They are actually saying that the Democratic party needs to win back affluent Left-of-Center voters like themselves.
In reality, working-class populism is largely against a professional class, who the working class views as incompetent, snobbish, condescending, and driven by ideology to destroy what the working class loves. That is why Leftist economic populism can never win working-class support.
Typical working-class voters are willing to defer to superior competence, but they are not willing to defer to those whom they perceive as trying to dismantle what they believe in.
Typical working working-class voters want:
Economic growth so they can go on with their lives.
Competence in performing your role (in this case their role within the nation, community, family, and corporation)
A willingness of individuals to sacrifice for the good of the group (in this case the nation, community, family, and corporation)
Social equality (as opposed to economic equality) that gives respect to those who do the above relative to their innate abilities.
Typical working-class voters accept economic inequality as a fact of life. Working-class voters rarely worry about reconstructing society so that it complies with their moral views. They are far more pragmatic than professional-class voters who focus on abstract ideological and moral views.
Typical working-class voters are more concerned about whether the elites govern well and whether those with more income, wealth, and power earned their place through hard work and contributions to society.
Typical working-class voters resent:
Those who think that they are better than others without any demonstrated results.
Those who focus exclusively on their own self-interest, particularly when this is combined with claims of moral superiority.
Those who look down on them. Even minor demonstrations of condescension or disdain are greeted with hostility.
Those who look down on their values, such as Nation, Faith, and Family.
Those who have been elevated far beyond their abilities due to political or family connections.
Typical working-class voters respect (but perhaps not love):
Demonstrated competence
Cockiness that is backed up by demonstrated competence.
An ability of successful people to treat them like real people deserving of respect.
Leaders who sacrifice for their followers.
Rags to riches stories that require hard work, perseverance, and skill.
All of these views radically conflict with the economic populism of white, college-educated professionals on the Left. And that is why those people will never understand working-class populism.
The reality is that economic populists of the Left have absolutely no interest in listening to what the real working class thinks. Economic populists of the Left are too focused on telling the working class what they should think.
Economic populists of the Left have no interest in actually listening to real members of the working class. And economic populists of the Left have these attitudes because they do not actually respect the working class. They only like the intellectual concept of defending the working class and fighting for Social Justice and Equality.
And that is why the Left will never understand the working class. And because of it, the Left cannot get out of their downward spiral.
See also my other articles and podcasts on Ideology:
Why Ideologies Threaten Progress (Part 1 of 3-part podcast series)
Why ideologies fail (podcast)
Descent into a man-made Hell: Understanding modern Totalitarianism
You might also be interested in reading my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
Dr Magoon, I think this is a tremendous essay. I am currently working on a post that tries to express many of the same ideas. I know I will be quoting several paragraphs from this post.
This fails to account for the millions of 9mostly) white working class voters who supported Bernie in the Democratic presidential primaries, but then switched to Trump in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 general elections. It’s true that Bernie’s core support came from young college-educated leftists (not all from privileged economic backgrounds, by the way). But that doesn’t account for the breadth of his support, especially in 2016. Bernie had strong working class backing. But he couldn’t get over the hump because Hillary had support not only from centrists and the party establishment, but also among Black and Latino voters, core Democratic constituencies that can be decisive in Democratic primaries. Th main takeaway,, is that Bernie’s brand of left-wing economic populism did appeal to many of the same working class voters who subsequently fell for Trump’s faux populist appeal.