Politics
The false narrative at the heart of Trump’s victory over Harris
Since Tuesday night’s election results were tallied, there has been a recurrent refrain as to why Democrats lost so badly — they ignored the working class, both white and nonwhite.
In what amounted to the proverbial act of coming down to the battlefield and shooting the survivors, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., labeled the Kamala Harris campaign “disastrous” and said Democrats should not be surprised that “a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”
There are a couple of problems with Sanders’ argument. The most obvious and glaring is that it simply isn’t true that Democrats abandoned the working class.
It simply isn’t true that Democrats abandoned the working class.
During his nearly four years in office, President Joe Biden was arguably the most pro-union president since FDR. He literally walked a picket line, supported union organizing efforts, increased funding for the National Labor Relations Board. He infused $36 billion into the Teamsters Union pension plan (an act that Sanders praised).
Biden’s attention to the working class went far beyond the symbolic. The Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the CHIPS Act all led to a fertile job creation environment — and a significant increase in manufacturing jobs, which declined during Donald Trump’s presidency. (It bears noting that all of this legislation passed in the U.S. Senate with the support of the senior senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders.)
Indeed, since Biden took office, the U.S. economy has added more than 16 million jobs — which starkly contrasts Trump’s negative job growth rate. As for wages, the working class saw a higher increase in their pay than any other group of Americans, so much so that it undid one-third of the growth in wage inequality since 1980.
During Biden’s administration, subsidies for Obamacare grew. He forgave billions in student loan debt, much of which went to community college students. His Department of Labor changed overtime eligibility rules, boosting wages for more than 4 million workers and also increased pay for construction workers on federal projects.
Critics like Sanders would likely argue that these successes weren’t messaged properly to working-class Americans. That’s not true either. As the New Republic’s Greg Sargent pointed out earlier this week, the Harris campaign poured $200 million into ads that focused on her economic message. In fact, she outspent the Trump campaign by around $70 million on ads about the economy.
What was the content of these ads? Calls to end corporate price gouging, lower housing costs, cut middle-class taxes and protect Social Security and Medicare. Other Harris ads accused Trump of only looking out for his billionaire pals and corporations and attacked him for enacting tax cuts that were primarily directed at the wealthiest Americans.
This is the definition of an economic populist message.
Critics like Sanders would likely argue that these successes weren’t messaged properly to working-class Americans. That’s not true either.
Yet, Biden’s record and the disparity in the two candidates’ economic messages didn’t increase the party’s support among working-class voters (which are defined here as those without a college degree). Arguably, it improved Harris’ margins in swing states where these ads predominately ran, but according to preliminary exit polls, Trump won them by 14 percentage points over Harris (56%-42%), a 6-point improvement over his performance in 2020.
Harris only did one point worse than Biden among white working-class voters, but she was still mired in the low 30s with them. Instead, her losses came among the nonwhite working class, a group with which she did 16 points worse than Biden — and 26 points worse than Hillary Clinton.
In short, under Biden, Democrats adopted one of the most pro-working class policy agendas in recent political memory, enacted much of it — and accrued no electoral benefit.
As for Trump, his main economic agenda item was a pledge to increase tariffs, which by increasing costs on imported items, would have disproportionately harmed low-wage workers. Did he have a plan for lowering housing or dealing with health care? What about lowering inflation?
What Trump essentially offered the working class were attacks on undocumented immigrants, which his campaign blamed for much of the nation’s ills.
As in 2016, Trump served as a political voice channeling the fears, cultural grievances and resentments of working-class Americans — and, as has been the case for much of the past 60 years for Republicans, it worked.
Of course, it’s not just Trump. The GOP’s attention to the white working class is overwhelmingly symbolic. They offer nothing substantive on policy. They oppose expanding health care access or raising the minimum wage.
During Trump’s tenure in office, his major legislative accomplishments were a tax cut for the wealthy and the further tilting of the economic playing field in favor of corporations and not workers. While some working-class voters drifted away from him in 2020, he easily won them back in 2024 (and of course, won the majority of such voters in both elections). None of his policy positions mattered much at all.
During Trump’s tenure in office, his major accomplishments were a tax cut for the wealthy and further tilting the economic playing field in favor of corporations, not workers.
Take, for example, what happened in Missouri on Election Day. Voters in the Show Me State didn’t just narrowly support a referendum enshrining a right to abortion in the state constitution by a 58%-42% margin, they backed a ballot measure raising the minimum wage and requiring employers to provide paid sick leave. Yet, at the same time, only 40% of the state’s voters cast a ballot for Harris, who, unlike Trump, supports both policy initiatives.
Democrats are a party of “doing stuff” with an electorate utterly indifferent to the stuff they do.
As Larry Mishel, former president of Economic Policy institute, who has written extensively on politics and the working class, said, there is a glaring lack of connection between material reality, even material gains, and recognition or appreciation for such gains. “Partisanship shapes perceptions. There is simply a disconnect between policy, outcomes, and political rewards.”
Is there a path for Democrats to reverse their declining support with the working class? The short and depressing answer is that they likely can’t.
Appeals to the working class might have worked for Democrats when the Republican presidential nominee was a blue blood like Mitt Romney or even a creature of Washington like George H.W. Bush or Bob Dole. But when facing off against a racist demagogue like Trump, it’s a nearly insurmountable challenge.
Moreover, the Democrats’ political coalition is liberal and overwhelmingly Black (even with the inroads Trump made on Tuesday), which only compounds the challenge. The party can’t run against undocumented immigrants or retreat on cultural issues like guns, LGBTQ and civil rights, or abortion, which are such powerful political drivers among the working class.
In 1992, Bill Clinton could get away with naked appeals to white voters, like when he attacked the rapper Sister Souljah. Back then, the Democratic Party was around 80 percent white. Today, the number is closer to 56 percent.
Quite simply, the Democratic coalition as presently constructed doesn’t allow for the kind of political appeal that might (but probably wouldn’t) win back the working class.
Indeed, when I recently asked a red state Democrat what the national party would need to do to win over working-class Republicans, he joked, “Firebomb an abortion clinic.” The cultural divide is so intense — and Republicans are so hostile toward the left — that it’s hard to see any reasonable way for Democrats to bridge it.
If there is any path for Democrats to return to national power, it might be in doubling down on what produced such significant political gains for the party in 2018, 2020 and 2022 — college-educated suburban voters. At the same time, they need to find ways to arrest their slide with minority voters. Or considering the fact that the last four presidential elections have gone Democrat, Republican, Democrat, Republican —which hasn’t happened in America since the late 19th century — maybe they should just wait for an inevitable anti-Trump backlash.
But if Democrats think they can win back the loyalty of the working class, they likely should think again.
Michael A. Cohen is a columnist for BLN and a Senior Fellow and co-director of the Afghanistan Assumptions Project at the Center for Strategic Studies at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. He writes the political newsletter Truth and Consequences. He has been a columnist at The Boston Globe, The Guardian and Foreign Policy, and he is the author of three books, the most recent being “Clear and Present Safety: The World Has Never Been Better and Why That Matters to Americans.”
President Donald Trump made major gains among Latino voters in 2024. Now, those same voters might cost Republicans control of Congress.
Fifty-nine percent of Latino registered voters prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress, compared with 35% who favor Republican control, according to a new NBC News/Telemundo poll released Sunday. That 24-point gap for Democrats is twice the party’s lead compared to the September 2024 version of the poll.
A separate CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday also found Democrats ahead among Hispanic likely voters, with 60% backing a Democratic House candidate and 39% supporting a Republican.
The findings threaten gains the GOP made in 2024, when Trump narrowed Democrats’ long-standing advantage among Latino voters. A POLITICO analysis of that year’s election results found that Trump improved his vote share by an average of more than 6 percentage points in majority-Hispanic counties, compared with 2020.
With the midterms approaching, Republicans have made those gains central to their push to maintain control of the House. When Texas Republicans revealed their redistricting proposal last year, four of the five potential GOP pickup opportunities were in majority-Hispanic districts.
Meanwhile, Trump’s overall approval rating among Latino registered voters stands at just 27% in the NBC/Telemundo poll, while 69% disapprove. On the economy specifically, 74% of Latino voters disapprove of Trump’s handling, while 78% disapprove of how he’s dealt with cost-of-living concerns.
Nearly two-thirds, 65%, say Trump’s policies have hurt economic conditions. Inflation and cost of living rank as the most important issues facing the country for 33% of respondents, followed by government corruption at 22%. Another 10% named jobs and the economy.
Economic frustration helped drive Latino voters toward Trump in 2024, with Democrats across the country suggesting in the aftermath of his victory that he was better able to connect with the voting bloc on financial issues.
But now, Latino voters seem to favor Democrats over Republicans on the economy, 48% to 27%, and the cost of living, 45% compared to 26%.
The war with Iran, now in its seventh month, is also weighing on voters’ perceptions of energy costs. In September, the average price of diesel hit a record $6.53, according to AAA.
In the CBS survey, 91% of Hispanic registered voters attributed rising U.S. oil and gas prices to the conflict.
Trump’s immigration crackdown is also putting vulnerable Republicans on the defensive. Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) released an ad in English and Spanish criticizing the administration for going “too far” on immigration and saying Hispanics who backed Trump in 2024 feel “betrayed.”
In the days immediately following her ad, Trump told reporters that he still supported Salazar. “I’m very strong on the borders — and she isn’t,” Trump said. But the president later reposted a flurry of social media messages criticizing Salazar on Truth Social, including one calling for the Florida Republican’s replacement ahead of the midterms.
In the NBC/Telemundo poll, 67% of Latino voters say Trump’s immigration enforcement has gone too far, compared with 22% who say he has taken the right approach.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dissatisfaction with Trump and Republicans has not translated into broadly positive views of Democrats. According to the NBC poll, Latino voters remain nearly evenly divided on the Democratic Party, with 41% viewing it positively and 42% negatively. Negative views of the GOP, meanwhile, have climbed to 62%, up from 46% in September 2024.
The NBC/Telemundo survey of 800 Latino registered voters was conducted Sept. 21-28 and has a margin of error of ±3.46%. The CBS/YouGov survey of 2,166 adults was conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 2, with a margin of error of ±2.5 points.
CONCORD, New Hampshire— Pete Buttigieg is barnstorming the nation in the final weeks before the midterms, boosting candidates in battlegrounds and even areas traditionally hostile to Democrats. And it’s helping him look beyond November.
Down the homestretch, Buttigieg is set to campaign in at least six states: North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, Georgia and Nevada, along with his adopted home state of Michigan, according to an itinerary shared first with Playbook by a spokesperson for Win the Era, his political group.
Buttigieg has been refining his campaign trail message as he crisscrosses the country, connecting concrete cost-of-living concerns to the more abstract need for political reform.
It’s a kind of real-world testing that helps him further define his political brand at the same time that he leverages it to “be useful,” as he so often puts it, to his party.
“I have a lot of conviction that, actually, your economic message only has credibility if you have a reform message, too,” Buttigieg said in an interview after a Rochester Opera House rally where he received a standing ovation. “Because otherwise, what you’re doing is you’re saying things that people agree with, which is great, but they might not believe that you can actually deliver it.”
He’s also building the kinds of relationships with voters and party leaders that can be useful if he runs for president in 2028, a question he was repeatedly asked. (“We’ll see,” he told one woman at the Deerfield Fair.)
“For Pete, it’s less about getting credit nationally for what he’s done for Democrats and more about building relationships in places that will be beneficial down the line,” said David Axelrod, a Buttigieg confidant.
Buttigieg’s status as an in-demand surrogate was on full display during his 48-hour swing through the Granite State, where he finished “a very, very, very close second place” to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the 2020 primary, as Buttigieg put it in Saturday evening remarks at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s Eleanor Roosevelt Dinner in Concord.
“I couldn’t ask for a better wingman,” Rep. Chris Pappas said, introducing Buttigieg at the packed rally Friday in Rochester. “People know that he’s a trusted voice,” Stefany Shaheen, who is running for Pappas’ seat, told Blue Light News after campaigning at a book store, cafe and candy shop with Buttigieg along Elm Street in Manchester.
How Buttigieg is learning from the midterms
Buttigieg has neither a battleground governorship nor a personal fortune to wire into midterm races. What he has put on offer is himself: He’s made more than 100 endorsements this cycle, campaigning in person for roughly half of them, and stops in 37 states since he left the Transportation Department.
Buttigieg was welcomed in places where candidates shunned some of his potential rivals. He campaigned with Rob Sand and Josh Turek in Iowa as they run for governor and senator, respectively. He backed Brandon Dukes in his special election effort to flip a Pennsylvania state House seat that Trump won by 18 points. He was alone among his peers in endorsing Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin in his victory over longtime Rep. John Larson in Connecticut.
“If I can help give voice to what people are after in diverse geographies, including very conservative areas,” he said, “turns out that’s my best use of time.”
Buttigieg admitted he wasn’t certain what role he would play in the party’s midterms at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term. Now he’s processing all of the data and inputs he’s receiving along his travels.
“I’m learning a lot about our country and our party as I go, and what I’m seeing is that people have a real hunger for change,” he told Blue Light News. “First of all, in policy. Secondly, in the kind of politics that we have, and third, in the system itself.”
That’s developed into a core argument in his speeches connecting the cost of living to political reform: “If we want the kitchen table to be better off, we got to deal with the political system that is kicking the legs out from under the kitchen table,” Buttigieg said at the Rochester Opera House Friday evening.
It’s a message that can last long beyond the midterms, and Buttigieg is trying to point his party there.
“Part of what I’m really trying to push my party on is the need to have answers for ‘then what,’” he said. “There’s a big ‘then what’ for when Donald Trump leaves the political scene, but there’s an immediate ‘then what’ starting on Nov. 4.”
A Democratic Congress, he argued, needs “a compelling governing vision coming out of the gate” and should move quickly on tariffs, the minimum wage, tax fairness, health care, the Child Tax Credit and political reforms including gerrymandering.
The 2028 question
Even as he sidestepped several questions from reporters about his next moves, saying he was focused on 2026, remnants of his 2020 campaign and hints of a future one piled up. People wore “Pete for New Hampshire” buttons and T-shirts. His old playlist, including Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Up Around the Bend,” played at the Friday night rally.
At the Roosevelt dinner the next night, in front of a sold-out crowd of over 400, Buttigieg earned a standing ovation that ended in “Pete, Pete, Pete” chants.
“Pete had a great New Hampshire organization in 2020, nearly winning,” Ray Buckley, the chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, told Blue Light News. “If anything, his popularity here has grown.”
Much has changed since then.
On Saturday evening, instead of walking out to Panic! At the Disco’s “High Hopes,” his ubiquitous anthem back then, or even Imagine Dragons’ “It’s Time,” which he road-tested last year, Buttigieg employed “You Get What You Give” by the New Radicals.
There have been deeper changes, too: Buttigieg is now the father of 5-year-old twins, Gus and Penelope. He is weighing whether he can run for president and remain a good and present father.
His husband, Chasten, is a “great dad” and “knows why I’m on the road.”
Back on the road, Buttigieg is winning over those who didn’t back him in 2020.
At the back of the room in Rochester on Friday night, the town’s Mayor Chuck Grassie wore a “Pete for New Hampshire” button as he took in the scene. Grassie, who backed Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2020 and considers himself a “pragmatic progressive,” said Buttigieg could knit together the party’s moderate and progressive factions.
“He’s a guy I think would attract a lot of people,” Grassie said. “And a lot of people I talk to are saying, ‘You know, he’s looking better and better every day.’”
Added Grassie: “In New Hampshire, I think Pete may be the guy to beat.”
Sen. Ted Cruz fired back at JD Vance for suggesting he’s already focused on a 2028 presidential bid, calling the vice president “insecure” while insisting he’s focused on the 2026 midterms.
“In my experience, people engage in political bomb-throwing when they’re feeling insecure,” Cruz said in a phone interview Saturday. “So he’s welcome to make whatever comments he likes. I’m going to keep focusing on the midterms and helping us win on Election Day in the next 30 days.”
Cruz’s comments came in response to an NBC News interview Thursday with Vance in which the vice president suggested Cruz was prematurely eyeing a White House run.
“It is really obvious to me that, at this very moment, Ted Cruz is running for president,” Vance said. “At this moment, I’m not. I’m trying to help elect Republicans. That’s what I’m going to keep on doing.”
Vance is widely viewed as the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, but Cruz has said he doesn’t believe Vance is the sure-fire nominee and suggested he might throw his own hat in the ring. “I’ll certainly be part of the discussion,” he told MS NOW in August.
On Saturday, Cruz told Blue Light News he is dedicated to helping Republicans maintain control of both chambers of Congress. He pointed to his travel this cycle to campaign with candidates in Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina as well as in his home state of Texas as proof. He also said he has trips planned this month to campaign with Republicans in Alaska, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina.
“Over the last 10 years, there’s no Republican in the country who has campaigned for more Senate candidates, more House candidates, more gubernatorial candidates than I have, and this year will be no exception,” he said.
Cruz rattled off a list of a dozen GOP candidates he’s helped bolster in past years, including former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, U.S. House candidate Karoline Leavitt — and the vice president.
“Indeed, ironically, I spent a full day on the road with JD Vance, campaigning with him when he was running for Senate in Ohio [in 2022],” Cruz said. “I was very glad he won that race. I was very glad to help him.”
A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to Cruz’s latest comments.
Vance campaigned in Texas and Florida this week and will hold a rally in Alaska on Monday.
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