Is the Working Class Finally Turning on Trump?

Part of the problem for Democrats is that the party’s current reputation alienates some voters who could benefit from its agenda, a predicament that was highlighted in another recent survey conducted by the Center for Working-Class Politics. It tested the level of support for a populist economic agenda among three thousand residents in four key states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Many of the proposals tested in the survey — barring tax-advantaged companies from laying off workers, capping the cost of prescription drugs, eliminating taxes on Social Security income — have garnered strong support across the political spectrum. It is striking, however, that the level of enthusiasm varied considerably depending on the messenger. When respondents were asked whether they would vote for a candidate who made various populist statements, such as “It’s simply not true that hard-working families struggle to keep up while big corporations get massive tax breaks and then turn around and lay off American workers,” they were, on average, eight percent more likely to say yes when the candidate was an independent than when he was a Democrat.

That margin is more than enough to swing an election in a state like Michigan, Wisconsin or even Ohio, where, in 2024, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, a populist who opposed unpopular free trade deals and pushed to raise the minimum wage, lost by three and a half points to Republican Bernie Moreno. (Brown is now trying to unseat Sen. Jon Husted, who was nominated to replace Vice President J.D. Vance.) The survey’s authors call this the “democratic penalty,” and they found that it was particularly stark among working-class voters, Latinos, and residents of small towns and rural areas.

It won’t be easy to overcome the perception that the Democratic Party is run by and catered to elites, which the right-wing media has propagated relentlessly over the past few decades, and that it doesn’t fight hard enough for boldly progressive ideas, which a growing number of its own members have come to feel. Democrats running for Congress on populist platforms this fall include union member and retired firefighter Bob Brooks, vying to win a key district in Pennsylvania, and Democratic Socialists of America member Chris Rabb of Philadelphia. (Brooks and Rabb both won closely contested primary elections on Tuesday.) That challenge is compounded by the influence wielded by big donors and establishment voices. When Kamala Harris ran against Trump two years ago, she assembled a team of business advisers who urged her to take a moderate tone on issues like price gouging and the minimum wage. Harris promised to create an “opportunity economy,” an idea that may have appealed to her Wall Street and Silicon Valley donors but failed in the face of struggling workers in places like Reading, where opportunity is scarce and the poverty rate is 29 percent.

Manuel Guzman told me he now worries that Democrats are squandering the opening created by Trump’s waning popularity by neglecting to focus on the issues that brought him to power. In Berks County, which includes Reading, one of those issues is the cost of rent, which will likely be exacerbated by the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to rental assistance and affordable housing programs. “Let’s say we win back the House in November: Are we going to spend the next two years in impeachment proceedings and not talk about day-to-day issues?” he asked. At the time of our conversation, which took place in early May, Guzman noted with dismay that the Democratic Party still had not released the autopsy it had promised to conduct to examine the factors that led to Harris’ defeat. (The report was released Thursday; it barely touches on inflation.) If growing disaffection with Trump allows Democrats to win the midterm elections, Guzman believes his party would be better served by drawing some lessons from the president, both on what to do and what not to do. In other words, they should promise to make America affordable again and, unlike Trump, keep their promises. ♦