How the Democrats Lost the Working Class (NYT)

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/04/us/politics/democrats-working-class.html

https://archive.ph/IbRW0

How the Democrats Lost the Working Class
The theory seemed sound: Stabilize financial markets, support the poor and promote a more secure, integrated world. But blue-collar workers were left behind.
By Jonathan Weisman
Jan. 4, 2025 Updated 9:59 a.m. ET

Democrats had just absorbed a crushing defeat in the 1994 midterm elections when President Bill Clinton’s very liberal labor secretary, Robert Reich, ventured into hostile territory to issue a prophetic warning.

Struggling workers were becoming “an anxious class,” he told the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, two weeks after Republicans led by Newt Gingrich had gained 54 seats in the House and eight in the Senate. Society was separating into two tiers, Mr. Reich said, with “a few winners and a larger group of Americans left behind, whose anger and whose disillusionment is easily manipulated.”

“Today, the targets of that rage are immigrants and welfare mothers and government officials and gays and an ill-defined counterculture,” Mr. Reich cautioned. “But as the middle class continues to erode, who will be the targets tomorrow?”

His message went largely unheeded for 30 years, as one president after another, Republican and Democratic, led administrations into a post-Cold War global future that enriched the nation as a whole and some on the coasts to staggering levels, but left many pockets of the American heartland deindustrialized, dislocated and even depopulated.

...

[madville]

1. "Free" trade and outsourcing

Sending so much of our manufacturing to Mexico and China and weakening/declining union membership, while politicians from both sides and corporations got rich off of it.

[MichMan]

9. I don't understand why some here want cheap Chinese EV imports

[msongs]

13. how are they priced and featured compared to domestics? nt

[madville]

20. Like my neighbor that bought a cheap Chinese

Quad/4-wheeler. It was about 25% the price of a name brand model and it ran about a month before it broke and never moved again. Meanwhile my 20 year old Polaris is still going strong.

[delisen]

41. Many of us simply want an affordable ev. We cannot afford to prop up the US auto industry.

We are overextended propping up the housing industry, big agriculture, and so on….

Given the median income for a family in the US we need a well running ev for $15000.

A guy in Germany recognized this sort of need many decades ago and filled it with a “ people’s car.”

It helped him build a following and the rest is unfortunately history.

[MichMan]

46. I guess we want the union vote without actually buying their products n/t

[delisen]

51. My point is that people have to be able to afford to buy the products

What we are being presented with by the American auto industry are vehicles that we cannot afford and expensive “dream” vehicles when we need utility.

It has nothing to do with me or anyone else wanting the union vote without buying their product. It has to do with auto manufacturers not tailoring products to meet the needs and pocketbooks of citizens.

It is not really the product of the union workers,is it?
It is the company owners who determine what will be designed and manufactured and at what price and profit margin.

[madville]

69. Lithium battery golf carts cost $15k

With battery costs and mandated safety standards $25k-30k is the basement for a reliable EV or even a gasoline car these days.

[yankee87]

10. GM Retiree here

My family and I know very well about this. I moved my family to three states as the factories kept closing. I strongly believe the Democrats better veer to left. I'm all for letting the younger generation take over the party. I realize if we have any elections.
Right now, this country is a full oligarchy. This is going to be so difficult. They own all the media and Reich Wing floods the net.

I like what was said, let's run Cuban in 28, hopefully I'll still be here.

[madville]

21. Should have mandated that they couldn't

Move anymore manufacturing to Mexico when they got bailed out in 2009

[Borogove]

40. My dad was a GM retiree.

It breaks my heart every time I drive by the abandoned assembly plant he spent his life working in.

[yankee87]

43. Absolutely

My son works in Indiana with GM. He already transferred there because Lordstown shut down.

[valleyrogue]

66. That was 40 years ago. People act like this is something new. It isn't.

Democrats have won many elections since then. The balance of power has gone back and forth forever in this country.

These articles are frustrating because they are garbage.

[madville]

68. And huge areas of the country

Have never recovered, destroyed local and state economies for decades and still to this day.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. How does this article define the working class?

[Cirsium]

59. Blue collar

It usually means blue collar workers. We shouldn't use it that way, as that divides the working class.

[OrlandoDem2]

3. Free trade benefits the majority. How do you stop globalization? AI is going to exacerbate things. This article has good

info but money drives decision making. It always has and always will. How do you stop globalization in a global society?

Wait until AI kills off a bunch of jobs soon. Autonomous trucking might be one of the first big industries to be impacted by AI by 2027. Wait until truckers are out of work. Go google the idea. It’s only the beginning and progress can’t be stopped.

This article is also BS because it failed to mention (or only mentioned briefly) that Democrats fight for affordable health care, tax cuts for the poor and middle class, an expanded child tax credit, a higher minimum wage, the growth of labor unions, protection of Social Security, protection of Medicare, higher taxes for the rich to pay for a better society, modern manufacturing like microchips and clean energy, and so much more.

The article mentioned social/cultural issues briefly in 1-2 sentences. The fact is blue collar workers who Democrats unquestionably support are also culturally conservative.

While we should heed the results of the 2024 election we should also avoid overcorrecting. Inflation and trans issues (for whatever reason) drove The agenda and Trump won by fewer than 1.5%. Let’s not go crazy overthinking this!

[stopdiggin]

12. good post! what the article utterly FAILS to address

Is what the Democratic can (plausibly) do in response to a 'left behind' middle ... ?
(and particularly with little, or often no, legislative majorities to work with .. ?)

Protectionism? That all we got? (As a successful long term global strategy?)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[Demsrule86]

44. No it doesn't benefit folks period. Cheap shit has been largely responsible for the

death of the middle class...you will never have a successful country without manufacturing...and globalization allows the concentration of wealth to go to only a few.

[yaesu]

4. MSM is going to preach to us, again, telling us what we are thinking. Well, I'm not blaming Dems for a sham election

I'm blaming voters who are radicalized by 24/7 RW propaganda and lies, red state voter suppression, russia & china cyber war tactics. Not to mention deep pocket fascists. This working class dude says quit blaming Democrats.

[B.See]

14. Exactly.

With the election of Barrack Obama to the presidency, the racist and hate filled fascist right completely LOST THEIR SHIT.

Demonized anything and ANYONE not-white-Christan and conservative.

A 16 year hate fest consisting of nothing but lies, distortions, and divisive rhetoric - a phony assed 'culture war' - fueled by Trumped up victimhood and based upon a white Christian nationalistic rejection of inclusion, integration, equal opportunity, and acceptance of a diverse America.

Despite the fact that Republicans rejected undermined and obstructed initiatives that benefited the working class,

despite the fact that their tax cuts favoured the wealthy and their opposition to the ACA, Medicaid, and a higher federal minimum wage, hurt the average American.

Trump's deplorables embraced the HATE and empowered the party that hadn't done a FKNG thing for them.

And now we have to read tripe about how Democrats supposedly lost the working class?

BULLSHIT.

[Quiet Em]

16. Thank you.

Well said.

[Cosmocat]

52. Y E S

Just more of the endlessly contrived "economic anxiety" bullshit.

THEY VOTED CULTURE.

[multigraincracker]

5. Better yet NYT, lets talk about how the GOP lost the highly educated.

PhDs, Scientists and medical Doctors.
Critical Thing vs FOX watchers.

[Silent Type]

6. Robert Reich is one of the main reasons Clinton lost in 2016. His and a few other Democrats constant bashing of

Obama and Clinton over trade agreements right up to election were damaging. I guess Reich was ticked because neither Obama or H Clinton wanted anything to do with him.

Besides, any working class we might have lost were racists and bigots.

[BannonsLiver]

8. + 1

Reich has become kind of a clown, frankly.

[Abolishinist]

42. Once again, I should have learned from you.

Sometimes a few words are better than many.

[Progressive dog]

7. Isn't it wonderful to have

the NY Times explain how someone in 1994 predicted the future. of the Democratic party. Have they no news to write about?

[keep_left]

11. We need a lot more serious industrial policy in this country. The problem is...

...that there are too many people getting rich off all the outsourcing and offshoring, even when it endangers national security. Some DUers may recall that even Trump mentioned industrial policy (for a total of about two minutes) during his first campaign. And then afterward, it was as if the topic had never been discussed. A few left-wing and progressive commentators did notice, but that was about it. I never heard an explanation, but my guess is that some of the big-business types in the Republican party told Trump to zip it. (These are the same people that believe that industrial policy ipso facto leads to a Bolshevik society).

In more recent times, Biden supported and signed into law the CHIPS Act, which may finally bring to an end the hemorrhaging of our high-tech sector (in particular, high-tech manufacturing) which has been ongoing for about 40 years. We need a lot more of those kinds of laws. We also need a reinvigoration of the labor movement. There was an entirely missed opportunity to pass a "card check" law under Obama that would have made it much easier for workers to organize unions.

[Autumn]

15. Who will be the targets tomorrow?. The poor, it's always the poor.

[JI7]

17. Bill Clinton and Obama prove most of this is bs

Biden was the most pro labor President we have had since LBJ.

Trump actually gets his shit made in China.

People can claim they are for or against things but actions show more.

[Skittles]

18. fucking nonsense

WHAT THE FUCK HAVE REPUKES *EVER* DONE THAT HELP THE WORKING CLASS

seriously, WHAT

[JohnSJ]

49. Thank-you. Exactly. They are going to pay for their foolishness just as they did when they voted for Reagan, only this

time it will be far worse.

[Skittles]

50. even when repukes do toss a bone

it is MORE than drowned out by the damage they do to America

[Initech]

19. The working class fell prey to the right wing spin machine.

The right wing spin machine is a virus that destroys everything it touches.

[Kid Berwyn]

22. Two Messages resonated bigly in Detroit

1.) Kamala was happy to have taxpayer pay for inmate sex change operations.

2.) Immigrants were collecting benefits regular folk can’t get.

Adult and literate people believe that tripe.

[keep_left]

25. And unfortunately, when it came to the "sex change op"...

...political ads, the Democrats didn't punch back--at all. I never saw even a single ad opposing those "Kamala sex change" spots, and they ran over and over...for months on end.

[Kid Berwyn]

31. Yeah. I'd like to ask Plouffe about that.

…and why this wasn’t on TV?

[keep_left]

32. Absolutely.

[Blue_Tires]

27. God forbid people look up the issues themselves 😔

[Kid Berwyn]

34. True. People are busy, though.

You wouldn’t believe how many college grads, including lawyers, are working two or three part time jobs these days in Michigan — especially those of us nearing retirement.

[Blue_Tires]

36. Attorneys need part time jobs? 😮

[Skittles]

47. they seem to always have time for social media and streaming crap

yes indeed

[Scrivener7]

30. We could have fought those by flooding the airways with "weird" and "smelly."

Both of those had legs. The high road doesn't work.

But anyway, that isn't why we lost the election. It was racism and sexism. The numbers prove it.

[Blue_Tires]

37. Exactly

[Kid Berwyn]

39. Please share. I need data.

From what I have gathered, the numbers showed me people did not understand who best supported their interests over the past 50 years and would do so in the future. Instead, a majority of males voted for a male — including Hispanic men, to my personal shame.

We took advantage of the attention when Joe dropped out after the debate. Our team’s messaging was working and we were dominating the airwaves. That is, it was that way until the pros came in. Then it was back to “Poor Baby Donald 24/7” all over ABCNNBCBSFakeNoiseNutworks.

[PeaceWave]

23. I never understood why it took a Republican (Trump) to double the standard tax deduction.

A lot of working class (I hate that term by the way) folks do not own their own home. Hence, they're less likely to itemize their deductions and have to resort to taking the standard deduction. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act increased the standard deduction from $6,500 to $12,000 for individual filers, from $13,000 to $24,000 for joint returns, and from $9,550 to $18,000. That was a big deal for those folks. That was an accomplishment Democrats should have been able to claim as their own.

[jimfields33]

33. It's ending this year. Devastating if it doesn't get extended.

[edhopper]

24. What the Democrats failed at,

because the GOP kept stopping them as the Middle Class kept electing them. Is raising the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation, and protecting Unions. Because too many Union workers voted GOP, who did everything they could to crush Unions.

[Blue_Tires]

26. God, not this blame-the-victim shit again

Since media pundits are hellbent on repeating the same old lazy recycled debunked hot takes we've seen a hundred times before, I'll recycle my response until it finally gets through everybody's skull...

1. BE SPECIFIC and say **WHITE** working class

2. I need just one hot take pundit to explain to me exactly WHY Repubs "won" the "white working class" when they're literally worse on every economic issue while gutting workplace and consumer protections across the board... And that's before I get to education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc...

3. Did it ever occur to anyone that the blessed all-holy white working class just might have voted for the felon because of social instead of economic issues??

[Johnny2X2X]

28. Utter insanity

The robber barons convinced regular working people to vote for a bunch of robber barons who promised to take everything from working people.

[awesomerwb1]

29. The NY times? Hard pass.

[ananda]

35. The Democrats did not lose the working class!

The Republicans failed them, and rightwing media
and politicians blamed the Dems... and got away
with it.

[delisen]

38. Irony Alert: The NYT has never written for those whom they label " the working class."- They just write about them.

The NYT. Writes about the working glass as though they are some foreign species they are viewing in a microscope.

It is ironic that they attack the Democratic Party for supposedly “losing” the working class, when the party has been addressing many of the concerns of non-rich Americans and undocumented immigrants. Health insurance, child tax credits, public education……..

The NYT covers a city full of what they label as working class people but caters its news and features to those it considers rich and upper and middle class.

It is not the Democratic Party that has failed America’s less affluent. It is the New York Times that has failed America.

My advice to the NYT. Stop the scapegoating and look in the mirror. You had the gift of the the First Amendment of our Constitution and have squandered it.

I am thankful for the emergence of the small presses online which are filling the void you failed to fill.

[Ping Tung]

45. "The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton

Followed by,

“It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.” Lord Acton

[Jit423]

48. F that. It should read How the Working Class lost its mind! nt

[Passages]

53. Denial is still running strong for some.

[betsuni]

55. Reich's a big believer in the left-leaning populist BS that Democrats ignore-hate unions and the white working class,

ruined everything by creating globalization and trade deals (ALL trade deals BAD, evil neoliberal Obama was conspiring to ruin America with the TPP -- the Democrat-haters all said so every day so it must be true), and accepting legal campaign donations from an office assistant at Goldman Sachs was immoral corruption and proof Democrats were beholden to Wall Street. That was huge in 2016.

Reich in 2016, his little dream-prediction of an alliance after Republicans realized they were actually progressives: "Millions who called themselves conservatives and Tea Partiers joined with millions who called themselves liberals and progressives. ... The People's Party won the U.S. presidency and a majority of both houses of Congress in 2020."

Oops! And now the Republican Party is claiming they're the working class populist saviors. Copycats! They copied the idea that Democrats rig elections, too, that didn't come from Trump first.

[In It to Win It]

56. Biden has done nothing but enact policies geared toward the working class. I've said this before.

Kamala Harris casted tie-breaking vote that saved the pensions of union workers.

The old GM plant in Lordstown, OH reopened as a battery plant using financial incentives from Joe Biden’s IRA bill.

I could go on about the hundreds of factories, mining operations and processing plants that used financial incentives from Joe Biden’s industrial policy that will come to hire hundreds of thousands of blue collar workers… and I don’t quite understand how a party that passes policy that have started to generate working class jobs, and will do so in the future, loses the working class.

If Democrats lost the working class after enacting working class policy and investing in working class jobs, it's because false information and propaganda.

[PJMcK]

57. How the New York Times lost the Working Class... and me

The NYT has become another member of the oligarchy. The sane-washing of Trump has been pathetic and the both-siderisms they continually embrace has made clear that the NYT is no longer a legitimate news source. Their reporting is lame and their columnists have taken positions that resemble milk toast or right wing positions. Fuck 'em.

I began reading the Times during the Nixon era. Through late high school then college and then into my professional career, I found the Times to be the "Paper of Record" that I could depend on for accurate news and analysis.

No more. It's become mediocre bullshit.

Their analysis of the recent elections is so terribly slanted against Democrats that I"m done with the rag. Cancelled my subscription to the paper, Wordle and their crossword puzzle. Fuck 'em. They don't deserve my money.

I get more accurate news from Democratic Underground.

[Skittles]

63. THANK YOU

the main issue at hand seems to be EXTREME INEQUALITY - but THAT is all because of the policies of the GREEDY OLD PIG PARTY....the mainstream media HAS NOT ACCURATELY CONVEYED THIS TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE because they are PART of racket to keep things as they are, or have them get WORSE....instead, REPUKES have been successful in blaming the hard times on GAYS, IMMIGRANTS, CRT, WOKE, TRANS or whatever their BIGOTRY FLAVOR OF THE MONTH IS

SICK OF THIS SHIT!!!!!!!!!!

[Ndp5]

58. Insightful piece, despite...

… the fact that he mostly talks to Washington elites. I feel like there’s a lot more to this, but his basic premise is right.

I realize in saying that I’m disagreeing with most posters here. But a) not all legacy news outlets are too far gone to read. If you want broken, try TikTok. And b) people in left-behind swing states wouldn’t be vulnerable to Trump messaging if there weren’t real economic anxiety and resentment at the establishment there. Culture wars stuff is the placebo Trump offers up for real economic ills.

Also, c) attacking the messenger or denying election results just helps Trump in the end, because it prevents Democrats from making the course correction they need to come back from their 2024 loss with a vengeance.

We already have one party that’s devoted to advancing Donald Trump’s career. We don’t need two of them.

[Keepthesoulalive]

60. Please tell me what have the republicans done for the working man in the last 40 years

They are trying to cut programs that help the working poor. Virgil Goode hasn’t done shit for the farmers, construction workers, white blue collar workers , he has done nothing for the Shenandoah Valley. What’s really bizarre they elected someone worse than him to replace him in his district. It is not about economics, it’s about culture.

[betsuni]

61. As if 40 years of Republican trickle down economics has been fantastic for the working class!

Republicans can ONLY run on culture war lies. If R policies are so great, WHY any "economic anxiety"? R-controlled states with complete control wouldn't have any economic problems. Why would voters be vulnerable to culture wars to get them to vote Republican? Doesn't make a bit a sense.

Oh wait, something about the Democratic-neoliberal-corporatist-establishment-elites. The pathetic gaslighting continues!

[Ndp5]

67. That's why I said "placebo." A placebo pill does nothing

… but there is a “placebo effect” where people momentarily feel better for having taken any pill, even if it’s not really treating their underlying condition.

The point of the article posted above, if you read it, is that Democrats have treated the working class as consumers rather than workers first and foremost. It’s not saying that Republicans have helped the working class economically. It’s saying that neither party has, and Republicans have sneakily redirected economic grievances from financial elites (where they belong) to cultural elites (who do also have more money than the working class).

The article is saying the underlying problem is economic inequality, not culture wars stuff, and I happen to agree.

[Keepthesoulalive]

70. That placebo is the longest working painkiller in history

It’s been over 300 years and they are just finding new people to hate on. Everything the republicans have campaigned on is hatred of others and fear of others and in this America it works.

[betsuni]

71. American union membership peaked in the mid-50s -- class identity lessens as union membership does.

We're going back in time to blame Democrats for the changes in American culture, they're to blame that the post war American Dream boom economy lasted until the early 70s when the global situation changed, other countries caught up with the U.S., and the manufacturing economy shifted to service and then tech? How did they do that?

What does "Democrats have treated the working class as consumers rather than workers first and foremost" mean? I'll give ten dollars and a coffeecake to anyone who can possible explain that one to us. Something about elites?

[Skittles]

62. Trump doesn't give a DAMN about the working class

WTF

[Passages]

64. A thread on how Trump "won" the popular vote.

A thread on how Trump “won” the popular vote.

I put “won” in quotes because it wasn’t his win, but Harris’s loss. The results were not a “swing right” embracing Trump/MAGA, but a vote of no confidence in Democrats (and in our system as a whole).

Link to tweet

[valleyrogue]

65. LOL!!!! There is no "working class" in the United States.

The sloppy use of language really needs to stop. "Working class" applies to those in European countries, NOT the United States. What this idiot means is "blue collar workers" as distinguished from "white collar workers." What he REALLY means is the aggrieved white males, especially those without a college education, but there are plenty of those who are allies of the misogynists and racists.

Also, this handwringing because Democrats lost an election needs to stop. I have heard this bullshit over and over and over again my entire life after Democrats lose a presidential election, and it continues to be bullshit.

Where is the handwringing when the GOP loses an election? Crickets.