No, "the working class" didn't leave the Democratic Party
A story about race that is often described as a story about class
A New York Times piece last month (and a related economics paper) argued that Democrats have lost working class voters over the past 50 years because of their economic policies. That is, by embracing a tax-the-rich “redistributionist” strategy, as opposed to a New Deal-style “predistributionist” one, Democrats slowly alienated working class voters, resulting in the Democratic Party becoming more popular among the college educated but less popular among non-college voters.
This argument didn’t make a lot of sense to me. But more importantly, it ignored some very key points about just who has left the Democratic Party over the past 50 years. I’ve written about it here at MSNBC.
As I argue, this change in voting patterns is much more about race than class. In 1968, 52% of white people who never attended college voted for Democrat Hubert Humphrey; in 2020, just 35% voted for Joe Biden. We can understand a lot about this shift by looking at how the Nixon administration and its allies (as well as subsequent Republican administrations) sought to ply working class whites away from the Democratic coalition with thinly disguised racial appeals and culture war attacks.
Anyway, I hope you’ll add this to your Sunday reading!
Having grown up in a northeastern white suburb in the fifties and sixties, I can testify it is an understatement to note that race has been a defining factor since then separating today's Democratic and Republican voters. However, I also campaigned actively for George McGovern, and I can say that racial factor has been baked in since around 1972. I believe the defining factor will be most decisive in 2024 is whether a white is a Christian or Catholic conservative or a progressive, particularly on the issues of abortion and gay marriage, and older, regardless of educational attainment. If Democrats can muster an 80 percent turnout rate in 2024 among all Democratic or Democratic leaning younger voters (under 30-40), both of these aging constituencies might be overcome. Hopefully, the DNC is setting such a goal for 2024.