To Win Back the Working Class, Democrats Must Adjust Their Aim
By Will Marshall
Founder and President of the Progressive Policy Institute
for The Hill
It’s been a dreary political winter for President Joe Biden. He’s buried under an avalanche of adverse polls showing perilously low public approval ratings as well as scant enthusiasm even among loyal Democratic voters.
The blizzard of bad news, however, doesn’t mean Biden will lose his job next November. That’s especially true if his opponent is the rabidly divisive Donald Trump, who is kryptonite to American democracy.
But the president’s consistently poor job performance numbers and the fact that he’s trailing Trump in many polls reflects a general Democratic failure to consolidate and expand the anti-Trump majority Biden assembled in 2020.
Over the past three years, Democrats have made little headway on their top strategic imperative: winning back working Americans. On the contrary, Trump has expanded his already enormous margins among white working-class voters even as Democratic support among Black and Hispanic non-college voters continues to erode.
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