Historian Matt Karp has written extensively about the phenomenon of class dealignment in our current political moment. As the Biden presidency fails to make good on its campaign promise to alleviate student debt, the progressive agenda is marginalized in Congress by old, wealthy establishment Democrats, and the overtures of the Democratic Party to working-class voters feel more performative than substantive, we find ourselves in a political situation “in which downscale voters — with less education and lower incomes — move toward the Republicans, while upscale voters make a parallel and opposing journey toward the Democrats,” as Karp explains it.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. “We can help reverse it,” the headline of Karp’s piece reminds us of this phenomenon. How can we read the results of the last midterm to understand why class dealignment is taking place? What kind of appeals to working-class voters will turn the tides and stop the flow of voters to the Republican Party — a party intrinsically opposed to the robust social programs necessary to eradicating poverty? We’ll turn to Matt for a deep dive on these and other questions, and we hope you’ll join us. Paying subscribers can watch our conversation when it’s released on here this Friday evening; everyone else, tune in Saturday via Spotify, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, and more.
Karp’s research, and what he presents in the Jacobin piece, and presumably in the upcoming interview, is critically important.
Trump has transformed the Republican Party into a authoritarian populist movement built around the rejection of governance of, by, and for the privileged.
The Democratic Party is the only entity now capable of providing an alternative to our nation’s devolution into autocracy. There is simply no way to do that without significant de-polarization; and there’s no way to depolarize without substantially refocusing public policy on addressing and reversing middle and working class disaffection and resentment.
Democrats must demonize and repudiate Trickle-down Reaganomics and fervently champion Bottom-up and Middle-out economics. We need urgently and authentically to become the party of, by, and for “The People.” Absent that, we are doomed.
File under- no shit, Sherlock.