Democrats' working-class exodus sets off reckoning within party

WASHINGTON — Demoralized Democrats are soul-searching and blaming each other after President-elect Donald Trump's resounding election victory exposed erosion among working-class support for Democrats that poses a potential long-term crisis for the party.

Democrats ? who have long prided themselves as the party for the little guy ? instead strengthened their emerging base of financially secure college graduates this election while a growing number of blue-collar voters embraced Trump and Republicans.

Especially alarming for Democrats this election: The exodus of working-class voters from the Democratic Party included not just white voters, but helped Trump make gains with Latino and Black men.

Reflecting a widening educational divide, voters with college degrees backed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris 55%-42% in this week's election while Trump won non-college-educated voters ? who made up more than half the electorate ? 56-42%, according to exit polls. Four years ago, Trump won 50% of voters without college degrees to President Joe Biden's 48%.

What's more, Trump won 50%-46% among voters whose income is less than $100,000, a staggering turnaround from Biden's 56%-43% advantage with this group in 2020. Meanwhile, Harris won voters who earn $100,000 or more 51%-46% over Trump, who in 2020 topped this more affluent group of voters 54%-42% over Biden.

More: How Kamala Harris lost the election: The fatal flaws in a doomed election bid

The realignment crystalized a political reality that's tough for Democrats to swallow: With blue-collar voters flocking away from their party over multiple election cycles, Democrats' refashioned base is becoming more upper-class, urban/suburban and coastal. It's a narrowed coalition that does not bode well for future elections.

"It should be the top and only concern of every Democrat in Congress and around the country for the next two years and beyond," U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told USA TODAY. "It showed that the campaign was a failure. We have to prioritize the economic needs and hardships of most working-class families. We failed to make them seem heard and seen in their frustrations with the economic and political system."

The shift of many working-class voters away from Democrats helped produce Republicans' first popular vote victory in 20 years. Trump gained ground from his 2020 performance in 49 states, while a New York Times analysis found Trump improved on his 2020 margin in at least 2,367 counties and decreased in only 240 counties.

"We should spend six months just listening to communities," said Khanna, who grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which narrowly flipped to Trump in this week's election. "Just sit there and respect the voters. Listen and understand what they're saying."

For the past three-plus years, the Biden administration tailored economic policy to blue-collar union workers including making historic investments in green-energy and microchip manufacturing and supporting tax relief for families with young children. Biden walked the picket-line with striking autoworkers. And Biden and Harris pushed tax hikes on the super rich and corporations and savings for the middle-class through measures to lower prescription drug costs.

More: Burdened by what had been: Kamala Harris couldn’t convince voters

But the Biden-Harris sweeping economic agenda ? which includes projects that are a decade out ? failed to connect with working-class Americans' immediate concerns about inflation and high consumer costs.

"Democrats have a fundamental problem on their economic brand, and I don't think it can be dealt with by just offering a couple popular proposals or even the best message or ad test," said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. "I think we have to step back and really develop an economic narrative that communicates that we're in touch with people's lives and that offers real help for working class people."

Lake said about 60% of voters don't believe Democrats have an economic plan, while those who do recognize a plan believe it favors college-goers. She pointed to Biden's efforts to forgive college student loan debt as an example. She said Americans have more clarity with Trump's brand of conservative populism: tax breaks, "America first" policies like higher tariffs, and less federal regulation.

"Trump beat us with populist economics," Lake said, adding that Democrats' struggles with the working class are years in the making. "It's not just one loss. This has been building, and I think this is a call to action to get an economic brand that includes working people."

Harris spent much of her campaign warning about the dangers of a second Trump presidency. She called him increasingly "unstable and unhinged" and out for revenge and power. Echoing Biden before he departed from the race in July, Harris attacked Trump as a threat to American democracy, convinced that the memories of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol would weigh on voters.

Yet such rhetoric resonated most with college-educated voters and "never Trump" Republicans who already backed the Democratic nominee. And restoring abortion rights, another focus of Harris, took a backseat to many voters behind the high costs of their groceries.

David Axelrod, former longtime adviser for President Barack Obama, likened Democrats to "missionaries" in their approach to non-college-educated voters ? a message of "we're here to help you become more like us."

"There's a message of unspoken and unintended, I think, disdain that was felt," Axelrod said in an interview on CNN. "If you're talking about democracy over the kitchen table ? and I care deeply about that issue ? you probably don't have to worry about the food on your table, about the cost of it."

More: Shifting loyalties of these voters helped power Donald Trump to election win

It's not as if Harris ignored blue-collar voters on policy ? far from it. On the campaign trail, Harris championed proposals to make housing more affordable for first-time buyers, capital available for Americans starting small businesses and extending the child tax credits. She called it an "opportunity economy" for all Americans, regardless of income.

But while she labeled reducing consumer costs her top priority, Harris remained tethered to the unpopularity of Biden, who voters blamed overwhelmingly for high inflation, even as it dropped considerably from a year ago, and migration at the southern border.

Rather than regularly railing on the billionaire class, Harris campaigned on a "pragmatic" approach to the economy. "I'm a capitalist," she told Americans in an appeal to independent and moderate Republicans.

The Atlantic, citing an unnamed Biden aide, said Harris backed away from a more aggressive economic populist message at the urging of her brother-in-law Tony West, chief legal officer of Uber, who held an influential role in Harris' inner circle. West pushed the shift as a way for Harris to win support within the business community, The Atlantic reported. By the end of the campaign, one of Harris' top surrogates was billionaire businessman Mark Cuban.

"It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them," U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said in a statement. "First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right."

More: Trump’s gains among Black men leave many asking: What went wrong?

Many progressive Democrats celebrated Sanders' blistering assessment, but some in the party's establishment pushed back, arguing Harris and Biden got behind many of the very policies Sanders has championed.

"This is straight up BS," Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison said in a post on X, calling Biden "the most-pro worker president of my lifetime" who saved union pensions, created millions of jobs and "even marched in a picket line."

He said Harris' various economic proposals would have "fundamentally transformed the quality of life and closed the racial wealth gap for working people across this country."

"There are a lot of post election takes and this one ain’t a good one," Harrison said in his rebuke to Sanders' critique.

For all the Democratic infighting over economic messaging, others blame the party's left wing for exposure on divisive cultural issues such as support of transgender rights and the chaos on college campuses from Gaza war protests. Harris didn't campaign on these areas ? but Republicans attacked her over them anyway.

"Republicans are masterful at weaponizing the words of the far left against the Democratic Party, and the losses among voters of color, particularly Latinos, is nothing short of a catastrophe for the party," U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., said in an interview on MSNBC.

Arguably the Trump campaign's most powerful ad of the 2024 race ? which it targeted to male voters watching football games ? was an overt anti-trans spot featuring Black radio host Charlamagne tha God sounding off on Harris' support for taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries in prison. "Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you," the ad claimed.

Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky, in a Substack column she penned on her party's "messaging crisis," said the rampant number of anti-transgender ads this election cycle was a "a gross exploitation of a vulnerable community." But she said the average person in Saginaw, Michigan doesn't think it's fair that their daughter has to compete in athletics with someone biologically stronger than her.

Roginsky also emphasized the lack of outrage from Democrats over pro-Palestinian protests this year that effectively shut down some colleges and universities.

"Democrats are no longer perceived as the party of common sense. In our quest not to offend anyone, we come across as totally out of line with how regular people think," Roginsky said.

Torres pointed to the results in heavily Latino Starr County, Texas, a southern border community that Trump won with 58% of the vote ? ending 132 years Democratic vote support. Trump came within 6 percentage points of winning Democratic-stronghold New Jersey, he noted, and lost New York by only 12 points, slicing in half his 24-point 2020 defeat in New York.

"If that is not a wake-up call then I'm not sure what would be. And we ignore those wake-up calls at our own peril," Torres said. "We have to seriously reckon with the results of the election."

Reach Joey Garrison on X, formerly Twitter, @joeygarrison.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Democrats' working-class exodus sets off reckoning within party