Democrats are losing support among voters of color. Black, Hispanic and Asian voters are all trending away from them.
But it’s not about race, it’s about class. College-educated voters of color are sticking with or increasing their support for Democrats. It’s blue collar voters that are moving rightward.
As New York Times writer David Leonhardt reported this morning, “Yes, race played a meaningful role in Trump’s victory, given his long history of remarks demeaning people of color. But politics is rarely monocausal. And there were good reasons — including Barack Obama’s earlier success with Trump voters — to believe that the 2016 election was complex, too. Eight years later, the “it’s all racial resentment” argument doesn’t look merely questionable. It looks wrong.”
The numbers look especially bleak for Joe Biden’s reelection. He’s holding his own with white voters, but the latest polls project a stunning (and perhaps overstated) collapse with voters of color.
If those numbers hold up, if Biden really does take an 18% hit with nonwhite voters, well then, he simply can’t win, especially when you consider that these voters play an outsize role in swing states, like Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. They probably even provide the margin of victory in Wisconsin, with a relatively small percentage of nonwhite voters, but also elections that are usually photo finishes.
This turns the NPR view on its head. In that world everything is about race. The hard-left can feel superior and blameless in Trump’s 2016 victory and his continued viability because his support is all about irredeemable “uneducated” white racists. But, if that’s the case, how can you explain the migration of nonwhite voters to Trump? You can’t and so it suggests that it’s more about class than race.
Which brings me back to a point I’ve made before with regard to labor. When Democrats want to appeal to blue collar voters they inevitably show up at union halls or on factory floors where there is a union. And yet over 90% of American workers don’t belong to one. Democrats are losing blue collar votes because they don’t understand blue collar voters.
They don’t connect on the basic foundation of values. Democrats come off as the party that wants to use (or worse, raise) your taxes to give stuff away to people who don’t work as hard as you do, regardless of race. Democrats are the party that wants to talk about the “root causes” of crime when what you want is more cops in your neighborhood to head off the real threats you have to live with. Democrats want to use schools for social change when all you want is for your kid to be safe and to learn how to read, write and do math so that they can be successful in life. Democrats are the party that talks about climate change as an “existential threat” when it seems more or less abstract to you and you suspect their solutions might cost you your job, and you can’t afford an EV.
In short, Democrats just don’t get you. And, in fact, they’re so condescending and seem so out of touch with your life that you’re wiling to vote for a man like Donald Trump. You’re fully aware of all of his faults, but at least he doesn’t sound like just another politician. And, bonus, he annoys the hell out of the liberal Democrats.
My guess is that that 18 point loss of nonwhite voters for Biden won’t hold. But even if it’s only half that, how does he win?
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
Dave, your argument against pro-union rhetoric feels very familiar to your worries about Democrats “going too far” on abortion rhetoric after Roe was overturned. You want to believe that a campaign that appeals to you is the one that is most likely to succeed, but that’s probably not the case.
There has never been a better time to be a pro-union candidate. Polls show that organized labor enjoys its highest level of public support in a half-century. Yes, unions have been weakened by decades of attacks by right-wing politics and business, but to accept that their decline should continue is completely antithetical to the politics you claim to support. Unions represent an opportunity for people to be empowered in the workplace and collaborate together to win the wages and benefits they deserve, rather than to be dependent on government largesse. It’s a message that is broadly popular. Biden walking the picket line with UAW members was probably one of the best political moves of his administration –– many of those union members are Republicans, but they were on strike and appreciated that one candidate showed up to support them. Democrats do best when they return to their bread-and-butter strength of being for the little guy and portraying Republicans as against the little guy.
Here’s another question: what do you make of the threat to Democrats of the massive disillusionment with Biden among young voters, notably about Israel/Palestine but also a vague sense that “all politicians are the same.” That group is extraordinarily concerned about climate change and yet in a previous post you advised Democrats not to bother talking about climate investments –– to just frame them as good old economic development or whatever.
As you’ve said before, Biden essentially won the last election by about 40,000 votes. And the main difference between 2016 and 2020 was the much smaller third party vote total –– Jill Stein didn’t get nearly as many votes. There is a big risk this time of left-leaning young people voting third party or not voting. You don’t have to do any “woke” crap to appeal to them, but you do need to present a strong values-based distinction between Democrats and Republicans, and it’s not just “we’re not crazy” or “we’re not insurrectionists.”
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I share your concerns about Biden and not just on the youth vote. The last Times/Siena poll was full of bad news for him no matter how you cut it. There’s risk either way, but I think we’d be better off with a different candidate, though that seems remote at best. On unions, I think you’re misreading me. I’m not against them. I wish more people belonged to one. My point is that unions are not synonymous with labor. I’d like to see Biden and Harris go to a Wal-Mart in addition to the union halls.
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Young voters are entitled and don’t vote in significant enough numbers. We should be focused on suburban voters and exploiting Gov Ever’s success with voters in Wi-03 so we can win that district back.
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Mayor D,
Your blog about the Democrats losing voters of color, as well as blue collar, is one of your best ever.
A couple of times I had to scroll back to the top to see if I was reading David Blaska! 🤣
In my opinion, both of you guys do excellent work regardless if I agree or disagree.
Kim Richman
Madison
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Well, thanks, but that’s slanderous to Blaska. I expect he’ll demand a retraction.
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