I regularly criticize leftist electoralism. Usually that criticism concerns strategic blunders and naive campaigns. I’m going to return to this topic in a couple of ways. First, I’m going to (once again) clear up some misconceptions about class and voting. After that, in a second post, I’ll address the left’s flawed view of the electorate.
Voting and Class
Here’s a starting point for us. Erik Levitz wrote an article in The Intelligencer. His basic thesis? Americans used to vote their class (or at least their class interests), but now they don’t. He thinks this fact tripped up the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign. On Levitz’s view, Sanders policies focused on the interests of working-class people, but those people voted for Joe Biden instead.
For my part, I’ll allow that Levitz’s theory isn’t totally wrong. Sanders built a more diverse coalition in 2020 than in 2016. But he fell well short of the ‘multiracial working class‘ movement he sought. In particular, he failed to bring enough new working-class voters to the table to take home the win. This points to the need for all the usual virtues I advocate in this blog: building labor and tenants unions, et al.
But Levitz also misses the mark with his main thesis. Americans do still vote their class. Levitz goes astray because the markers he uses for class status – especially education – no longer track class. Class stands apart from education and sometimes even income.
The old ‘working-class Democratic base’ didn’t flip Republican. That base no longer votes at all. Given that neither Democrats nor Republicans advance their interests, it’s a decision that makes sense. They vote their class by not voting. Among the millions of primarily non working-class people who do vote, the one with a college degree mostly vote Democratic. And the ones without a college degree mostly vote Republican. Democrats win professionals with socially progressive views, and Republicans win managers and small business owners who harbor racial resentment or grievance.
In this picture, all the groups vote their class interests. At the very least, they don’t vote in a way that’s contrary to those interests.
Electoral Implications
Finally, we might think about what this teaches us about leftist electoralism. Levitz raises the issue of whether Sanders or Elizabeth Warren ran a better campaign.
If, as leftists, our electoral goal is to bring non-voting working-class people to the polls, neither Sanders nor Warren succeeded. Warren failed completely. She built a coalition almost entirely out of highly educated, often wealthy political progressives. These people always vote, and always vote Democratic. She didn’t bring anyone new to the table. Sanders did a lot more than Warren, but he also fell short (as we saw above).
And so, we have our quick answer. Sanders ran a better campaign than Warren, but neither hit the goal. If there’s a lesson for us to learn, it’s this one: there are no shortcuts to good electoral work. It takes time, and it requires a broader movement. If anyone lost here, it was the ‘elections first’ segment of the U.S. left.
