A couple years ago, Jacobin commissioned a study of working-class voters. I took a close look at the study in an earlier post, and in many ways the study went quite well for Jacobin. While it didn’t necessarily support the mag’s focus on elections and the national political narrative, it did suggest that working-class voters are attracted to a progressive, populist political message.
Jacobin continued the study with a second part, and so I’ll continue with a second post. Readers can check out the mag’s intro to the study here. And they can check out the full study here. While the first study provided social democrats with reason for optimism, the second study paints a much more challenging landscape.
Let’s talk about why.
First vs. Second Study
What changed since the first study? As I wrote earlier, the first study showed working-class people largely supportive of basic social democratic language around race and class politics. It showed that working-class people want racial justice. But much of the technical jargon of racial justice activists turns them off. The study also showed that working-class people support language antagonistic toward the wealthy, among other favorite Jacobin turns of phrase.
In short, it provided grist for their mill. They had many reasons to like the study and explore the topic in greater depth.
The second study provides that depth, both in terms of who participated in the study and digging into the details of how working-class voters react to different presentations of the issues.
Unfortunately for Jacobin, this study went far less well. While working-class people do like the basic economic populist language the mag prefers, their policy preferences lean to the right. The people surveyed prefer moderate economic policies like small business tax credits to most progressive economic policies. They oppose, for example, a $20 minimum wage. And they favor quite regressive policies in some areas, such as harsh border regulation. They overwhelmingly oppose the kind of decriminalized border regime the left prefers.
How should we handle all this?
Interpretations
Jacobin puts a brave face on the findings. In fact, they write the report in the same rosy and optimistic prose as the first one, despite the very different findings.
But to be fair to the mag, the study does uncover reasons for (careful, limited) optimism. Working-class voters still respond well to economic populist messaging. And they do so across lines of politics and industry. They also occupy a more nuanced position with respect to progressive economic policy than one might initially think. While they oppose a $20 minimum wage, they’re far less hostile to a $15 minimum wage, for instance.
As Jacobin repeatedly emphasizes in its report, working-class voters strongly support a federal jobs guarantee. And that’s a good start for leftists. It provides a strong basis for the left to begin efforts to win over working-class voters to a broader leftist program.
However, the rest of the study is quite bad for the left, which the report predictably buries. It provides us a systematic lesson in why the left isn’t close to being ready for national electoral politics. It tells us our educational program and broader development has barely started, let alone gotten to a point where we’re ready to run candidates for federal office.
What’s lacking? Immigrants form a major part of any serious working-class electoral coalition. But working-class voters are quite hostile to immigrants. And for the DSA, in particular, the rhetorical landscape is especially challenging. The DSA’s preferred ‘racially inclusive economic populist’ language, combined with a $20 minimum wage, is literally the least popular combination of language and policy in the entire study.
Yikes.
The Pragmatism Argument Fails
Lots of people run an an argument – an appeal to pragmatism – to claim that Democrats should adopt more ‘progressive’ polices in order to win elections. Jacobin rehearses this well-worn argument in its report.
Readers have heard this argument before. It goes like this: Working-class people have tuned out politics or voted for the GOP out of frustration or desperation. In the old days (from the New Deal to the 1960s?), Democrats built a working-class voter coalition. But they abandoned it. To rebuild that coalition, Democrats need to run on economic populism, a $20 minimum wage, or other ‘progressive’ polices.
However, the study fails to support this argument. The electoral strategy simply won’t work in our current political environment.
Why?
Look beyond the rosy gloss and dig into the details of the study. While generic economic populism can sometimes work in particular races for specific candidates (e.g., John Fetterman), the main national Democratic base – e.g., PMC workers, highly educated voters, black voters across political lines, and so on – don’t really like it. They’re turned off by many of these policies. They’re also turned off by the antagonistic criticism of the Democratic Party that Jacobin and others prefer. And so, while Democrats might gain a few working-class voters with these tactics, it would depress and lose a segment of its own base in the process.
At best, then, we have a wash.
The Same Old Recommendations
Unfortunately, that means this study is a lot of grist for my own mill. The recommendations I would give are the same ones I always give.
Before we turn to leftist electoralism, we should speak with working-class people and invite them to join our orgs. We should engage in basic political education. And we should build solidarity by taking local action against bosses and landlords.
These things are prerequisites for successful electoral campaigns. To take electoral action, the left must first build its electorate. It won’t build its electorate by latching onto electoral campaigns.
