Guest Writer Zach Weissman examines the reasons behind Donald Trump’s recent electoral victory, arguing that the Democratic Party’s failure to connect with working-class voters on economic issues has led to repeated losses and threatens their future relevance.
In the aftermath of President Elect Donald Trump’s landslide victory in last week’s United States Presidential election, Democrats are scrambling to identify the cause of their loss. In the time since Vice President Harris conceded the election early Wednesday morning, there has been no shortage of theories proffered: everything from the Biden-Harris administration’s (in)action on Gaza, to immigration, to Kamala’s unusual laugh, to the simple fact that she is a woman of Indian-Jamaican descent.
All of these and more have been suggested by cable news pundits and internet activists as the “real reason” Harris lost, as they seek to push their own pet causes and get their “I told you so’s” in before the dust settles.
The most common theory is that because 70 million Americans voted for Trump, we must come to terms with the “fact” that half of the country is irredeemably racist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, or otherwise morally bankrupt. This erroneous lesson is exactly what Democrats took from Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016, and they seem just as determined not to learn from their mistakes eight years later.
What the Democratic Party Keeps Getting Wrong
What, then, can Democrats learn from their monumental losses in the House, the Senate, and the Presidency? For starters, the takeaway should not be that every American who voted for Trump did so out of hatred. After all, more than one in five Black men and more than half of Latino men voted for him. So should we assume they all did so out of self-hatred? Unlikely.
What of white women, who swung from a strong Biden-supporting demographic in 2020 to a key part of Trump’s victory in 2024? Are they all voting against their own best interests? Almost certainly not. Instead, the answer is what voters have been telling us for years; to quote Bill Clinton, “It’s the economy, stupid!”
Exit polls indicated that one in three voters nationally, and four out of five Republican voters rated the economy as the number one concern this election. To those of us who understand tariffs or the success of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act that has resulted in a “remarkable economy” according to the WSJ, this may seem incongruous with a Trump victory.
And yet, polls have consistently shown that despite rising wages and falling inflation, voters continued to feel worse off under Biden than under Trump, and attributed the state of their finances to the occupant of the Oval Office. Some may refer to this as the incumbency advantage not quite living up to reality.
This is the crux of the issue; 51% of Americans didn’t vote for Trump because he was racist, sexist, Islamophobic, anti-trans, or for any of the other despicable policies he endorses. They voted for him in spite of it.
How can we expect a factory worker in Pittsburgh who never attended college to grasp the intricacies of macroeconomic policy – if he has to choose between saving for his children’s college fees or buying groceries? Who are we to assume that by simply publishing an 82-page policy booklet, an auto worker in Detroit will no longer be susceptible to Republican propaganda promising job security through protectionism? We can’t.
For the tenth year in a row, the Democratic Party failed to listen to the working class; our victory in 2020 seeming more and more like a fluke that occurred thanks only to the chaos of Covid-19, with no real lessons being learned. The truth is that outside of Trump’s vocal but deceptively small base, most voters aren’t exactly big fans of him.
They just want to be able to afford necessities, and still have money left over to save for emergencies. That the current economy is a result of pre-Covid deficit spending under Trump, Covid, and the resulting global supply chain shocks is lost on the average voter with whom Democrats didn’t even try to connect.
How It’s Costing Us Our Future
If the takeaway from this election is that half the country is hateful “garbage,” we are doomed to repeat the results of this election in 2026, 2028, 2030, and beyond. Immigrants will be treated inhumanely, LGBTQ+ individuals will be increasingly marginalised, transgender children will be legislated out of existence, Ukraine will be surrendered to Russia, and the very fabric of our democracy will be eroded faster than Florida’s coastline as it is swallowed by the climate-induced sea-level rise that will continue to go unaddressed.
Trump didn’t win because half the country is hateful. He won because half the country is struggling to make ends meet. They feel as though they were better off under Trump, and when the average voter is as undereducated and misinformed as is the case in most swing states, feelings are all that really matter.
If we cannot learn to listen to the working class, if we cannot find the humility to acknowledge that their struggles are real, if we cannot swallow our pride to meet them where they are, then in four years you should expect to see this exact piece with “Vance” instead of “Trump.” And everything will still hold just as true.
Zach Weissman
