Democrats oblivious to rising tide of unhappy voters may be shocked by Republican midterm wins
The Democrats and the liberal media seem to think the Republican Party of Donald Trump is the party of blue-collar workers and working-class families. They think their voters are white, working-class voters, and they want them.
The Democrats think their working-class and white working-class voters are angry, are voting against Trump, and in many cases are voting Democratic for the first time.
The Democratic campaign strategists who are making this case are wrong, though, and they are missing the point so badly that they are creating the very anger and alienation that makes it so difficult for them to move the Democratic base.
A few months ago, I wrote a column explaining why the Democrats lost so many working-class and white working-class voters in 2016. I noted that, after the election, the left-wing media argued the Democrats were in disarray, and that voters who turned out for Trump were motivated by the anger over immigrants and Muslims and a perception that the Democrats had failed them.
I noted that the left-wing media ignored or downplayed the fact that white working-class voters were at their lowest in a half century, that Trump won because he appealed to working-class whites and, on the issues, ignored or downplayed the economic anxiety of the working class, and that turnout for the Democrats was only about two-thirds that for Republicans in the general election. Instead, the left-wing media focused on the reasons Trump won, mostly ignoring or downplaying the fact that Trump won because working-class whites, including white working-class males, were turned off by the policies of Obama, not because of their economic anxieties.
The left-wing media ignored these facts because they are so embarrassing, because they undercut their favorite narrative about how Trump won.
It is only now, after the blue wave is coming for Democrats, that people are paying attention to the reality of this narrative.
The truth is, the vast majority of working-class whites — even the white working-class males — are not angry, not because they support Democrats, but because their economic anxieties have been ignored or downplayed by the Democratic-party leadership.
And the Democrats have been using this economic anxiety as a wedge to drive a wedge between them