To Win Over Working-Class Voters, Harris and Other Democrats Should Embrace Economic Populism
New research shows that the key to combating Trumpism lies in targeting economic elites.
Isaac Rabbani and Fred DeVeaux
Every presidential campaign showcases the direction in which a candidate’s party is heading. This year’s choices of running mates are prime examples. Donald Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his running mate demonstrates the Republican Party’s desire to further its image as a populist, working-class party. And for her part, Kamala Harris sidestepped a centrist in Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro in favor of a progressive populist in Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The fact is that, policy wise, Walz’s populist bona fides are quite real whereas Vance’s are largely manufactured. But still, this much is clear: Both campaigns appear to recognize that the key to winning in November will be building trust with an electorate that increasingly sees both parties as elites, out of step with the concerns of ordinary working people.
To be sure, Americans’ distrust of elites is reaching a boiling point. Institutions of power — from Congress to the media to the corporate sector—maintain little of the public’s confidence. Among voters in both major parties, trust in government is at its lowest level since the 1950s. More Americans than ever view both Democrats and Republicans unfavorably, and a quarter do not feel represented by either party. Instead, most now believe that lobbyists and big donors, as well as big business, wield too much influence over politics. And an overwhelming majority of the U.S. public believes corporations are becoming too powerful in our economy.
This breakdown in the relationship between the mass public and elites is occurring alongside the march of class dealignment. That is, the Democratic Party’s base has steadily shifted from the working class toward upper-middle-class suburbanites — to the point that Republicans, for the first time in a half-century, can dispute Democrats’ claim as the party of working America. After all, the country’s richest areas are now blue, and the richest voters roughly split across the aisle. Sadly, at a moment when public disdain for the elite is reaching its peak, the Democrats are arguably becoming as much of an elite party as the GOP.
In many ways, the Democratic Party is uniquely positioned to benefit from anti-elite attitudes. After all, although populist sentiment has found putative champions on both sides of the aisle, not all these appeals are equally sincere. While Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats, has pushed to increase taxes on corporations and the rich, Donald Trump signed a historic giveaway for the wealthy and corporate America. While the Biden administration has strengthened organized labor, Republican judges and legislators have chipped away at the union movement. Once we look beyond rhetoric and campaign promises, the party with the more credible claim to economic populism ought to still be the party of the New Deal.
But Democrats can’t take for granted that voters will see the party that way. For that to happen, they have to embrace their role as defenders of the ordinary worker against the predations of a wealthy upper class. And so it bears asking: Are Democrats embracing this role? How many Democrats are employing populist rhetoric, by explicitly raising up workers, or by calling out economic elites? And is it working?
In our latest report, the Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) sought to answer these questions and more. In order to get a sense of where Democratic messaging stands, we conducted a comprehensive quantitative analysis of the campaign rhetoric of Democratic candidates for Congress in 2022.
While our complete study contains a wealth of important findings, our results with regards to economic populism are less than encouraging. We find that while anti-elite rhetoric is indeed effective at winning over working-class voters, very few Democratic candidates actually deploy it. By and large, Democratic rhetoric is not rising to meet our moment of mass distrust of elites.
To examine the communication strategies employed by Democrats, the CWCP collected the text from the websites of nearly 1,000 Democratic candidates running in the 2022 House or Senate elections. Our analysis provides significant insight into the promise of economic populism. We looked for two components of populism in candidates’ rhetoric. The first component raises up workers, casting them as the engine that keeps the economy running, and as deserving of a decent standard of living. This was commonplace: Over 70% of candidates spoke positively of workers. That said, less than half mentioned labor unions, so even here there is a great deal of room for improvement.
The second component of populism, conversely, points the finger at economic elites as responsible for “mucking up” the engine — that is, for mass economic woes, for standing between workers and the quality of life they deserve. This type of rhetoric was much rarer: Less than 20% of candidates went after large corporations, billionaires, Wall Street or price gouging in this manner. Less than 15% attacked corporate money in politics, and less than 5% of candidates went after the top 1%, corporate greed or big banks. A separate analysis of television ads found that only about 15% of candidates called out economic elites in any way, even in competitive races, where such rhetoric was found to be most effective. This result may not be so surprising: It’s easy, after all, to speak positively about one group, but harder to actively antagonize another — especially when the other makes up a large chunk of the donor pool.
The lack of anti-elite rhetoric wouldn’t be so concerning if not for another important result: Candidates who employ such rhetoric perform better than other candidates in highly-working-class districts — to the tune of two to three percentage points. Crucially, this relationship persists after we control for relevant candidate and district factors that influence elections, across a range of statistical specifications. This is consistent with findings from our previous experimental research, as well those of other pollsters.
Nor will mere rhetoric be enough: As we’ve demonstrated elsewhere, politicians’ words must be backed up with an ambitious policy agenda that addresses working-class grievances in order to be taken seriously.
If Democrats hope to win back working-class voters in an environment of elite distrust, which they should, more of them will have to acknowledge and validate that distrust. This is a tall order, as there are major forces militating against them. Party messaging naturally caters to the base, so deploying anti-elite rhetoric has only become more difficult as Democrats have begun to transform into an upper-class party. Wealthy donors from elite and corporate backgrounds continue to fund Democratic campaigns. And the upper class also works overtime to make populism the object of widespread fear: In media and intellectual circles, a torrential ideological current frantically sounds the alarm against mob rule, against anti-intellectualism, against “the paranoid style” of the masses — against, in short, a bevy of bogeymen that have been called on to disparage populist movements since the 1890s.
But unlike these imagined evils, the dangers of shooing away economic populism are all too real. The GOP is embracing populism, at least in name — in the selection of Vance, in hosting Teamsters President Sean O’ Brien at the Republican National Convention and in the party’s changing language. Ceding that ground to Republicans, in this moment of fluid coalitions, could cement Democrats’ role as being seen as the elite party — and potentially help usher in a second Trump term that promises to be disastrous, especially for working people.
Harris and other Democrats should instead recognize populism for what it is — a powerful egalitarian sentiment promising to lift up the many over the few — and give voice to it. It would be a profound mistake to miss this opportunity.
Disclosure: Views expressed are those of the writer. As a 501©3 nonprofit, In These Times does not support or oppose any candidate for public office.
Isaac Rabbani is an economist and researcher with the Center for Working-Class Politics.
Fred DeVeaux is a PhD student at UCLA and researcher at the Center for Working-Class Politics.
