After the spectacularly bad Republican showing in the midterms, Joe Biden was asked, what are you going to change? “Nothing,” he said triumphantly. You sure about that, Joe? “I'm not gonna change,” he repeated. C’mon man, that’s dumb. Three things from our pod this week with Ruy Teixeira:
The Trump-Democrat axis is a thing.
The midterms masked real problems for the Democratic Party.
Suburban moms and white college grads are great, but D no longer stands for working class. And the working classes are noticing.
It’s on its way to becoming conventional wisdom these days, but Donald Trump and his favorite candidates — Blake Masters, Dr. Oz, Herschel Walker, and assorted governors — were a gift to the Democratic Party in the midterm elections. But as the Democrats crack the French champagne and swipe ethically sourced brie on their baguette slices (gluten free, please!), they’re missing the big picture… which is bad long term news for the Ds.
Long story short, the working class exodus from the Democratic Party that began with the Trump election in 2016 has only continued. It’s not just non-college white people; it’s women, Hispanics, and to a lesser extent, black people who are walking away from the party that once considered them a slam dunk. But that’s the problem isn’t it? Because not every American wants to be considered by the label female, White, Black, or Latinx. Indeed, perhaps they don’t want to be sorted like that at all…
These voters who are leaching out of the Democratic Party care more about jobs, crime, immigration and inflation than their putative champions understand. Sure, in this election, these newcomers to the GOP didn’t outweigh the many, many urban and suburban types who were put off by the GOP’s craptastic brand and lousy candidates. But the Left can’t pigeonhole minorities and women or count on the GOP and Donald Trump forever.
What happens when someone speaks to the working class of all colors and ethnicities, to women and to independents, and asks, Would you like your kids to be in school? Wanna take off that mask? Want your kids’ teachers to actually teach? If you wonder, look at Florida. That’s what happens. And Donald Trump isn’t going to live forever. Sorry, Nancy and Chuck.
HIGHLIGHTS
Take MAGA (or just Trump) out of the election process, and what happens to Democrats?
RT: Well, I think nothing good at this point. I think it presents them with challenges that are very ill-prepared to handle. I touched on that in my latest Substack where I talked about the Hispanic and working class voter problem continuing and did raise the issue about what happens if they don't have Trump to kick around anymore. Going a little further in that direction in a piece I had coming out in the Wall Street Journal that I titled... Who knows what their title is, but I called it The Democrats' Ron DeSantis Problem, which is exactly that.
If the Democrats are confronted with more electable, smarter, more competent candidates up and down the ticket, what do they do? I think their whole strategy becomes a lot more difficult to implement
So Democrats have a Trump strategy?
RT: That's what I mean about codependent. I mean, Trump loves it. He loves being the center of attention. In a sense, the Democrats are his allies in keeping him at the center of attention because they sort of need him, whether they acknowledge it or not, because that's what enables their strategy to work as well as it does at the current time.
But it’s not just Trump is it? What about the so-called extremism of the GOP?
RT: If you go through the AP, the VoteCast survey, and I'm sure the exit polls aren't too different, there are a number of questions asked about which party is more extreme, which party tolerates extremists in its ranks too much, how favorable do you feel about parties, the Democrats do no better than Republicans.
Is the Democratic Party being overtaken by Progressive radicals?
RT: By and large, the average progressive caucus member is in a D plus double digits or more, or up into the 20s district. Candidates who were in competitive districts who managed to hold the line were by and large relatively moderate. Now, they may be pulled somewhat to the left by the overall sort of coloration of the caucus at this point, but they're basically relatively moderate and they tried to do fairly moderate campaigns.
A lot of them didn't even talk too much about this ultra MAGA fascist-at-the-gate kind of thing. It was more like, "Okay, there's abortion and there's this and there's that and this crazy thing this other candidate says and we want get back to normal here. No more nuts, please." So I think that that's underappreciated to some extent about how the candidates who held the line managed to hold the line. They were not AOC types. They're not even very influenced or interested in that kind of politics.
But the MAGA-fascist-at-the-gate trope masked some problems for the Ds, didn’t it?
RT: We did see a continuing move of working class and Hispanic voters away from the Democratic Party. David Shor in an interview has done some additional analysis on this. He seems to think, and I think he's right, that there was an additional move among Hispanics towards Republicans just in this election, and it suggests a certain durability with some of these shifts among Hispanic voters. … Look, they got, I think 19% of the vote among Black men. I'm sure that is mostly working class voters. Things are happening in that respect. The Democrats are becoming... Are still a party and are becoming more so the party that is really to some extent dominated by college educated liberals, suburban women…
So the Democrats are the party of elite women? How long does that work?
RT: I do think that Democrats did relatively well among suburban college educated women in particular, which was quite helpful for them in terms of holding a line. But I mean, your broader point that the strategy that Democrats appear to be pursuing is not a sustainable one, I think is absolutely correct. As I pointed out, it reflects the codependent relationship with Trump, Trumpism and a Trumpy Republican Party. They're not prepared for anything that's even mildly different.
So what happens when Trump is gone?
RT: [The Ds are] not ready for it because their strategy and the coalition they have built is not adaptable in that respect, or at least not adaptable without some serious work, which they seem uninterested in doing. As they move into 2024 and confront an incredibly unfavorable Senate map where they have just one red or purple state senator after another to defend, and the Republicans really hardly have any, what do they do then? What do they if their candidate... The candidate they face in 2024 is not Trump, but rather DeSantis or Youngkin or something like that? I mean, we don't know what's going to happen. But we do know, I think, that they're poorly prepared for it. I do worry as a Democrat that the debate, the takeaways people are going to get out of this election are not going to be helpful to the rethink that might be necessary to prepare for the future.
Why has DeSantis got all the mojo?
RT: I think his mojo comes from a number of sources, but maybe you could just sum them all up as say he's a very clever, very competent politician who practices effective governance and knows when he deals in cultural issues to pick the popular side... and not push it any farther. DeSantis is attractive to Hispanics because that's who they are. They want effective governance, they want upward mobility. They want their jobs to be there. They don't want the economy closed down for too long. They don't want their kids taught gender ideology in kindergarten
So Hispanics are not natural D constituents?
RT: If this is a constituency that broadly speaking all over the country is socially moderate to conservative, patriotic, upwardly mobile, mostly concerned about jobs, family, healthcare, effective schools, public safety and so on, I think the Democrats’ brand and those things has really been weakened. I think they're viewed as being a bit alien by a lot of the especially Hispanic working class voters at this point. The default assumption that, "I vote Democratic, even if I'm a moderate to conservative working class Latino," I think that has weakened. Not just in Florida and Nevada and Arizona, in neighborhoods in Chicago and New York and Minneapolis and Detroit and so on.
Wherever you find working class Hispanics, typically you do find this weakening of identification and support for the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party is not oriented at this point toward being a working class party. They are a working class constituency.
But, but, LATINX!!
RT: Right. I mean, Latinx, most people aren't even aware of it, but it's just indicative of the cluelessness of the culturally dominant liberal elements in the Democratic Party, including among some Hispanic activists. I think Hispanics are willing to tolerate the fact that the media and Democrat or Democratic politician was somewhat to their left on social issues, somewhat more liberal, but there's liberal and then there's liberal.
Are we still a working class party if we're not reaching working class parties, including working class voters, including Hispanics? How do we do it? How are we out of sync with them? Can we talk their language? What is really important to them? Why don't they think we share the... Why don't they think we value hard work?
All these things are very troubling questions for the Democrats and I think it's a lot easier to say ultra MAGA, abortion rights, January 6.
What about immigration? Doesn’t that help with Democrats?
RT: I think it's very important to draw distinction between legal and illegal immigration. I think Hispanics are broadly supportive of a fairly liberal regime on legal immigration. They would like to see, and certainly they don't want people mistreated at the border regardless of who they are, but they're actually not that enthusiastic about illegal immigration.
It's a big mess at the border and people are pouring across, obviously people are abusing the asylum system and for hardworking Hispanics who are already here as citizens who are working their tail off, I mean, it's actually not a winning issue for the Democrats to appear to be extremely lenient on this whole issue and to basically do nothing about border security. Most Hispanics are for more border security, not less.
This is really what's happening with the Hispanic voting population at large. It's not that they became Republican. They just become much significantly less Democratic. If you're starting to push 40% of the Hispanic vote or more in a lot of these areas, and we saw 40% nationwide in 2022, then it tells you that there's a big minority of Hispanics out there who do not of think in the same way that liberal Democrats do about the Republican party, which is they're an iniquitous den of fascist plotters. Right? And that they hate all immigrants. That's not how they think about the Republicans. They have much more nuanced views. I mean this is a problem for both political parties. They just can't wrap their minds around how complicated the views of a lot of their people they purport to represent are.
So… Biden 2024??
RT: I thought before this election, and I think probably even more so after it. I think if the Democrats had gotten their clock cleaned, as there was a reasonably plausible case for, I think he would've been under some pressure and had some second thoughts himself about running. But now that they've had a historically good midterm election for an incumbent party, I mean he's looking pretty cocky to me and he's not exactly trying to hide the fact he's kind of interested in running again. If he declares, ain't nobody's going to stop him.
Whole transcript here.
SHOWNOTES
Elections and Demography: A Final Look at the Polls (AEI Event with RT, November 3, 2022)
WATCH: Sarah Westwood warns Democrats may learn 'wrong lessons' from midterm elections (Washington Examiner, November 10, 2022)
What Democrats can learn from the midterm campaigns (The Economist, November 3, 2022)
Democrats’ Long Goodbye to the Working Class (The Atlantic, November 6, 2022)
Ruy Teixeira asks whether America has reached “peak woke” (The Economist, October 19, 2022)
The Democrats’ Working Class Problem Intensifies (The Liberal Patriot, October 20, 2022)
A Three Point Plan To Fix the Democrats and Their Coalition (The Liberal Patriot, October 13, 2022)
The Democrats’ Woes with Hispanic Voters (Wall Street Journal, August 4, 2022)
How Moderates Won the Midterms (The Atlantic, November 9, 2022)
Calcified Politics Gives Us Another Close Election (The Cook Political Report, November 9, 2022)
What the 2022 midterms mean for Biden's presidency (NPR, November 11, 2022)
Trump-DeSantis Rivalry Takes Off as Florida Governor Builds 2024 Buzz (Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2022)