Resisting authoritarianism is the second-highest priority for Democrats’ college-educated base. But for working-class Americans, it’s only the 19th priority (out of 20), we found in a new survey. The gap between these two groups was larger than on any other issues: elites prioritized resisting authoritarianism an astonishing 33 percentage points more than non-elites did.
Democrats’ dilemma is that their college-educated base insists they stand up to Donald Trump’s attacks on democracy, but they also need to win working-class votes. The way to thread that needle is to recognize that what’s needed to defend democracy in the short term is different from what’s needed to defend it in the long term.
In the short term, Democrats’ base is right: immediate action is needed in the courts, exemplified by the more than 150 lawsuits that Democracy Forward has filed against the Trump administration and the 82 filed by California attorney general Rob Bonta, contesting alleged corruption, funding cuts, election interference and more. Action in the streets is powerful, too, from the protests in Minnesota to the mobilization of more than 8 million people (chiefly highly-educated women) at No Kings rallies across the country. But while #resistance is necessary, it’s not enough. Democrats also need to take two additional steps.
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The first is to talk about defending democracy in ways that connect with working-class voters, which our survey defines as those without college degrees in the middle 50% of US income distribution. While “resisting authoritarianism” was a low priority for working-class voters of any race, “reducing corruption in government” was the third highest priority for white working-class respondents, fourth for working-class Latinos, and sixth for working-class African Americans, our survey found.
In fact, reducing corruption was one of only two top working-class priorities we identified that wasn’t economic. A study out of the UK explains why. It found that working-class Britons use “corruption” not in a narrow legal sense but to express “deeply rooted feelings of injustice and unfairness”. “The whole system needs [to be] seriously looked at and reformed,” said one man, protesting MPs at the Parliament bar with their taxpayer-subsidized gin and tonics. “The government don’t care about me, they don’t care about my children,” said a working-class woman. Corruption talk is how working-class people protest against a political system that doesn’t seem to represent them – a political system that has become anti-democratic.
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One prominent Democrat provides the template for how to respond: Jon Ossoff, the US Senator up for re-election in Georgia. “American politics is coin operated,” he said. “Money comes in, favors come out.” A former documentary film-maker, Ossoff knows how to communicate. First he adopts a catchy phrase–the “Mar-a-Lago mafia” – to describe the alliance of the Trump family and the ultra-rich that “has taken American corruption to spectacular new heights”. Then he ties corruption directly to negative impacts on ordinary people’s lives: “One point six billion of your tax dollars to fund and finance [Donald Trump’s sons’] mining project in Kazakhstan. All this, while you pay for more gas, for groceries, for healthcare.” Then, Ossoff pivots from political to economic elites: “Members of Congress live in fear of these Super Pacs. And that corruption is why insurance companies get away with denying your claim for a procedure you needed to save your life … It’s why the ultra-rich get a tax break while you pay more for everything.” Republicans have been harnessing anger against economic elites and redirecting it against political elites for decades; with an approach like Ossoff’s, Democrats can reverse the process, redirecting anger against political elites on to economic elites benefitting from a corrupt system.
If the first step for Democrats is to talk about corruption, not authoritarianism, the second step is to respect working-class priorities. Eight out of the top 10 working-class priorities are economic, our survey found, and while elites’ economic priorities focus tightly on prices, the working class also prioritizes higher wages and economic opportunity. Many working-class voters don’t rush to defend democracy because they feel it’s failed them for the last 40 years. American workers used to get 70% of GDP but today their share is only 54%. That helps explain why virtually all Americans earned more than their parents in the decades immediately after second world war, but only half those born in 1980 will. The only way to defend democracy in the long run is to prioritize creating an economy that delivers a stable, middle-class life for working-class Americans.
Donald Trump is busy alienating the working-class voters who swept him into office, but Democrats are also unpopular. If they want to win elections consistently enough to build a progressive, democratic future, they first need to respect that working-class top priorities are economic – not Palestine, not ICE, not trans rights. Democrats also need to talk about “defending democracy” in ways that connect with working-class voters. Anger at corruption offers a powerful entry point when linked to the widely held view that the economic system is rigged. This approach has worked in countries as diverse as Hungary, the Philippines, Guatemala and Malaysia. It can work here, too.
