Democrats out of touch

 Spiked Online:

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As the New York Times put it: ‘The confluence of economic problems and resurgent cultural issues has helped turn the emerging class divide in the Democratic coalition into a chasm, as Republicans appear to be making new inroads among non-white and working-class voters – perhaps especially Hispanic voters – who remain more concerned about the economy and inflation than abortion rights and guns.’

The Democrats are no longer speaking to the multiracial working class, but to people with other concerns – such as climate change, gun control and abortion. The Dems’ new base is the work-from-home pyjama class, the people with the luxury of caring about climate change and ‘January 6’, while their neighbours wonder if they should put food on the table or gas in the car because there isn’t enough money for both.

Want to know why working-class voters of all races are abandoning the Democrats? It’s because the Democrats have abandoned working-class voters.

Working-class voters of all races are hyper-focused on record gas prices, which are up 60 per cent on past year. It’s not just gas, either. The prices of eggs, chicken, meat and electricity are all up by double digits. Overall inflation reached a four-decade high of 9.1 per cent in June. Meanwhile, two-thirds of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. These people used to be the Democrats’ base.

Charles Stallworth, a union railroad worker in Houston, polled 100 of his fellow blue-collar workers for a piece in Newsweek. He found the same thing. To a man and woman, their top two concerns were crime and inflation. ‘You know what no one mentioned?’, writes Charles, ‘January 6. Or LGBT rights. Or abortion.’

Charles’ findings and the Times’ poll echo another poll tweeted by Rasmussen a few weeks ago, which found a similar disconnect – this time between voters and journalists.

The top concerns of voters were rising gas prices, inflation, the economy and violent crime. But while voters are busy worrying about mundane things like empty bank accounts, carjackings and a spike in homicides, the journalists surveyed were occupied by the war in Ukraine, the Capitol riot and – at the top of the list – climate change.

‘The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?’, our political and media elites like to say when anyone pushes back.

You know who the world really has ended for? Someone who has been murdered. Someone who can’t afford to feed their kids.

The bigger issue here is that the interests of the laptop class aren’t just different from the interests of the working class – they are often in fundamental tension. Demands to defund the police, open the borders and lock down for Covid make affluent progressives feel good about themselves, while they act as a literal tax on the working classes, who have to pay for this moral vanity. The Democrats’ new base tends to misread its economic privilege as a sign not of good fortune but of higher moral purpose. And they then demand others foot the bill for it – those with far fewer means than they have.
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I have thought that climate change was an overrated concern for some time.  There are more pressing problems than the Big Green agenda.  Biden and the Democrats deliberately drove up the price of gas to push their Big Greem policies and they deservedly earned the votes against them. The Democrats' energy policies contributed to inflation.  As the price of diesel went up so did the transportation cost of getting goods to market.

See, also:

Democrats hope Biden uses the climate to take over and destroy the economy