What Democrats still don’t understand about the working class
Without the scandals, Graham Platner might have won in Maine—but not with white non-college support.
We spent nearly a year hearing about Graham Platner's appeal to the white working-class voter, and how his campaign would revive Democratic strategy.
Yet polls consistently showed he wasn't making any gains with Maine's white non-college voters (the usual proxy for working class), and in mid-June, the New York Times/Siena Research Institute poll showed him underperforming every other Democrat.
For National Journal this week, I broke down what the failures were that brought us Platner in the first place, now that we’re about to see the end of his candidacy. A fundamental key was the lack of curiosity among a set of consultants who think they know better about what working-class voters actually want.
Instead of progress, we got an insulting caricature — because surely what working-class voters want is a scruffy, tough-talking oyster farmer who has a few skeletons in his closet and actually grew up kind of privileged. That’ll make them say “Hey, he’s just like us!”
This type of thinking will ensure Democrats lose even more of the working class.
Read my column here — paywall-free until July 31.
