Following the Democratic Party’s widespread losses in last week’s election, President Joe Biden declared that passage of the infrastructure bill in the House of Representatives “is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America.” Though polling indicates that Americans support that bill—not the costly and expansive “Build Back Better” act—voters admonished Biden and his party’s economic stewardship in down-ballot races.
Rejection of the Democrats’ progressive platform, with its identity-politics fixations, was particularly evident among blue-collar voters, who once made up the party’s electoral base. Biden spent his political career courting these voters—and promoting his “scrappy” Scranton roots—with Kennedy-era platitudes befitting an Edwin O’Connor novel. But last Tuesday showed that the Democrats’ working-class constituency has finished its years’ long last hurrah. The divorce was especially acute in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where Democratic affiliation was once synonymous with economic advancement in working-class communities. Blue-collar voters are turning to the Republican Party, further dampening Democrats’ hopes for next year’s midterms.
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