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Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria has an interesting column on the ongoing party realignment. He notes that a recent cover of the Economist has a rolled-up dollar bill taking off like a rocket with a headline: "The Envy of the World." Yet the strong economy hasn't helped Kamala Harris one bit. In fact, she is often blamed for a terrible economy. This indicates that something is afoot.
It is even stranger since Biden's economic policies, such as bringing more manufacturing jobs to America and massively upgrading the national infrastructure, have been specifically designed to help working-class men. Improvements to roads, bridges, harbors, airports, etc. create jobs in construction and related fields that are largely filled by noncollege men. Despite this, the noncollege workers don't like the Democrats. Polls show Harris will do about 9 points worse among working-class men than Biden did in 2020. What's going on here?
Zakaria argues that after decades of globalization and the digital revolution, the old order is fading and a new one is taking place. It used to be that the rich and upper middle class voted for Republicans and the working-class and poor voted for the Democrats. Also, white people were Republicans and minorities were Democrats. Now the main division is not economic, but educational, with college-educated voters (and some minorities) being Democrats and noncollege voters being Republicans. A second key factor is gender. Democrats are becoming the mommy party and Republicans the daddy party. As a consequence, Harris will probably get more white votes than Biden did because for college-educated white women, education and gender beat race.
The institutional Democratic Party doesn't get it. Party leaders think that Donald Trump has tricked working class voters into voting against their own (economic) interests, and when he goes away, all will be right with the world again. But Biden has tried to woo the workers, with little success. Some studies have shown that the most worker-friendly politician in America, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), is much more popular with the educated elites in the Democratic Party than he is with actual workers. How can the workers be so stupid?
Leaders of the Democratic Party do not understand that their problem is not that they are insufficiently worker- or union-oriented on economic policy. It is that they have moved far too far to the left on social and cultural issues and are way out of step with the working class. Their educated voters don't give a hoot about who marries whom or which bathroom anyone uses. It turns out that many working-class voters give many hoots about these issues and see the Democrats way off in la-la land on them. Many Democratic leaders are unable to comprehend why what they see as perfectly normal and reasonable is anathema to many working-class voters. So what do the Democrats do about these "stupid" people? They call them a "basket of deplorables." Probably not a good idea.
But even if the Democrats get the message, there is no easy way out. When economics was king, the solution was to grow the economy so everyone got more money. That was easy. But with divisive social issues being central now, it is hard to find positions that satisfy both Harvard graduates and high school dropouts. They have different ideas about the proper social order and especially the position of women in it. To the Democrats' great disadvantage, there are many more voters without a college education than voters with one.
All this suggests that the new alignment will mean a Democratic Party supported by college-educated voters, young people (primarily women) and minorities (again, primarily women). It will also mean a Republican Party supported by older working-class men and women and young men.
Among seniors (65+), the situation is somewhat different, with education and gender playing less of a role. Traditionally, seniors tended to be Republicans, but that is changing. For many seniors, Social Security and Medicare are big issues. In one poll, 55% of seniors said that Social Security is or will be a major source of their income and 80% said it is a major issue in how they vote. Republicans often talk about cutting it or privatizing it. Seniors don't like this, which is moving many of them to the Democrats, regardless of education or gender. Also, Black seniors tend to remember who was on which side during the Civil Rights battles of the 1960s and are still strongly Democratic. (V)