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The Left Is Baffled—but Still Repulsed—by the White Working Class
American Greatness ^ | 7 Apr, 2026 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 04/07/2026 7:06:15 AM PDT by MtnClimber

Democrats can rebrand candidates, but they cannot hide a long record of condescension toward the very working-class voters they now need to win back.

After failing to win Congress and the presidency in 2024, the Democrats conducted an internal postmortem of what went wrong. While they predictably did not divulge the full results, everyone knew what they had found.

Their obsessions with the low side of 30/70 issues had especially alienated Democrats from white middle- and working-class voters. Yet middle-class whites still comprise about 40–50 percent of the population and are perhaps overrepresented in voter turnout.

Democrats realize that their fixations on biological males competing in women’s sports, open borders and millions of illegal entries, radical green agendas, DEI-driven racial essentialism, and massive government entitlements rife with fraud have alienated the middle classes in general and white middle- and working-class voters in particular.

But since Democrat ideologues cannot shed their ideological straitjackets, they have instead tried to finesse the very problem that cost them the 2024 election.

They recall, in particular, the successful blueprint that won them the 2020 election. During that campaign, Joe Biden largely remained out of public view, hiding in his basement, while his handlers reconstructed him as a kind of waxen effigy of “good ol’ Joe from Scranton,” a throwback to the 1970s.

Once the cognitively diminished Biden was elected, his hard-left, Obama-era operatives behind that ossified, working-man veneer enacted the most radical four-year agenda in modern American history.

On the one hand, Democrats claim they will field candidates who can at least playact as good ol’ boy farmers and salt-of-the-earth welders.

The 2024 Democratic vice presidential candidate, Humpty Dumpty lookalike Tim Walz, talked incessantly about driving a pickup truck. He assured us he could change its oil and tried to portray himself as

(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: leftism; vdh
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1 posted on 04/07/2026 7:06:15 AM PDT by MtnClimber
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To: texas booster

VDH ping


2 posted on 04/07/2026 7:06:44 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

PLEASE let the Socialist Democrats be in their death throes!

I know they’ve got something up their sleeve, but I need to remain hopeful!


3 posted on 04/07/2026 7:13:22 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin (I don't have, 'Hobbies.' I'm developing a robust Post-Apocalyptic skill set.)
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To: MtnClimber

Nothing rankles a Democrat elitist like seeing a former blue collar worker rise to someone who has built their own successful business and enjoying the fruits of their labor. They deeply resent and disdain people like that because liberals feel they are socially and academically superior to them and therefore undeserving of such success.


4 posted on 04/07/2026 7:16:43 AM PDT by Starboard
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To: Diana in Wisconsin

Same here.


5 posted on 04/07/2026 7:19:47 AM PDT by No name given ( Anonymous is who you’ll know me as )
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To: MtnClimber

Why love the “downtrodden non-working class” more than the taxed and struggling “white working class?” Especially, if you are white yourself?

Questions, many questions.


6 posted on 04/07/2026 7:21:46 AM PDT by Pearls Before Swine
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To: MtnClimber

I CAN CHANGE OIL IN MY TRUCK—454 DUALLY-——AND I AM 86 & FEMALE


7 posted on 04/07/2026 7:25:08 AM PDT by ridesthemiles (not giving up on TRUMP---EVER)
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To: MtnClimber

The left wants to be the aristocrats of their societies. Like all aristocrats, they have a distinct low opinion of the working class.

It’s why Canadians don’t like Albertans.

It does occur to me that socialism is the upper class attempt to give the lower classes a taste of the fine life. Sarc.


8 posted on 04/07/2026 7:27:15 AM PDT by Jonty30 (I would have been an awesome merchant marine. I can sell convenient store items very well.)
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To: Starboard

And moat all of them also know, deep down inside, whether they admit it, that they couldn’t be successfuly like that. They don’t have what it takes.


9 posted on 04/07/2026 7:28:01 AM PDT by curious7
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To: MtnClimber
VDH understates the situation

Students attending our so called “elite” universities are indoctrinated to literally hate white middle class people in fly over country.

And which students hates the white middle class people in fly over country the most - white middle class students who come from fly over country. It's a very bizarre situation

10 posted on 04/07/2026 7:34:20 AM PDT by rdcbn1 (..when poets buy guns, tourist season is over................Walter R. Mead)
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To: MtnClimber

I’ve always thought that when Democrats talked about the working class, they only counted union members as “workers.“ Members of the private sector, no matter what their job was, were not a concern of the Democrats. Their prejudice is just more exposed now.


11 posted on 04/07/2026 7:34:44 AM PDT by Freee-dame (The left never dreamed that Trump would be back in the White House in 2025. )
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To: Starboard

Very common for people to confuse level of formal education with intelligent. I have known some blisteringly smart guys who skipped college because they believed it a waste of time, which it certainly would have been for them. Extremely successful in business, but also very well-read.


12 posted on 04/07/2026 7:39:42 AM PDT by Bruce Campbells Chin
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To: MtnClimber

Baffled until their roof leaks, tire goes flat, need a new light switch, or find their bidet leaking onto the floor. Then, for a few days a union takes place, quickly dissolved after a few $8 Lattes later.


13 posted on 04/07/2026 7:45:50 AM PDT by blackdog (The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.)
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To: MtnClimber

Informative post; but the term “working class” borrows from Marxist ideology. They not a rigid, Dikensian-era class, and they’re not the only ones who work hard.


14 posted on 04/07/2026 7:48:19 AM PDT by Socon-Econ (adi)
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To: Pearls Before Swine

Why love the “downtrodden non-working class” more than the taxed and struggling “white working class?”

I’m repulsed by all of them. Democrats and Republicans....as I get ready to send them a bunch more money on April 15 after paying all year.


15 posted on 04/07/2026 7:50:40 AM PDT by sheana
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To: MtnClimber

The split between blue collar workers and the leftists began back in the 60’s, when blue collar workers were reluctant to come out against the Vietnam war, and it slowly escalated from there. I remember listening to an analysis piece on NPR in the 80’s, where the reporter said something to the effect that the white working class might not be very smart, but they know when somebody hates them, and they weren’t going to vote for somebody who hates them. Forty years later, that message still hasn’t sunk it.


16 posted on 04/07/2026 7:51:23 AM PDT by beef (The pendulum will not swing back. It will snap back. Hard.)
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To: MtnClimber
Democrats realize that their fixations on biological males competing in women’s sports, open borders and millions of illegal entries, radical green agendas, DEI-driven racial essentialism, and massive government entitlements rife with fraud

I hope voters remember exactly this in November when the mid-terms come around.

But, as voters vote with their wallets, and they're seeing high gas prices and soon higher food prices, they will vote for the "other" party, i.e., Democrats.

And that would be a disaster.

17 posted on 04/07/2026 7:55:16 AM PDT by Bon of Babble (You Say You Want a Revolution?)
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To: sheana

Estimated tax... the ultimate insult. Did you know that none other than Milton Friedman came up with the idea of tax withholding during WWII? Estimated Tax was developed to make sure no accounts were left behind.


18 posted on 04/07/2026 7:55:45 AM PDT by Pearls Before Swine
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To: MtnClimber

I’m repulsed by the left.


19 posted on 04/07/2026 8:07:01 AM PDT by sauropod
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To: MtnClimber
Democrats are condescending to everyone. Some groups are more receptive to this than others.
20 posted on 04/07/2026 8:07:55 AM PDT by yuleeyahoo (“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” - the deep-state)
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