Posted on 07/21/2026 4:08:29 AM PDT by texas booster
Democrats can't win back the white working class with staged populism while embracing the policies and elites that drove those voters away.
The last Democratic candidate to appeal to the white working-class voter was Bill Clinton. He needed every one of those voters in his 1992 and 1996 races. Yet he still failed to win 50 percent of the popular vote because of Ross Perot’s third-party candidacy.
Since then, the Democratic brand has lost the white working-class vote in nearly every presidential election. Yet this demographic still makes up 40 percent of the electorate and registers and votes at much higher rates than non-white groups.
Apparently, during the Biden-era influx of 10 million illegal aliens, Democrats really believed their own slogans about an “Emerging Democratic Majority” and how “Demography is destiny.” They therefore confidently abandoned most efforts to recruit white working-class voters.
In 2017, the then-neocon—and now leftist Mamdani supporter—Bill Kristol (who has advocated abolishing ICE altogether) spoke of the need to open the borders to replace the “lazy” American worker: “Look, to be totally honest, if things are so bad as you say with the white working class, don’t you want to get new Americans in?”
Kristol then characterized this apparently dispensable group as “decadent, lazy, spoiled.”
And yet, until the novelty of Barack Obama’s candidacy and the demographic overconfidence it inspired, Democrats regularly lamented that, aside from the moderate Bill Clinton interlude, their steady leftward turn was becoming both irreversible and electorally costly.
Indeed, Obama aside, conventional Democratic wisdom apparently held that a presidential nominee, regardless of his politics, should have a Southern accent to project authenticity and appeal to working-class whites. Thus, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore all won the popular vote.
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
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The charismatic Barack Obama, as the first black president, and the wax-museum blue-collar construct of “good old Joe Biden from Scranton” are merely the exceptions that prove the rule.
Toxic Agendas
These trends have only accelerated with the top-down takeover of the Democratic Party by hardcore leftists, socialists, and even the occasional communist.
Their agendas are boutique and have little appeal outside blue-city and blue-state echo chambers.
In the proverbial real world, voters have little patience with redefining what a woman is, biological men showering with teen girls, or males masquerading as female athletes stealing girls’ medals. Open borders, mass amnesties, defunding ICE and the police, and romanticizing illegal aliens are likewise 30–70 losing issues.
Working people do not understand the banning of natural gas stoves or the subsidizing of wind and solar power while phasing out fossil fuels. Nor do they like the idea of losers suddenly wishing to change the system through 70 percent mail-in voting, no-ID voting, packing the court, destroying the Electoral College, and ending the filibuster—much less socialist talk of abolishing the Senate and the presidency.
No-cash bail, revolving-door arrests and releases, early prison releases, abortion on demand until the moment of birth, and climate-change fanaticism are equally mystifying to the working class.
Billionaire Trump wears his customary blue suit, red tie, and wingtips in every setting, on every occasion, and in every kind of weather. He does not perch on straw bales wearing a John Deere cap, affect a regional accent à la Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, or don blue jeans and work boots to “bond” with farmers. He is as out of place walking an assembly line as he is genuinely appealing to those who work there.
Why? His agenda is tailored to working-class tastes. He doesn’t care about race. In our 2026 America, that opposition to tribalism takes the form of refusing to gratuitously pander to the DEI industry.
Another excellent article from the pen of Prof Hanson. Please click the linky to read the whole article.
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Absolutely!
If ever there was a politician wetting his finger to see which way the wind blows, it was Bill Clinton.
Only cared for himself, and his libido.
His wife however, knew how to grab onto men and use them.
“Working people do not understand the banning of natural gas stoves or the subsidizing of wind and solar power while phasing out fossil fuels. Nor do they like the idea of losers suddenly wishing to change the system through 70 percent mail-in voting, no-ID voting, packing the court, destroying the Electoral College, and ending the filibuster—much less socialist talk of abolishing the Senate and the presidency.”
Oh!! . Just in. The new socialist mayor of NYC staff wants to get rid of the pesky Constitution as well.
The Dems have secured the cuck vote. They exist everywhere. Especially in college towns.
“Clinton went that way because of politics, not because his ideology had changed.”
Of all people, you’d think VDH wouldn’t get fooled by the guy.
The struggling Proletariat. The workers that are the means of production.
Nah, I think he put it the way he did to keep it within the context of his subject matter. I took it out of context as a friendly reminder.
“Read my lips, no new taxes...” is what elected Clinton.
I always thought, and still do, that it was his appearance on Arsenio Hall as a saxophone-playing hipster that got him elected. His groupies saw more in him than what was really there.
Notice how they didn't capitalize WHITE. If it weren't for the "White working class," there wouldn't be an economy.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Iaa3t-zORp4?feature=share
Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America forced a huge attitude adjustment on Bill Clinton. I was in Newt’s old GA 6th CD for many years.
The rise of the new socialists has only added another layer of hypocrisy to the Left’s preexisting elitism and dependence on big money, creating what Andrew Stiles has characterized as “Trust-Fund Socialism.”
Re: Joe Bidden
He didn’t win. The Demon-rats stole it for him.
The Dems have spent decades criticizing, nay DEMONIZING, white males, and particularly the working class ones who are “bitter clingers” to their guns and religion...and now they think that they can get their support? This is FURTHER evidence of their ultimate contempt for this large demographic - they clearly think that they’re too stupid to remember how they’ve been demonized.
PHUCK the Dems. These arrogant, America-hating pricks are finally reaping the whirlwind on how they treat people based on skin color and gender (things that we have all noticed that they criticize/demonize Republicans of doing). They define hypocricy, and also deserve to define political FAFO.
The final paradox?
The Left needs to win a lot more white working-class Trump voters. Yet in their astroturf efforts, they ridicule Trump for his very tastes and appeal, which they try in vain to inauthentically emulate.
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