Amid mounting evidence that declining support among working-class voters — particularly working-class voters of color — played a major role in Kamala Harris’s defeat, many commentators have started to reflect on how this shift happened and what Democrats can do to win back this crucial demographic in the future. But Jacobin and the Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) have been sounding the alarm about working-class dealignment for years and have produced a wide range of insights that can help answer these questions.
Below is an essential list of our works on class dealignment and how the Left can respond.
For a general overview of the evidence for dealignment and a survey of the most prominent approaches to understanding how it can be addressed, start with my essay “Class Dealignment Is the Defining Political Challenge of Our Time.” If you are interested in the specific question of dealignment among voters without a four-year college degree, you can find a short summary in “A Matter of Degrees.”
One key solution for reversing class dealignment is for progressives to double down on economic populism. “Democrats who attack the rich do better in elections” summarizes research from Jacobin and the CWCP demonstrating that Democratic candidates who run on economic populism do better with working-class voters than those who do not. “A Populism of the Left Can Realign American Politics” draws similar conclusions, this…
Auteur: Jared Abbott
