Stan Greenberg: Democrats, Speak to Working-Class Discontent

Stan Greenberg, one of the Democratic Party’s top Jewish pollsters, doesn’t see the political landscape all that differently than we do here at Occidental Dissent.

  • Republican strength comes from leaning into and harnessing working class cultural grievances
  • Republican weakness is their stale Reaganite policy agenda
  • Democratic strength comes from leaning into and harnessing economic populism
  • Democratic weakness comes from caving to progressive activists on their cultural issues and moderates on economic policy

In our view, White working class voters broke away from the Democrats and shifted toward Republicans in the Obama years, which changed the internal composition of the Republican Party. Similarly, White affluent professional class voters broke away from the Republicans and shifted toward the Democrats in the Trump years. This changed the internal composition of the Democratic Party.

Ideologically speaking, half of Democrats are liberals now, which has given liberals the upper hand in the party. The Democratic brand is social liberalism. The Democrats are two distinct parties. They are bleeding support from working class voters of all races. The party overwhelmingly caters to the whims and interests of White and Jewish professional class voters. Those people are also the face of the party. James Carville accurately assessed the situation when he said those people “make 80% of the noise.”

Greenberg is correct that the Democrats have a working class problem. They are losing more Democratic Leaning Working Class (DLWC) voters. White men were only the first to go under Obama. “Latinx” men and a swath of black men are also now turning on the Democrats. The based black man who was angry with Joe Biden over trannies taking over women’s sports and COVID policy illustrates how the trend has continued. Democrats have allowed progressive activists to expand the culture war battlefield from a handful of traditional issues like gun control and abortion to dozens of polarizing issues.

American Prospect:

“White working-class voters turned against the Democrats in 2010 and again in 2014, though in 2012 some were persuaded to vote for Obama against Mitt Romney, the very embodiment of corporate America. But Democrats didn’t just have a white working-class problem, they had a working-class problem. Democrats faced a pullback from their predominantly working-class base of Black, Hispanics, millennials, and unmarried women—the bloc I labeled the “Rising American Electorate” in my analysis of shifts in public opinion. …

The 2016 election did not set a record for turnout, in part because some Sanders supporters stayed home and Black turnout fell from 2012. What was historic was how poorly Clinton and Democrats did in suburban counties in the Rust Belt. She lost Macomb County by about 50,000—a margin well in excess of Trump’s 10,000 statewide margin in Michigan. New white working-class voters and rural voters rallied to Trump’s messianic, racist vision in breathtaking numbers. That juiced-up energy among the disaffected kept the proportion of voters without a four-year college degree nearly unchanged from four years earlier, despite their decline in the overall population. …

Despite Trump, Republicans are the same old low-tax, anti-government party that works for the biggest corporations and billionaires. So Democrats still have the opportunity to become the one best hope of America’s working families. It’s not rocket science. …

Hearing Democrats talk about big economic and political change also got the attention of white working-class voters under age 50 despite their attraction to Trump. In the simulated campaign, the Democrats cut the Republican margin by six points. Democrats also made gains with whites who have a disabled member of their family, a group who are disproportionately represented in the working class and respond very favorably to the Democrats’ health care policies. …

If Democrats are to stop hemorrhaging their working-class support and achieve the kinds of gains that they did in 2018, they have to embrace a message of change. It’s not just their electoral fortunes that hang in the balance. American democracy itself does.”

I agree with Greenberg about the correct strategy for Democrats.

We saw this in 2017-2018 when Dump sold the policy agenda to the donors. He deferred to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. They used his electoral mandate to push for traditional Republican obsessions like ending Obamacare and passing the largest corporate tax cut in history. As a result, Trump plummeted in the polls and lost the support of the White Independent voters who had elected him. Paul Ryan lost the House of Representatives and retired from Congress. Trump lost the Rust Belt in 2020. Democrats win elections when the most salient issues are things like unaffordable health care costs.

The correct Republican strategy would be to move away from the stale Reaganite policy agenda while playing up the cultural divide between the working class Democratic base and the Democratic establishment. The average working class Democratic voter needs to think he voted for Joe Biden and got trannies in women’s sports and COVID totalitarianism and foreign policy catastrophes and runaway crime and inflation. He needs to associate Joe Biden with high gas prices and masks.

As for Stan Greenberg’s optimized poll-tested messaging, it is only as good as the messengers and the media landscape, which is the shriveling coastal media bubble. Democrats can’t rely on the mainstream media to get their message out anymore. The “mainstream media” no longer controls the narrative and the national conversation like it did in the 1970s. PMCs dominate the mainstream media. These people are becoming more and more isolated in the Acela Corridor Twitter Bubble too.

9 Comments

  1. A populist or third position party would dominate American politics if it were allowed to happen. Not much chance of that happening though.

  2. Frt pg NYT

    “Pedestrian Deaths Spike in U.S. as Reckless Driving Surges”

    “Fatalities are climbing to record levels two years into the pandemic. Authorities cite drivers’ anxiety levels, larger vehicles and fraying social norms.”

    Welcome to the third world, Amigo.

    (“fraying social norms”, oooh I like that term, for a society degenerating into a brown turd pool. Expect to see that, a lot more.)

    • That NYT article you linked has a real “illuminating” quote.

      “It’s ironic that I told so many friends how crossing the street was so safe in the United States compared with India,” said Mr. Bhattacharya, who works in information technology. “I always thought we’d be safer here.”

      I submit that the irony’s not that indian streets are safer than US streets; instead, it’s that this tech indian’s here, having unirontically brought his trash culture and shit genes with him.

      “Third-worldization” is right.

  3. Stan Greenberg

    The same ‘Stan Greenberg’ That told southern democrats to run on an anti-gun platform, that caused a slaughter of southern Democratic house seats.

    Real bright guy, on the short bus.

  4. Aracial economic populism=full speed ahead with Hindu Legal Immigrants.

    A variant on this:Numberusa=White Working Class People don’t exist…and this is why we never mention them…and they better not have large White families…

  5. Greenberg doesn’t give a shit about the cows and sheep. He’s just telling his fellow servants of oligarchy which lies will be more effective. Yes he’s quite correct that “Republicans are the same old low-tax, anti-government party that works for the biggest corporations and billionaires.” What he fails to mention is that So are the Democrats.

    Importing millions from the third world serves to drive down wages to support billionaire oligarchs and Wall Street. So is Obamacare, which really amounts to handing control of the healthcare system over to Wall Street while selling it as a kind of socialized medicine. More bullshit, in other words. The notion of two parties is a myth. There is only one party which has two squads who make noises and play games of “opposing” each other. Both serve the same donors. Both are there to strip-mine and loot the country of assets. Only fake populists will be permitted.

    • Exactly, Cyclops. Government is an extraction racket, politicians are stationary bandits. They ALL sell tax and regulatory favors ( the latter tool designed to assist corporate donors by handcuffing competitors who are too small to absorb the costs of regulatory compliance).

      The Canadian government reaction to their truckers shows the best course of action against Leviathan is noncooperative malingering, not street activism. Stepping out just puts a target on your back. Just say no to the whole rigged game. Withhold your skills. Go Galt.

  6. If only an economic populist, social conservative, anti-immivasion party or even just a few prominent, unapologetic politicians would come forth, it/they would be overwhelmingly popular. It would take the winning issues (only hollow rhetorical ones of course, since both parties have the same owners) from both the cucks & the shitlibs. The kikemedia would shriek “RACISTS!! FASCISTS!!”, but to no avail because no one but urban fags listen to them anymore.

    The great obstacles would be funding & Big Tech censorship & deplatforming. The funding would have to be almost all small individual donations; as for the (((Cultural Marxist))) Silicon Valley & other corporate scum, they would be very hard to get around, as their successful strategy against Dump proved. Which is why they would have to be hammered relentlessly, with a serious promise to bust them up if elected. It would be hugely popular if believed: people HATE those smirking, increasingly street-shitter commie dictators.

    It should & could be done, but probably won’t, as long as stupid people are satisfied with “Let’s Go Brandon!” team sport politricks.

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