The missing middle class puts Democrats in a ‘big beautiful' bind

The Hill

2 days ago

Sometimes, a one-vote margin seems like a landslide.
That's how the 215-214 margin of victory in the House for the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' should have felt to many Democrats. From the moment of the bill's introduction, Democrats seemed unable to find their footing, resorting to calling it by less flattering names but not rallying the nation against it.
In fact, the Democrats couldn't seem to figure out quite who they were trying to rally.
If American democracy is to have a viable future, the Democratic Party needs to get its act together — and do it quickly. Its performance in the debate about President Trump's signature legislation was not a hopeful sign.
As the Senate begins its consideration of the bill, Democrats will say, to borrow from one commentator, that it will lead to 'the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history.' Think of what New Deal Democrats, and their hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt, would have done with such a bill.
They would have denounced it over and over again as the work of the 'plutocrats' or 'princes of property.' They would have been speaking to a solidly working-class base.
That was then. But now the Democrats have themselves become, at least in part, the party of 'plutocrats' and 'princes of property.' As political scientist Sam Zacher reports, 'Beginning in the 1990s, the Democratic Party started winning increasing shares of rich, upper-middle income, high-income occupation, and stock-owning voters.'
This shift was really evident in the 2024 presidential election. Last November, Kamala Harris received a higher share of the vote of people earning between $100,000 and $199,999 than did Donald Trump. That was also true among people making $200,000 or more.
In fact, a majority of Americans with a net worth of at least $5 million were also in Harris's camp. On the other hand, she carried the group of people making under $30,000.
Therein lies the problem. People in the lowest and highest income groups prioritize different issues. Satisfying members of one group may turn off the other.
While the lowest-income voters tend to focus on kitchen table issues, people in the upper income brackets are 'post-materialists, prioritizing issues of identity and other social concerns over traditional economic matters.' That is why the Harris campaign elected to eschew populist and redistributionist themes.
The former vice president was happy being shown in the company of celebrities and billionaires. At times, she seemed to be running to the right of Donald Trump, embracing patriotic fervor, gun ownership and the American dream.
But given the shifting allegiance of working-class voters, she had a very difficult task to win the election. We saw that again in the messaging from House Democrats about 'The One Big Beautiful Bill Act.' The party of FDR was again in a real bind.
Let's start with the simple fact that opposing it meant that Democrats could be accused of wanting to let Trump's 2017 tax bill expire. This, Republicans claimed, would increase taxes on millions of Americans.
The second problem was that part of the Democratic base will be among the winners if the bill is signed into law. As USA Today notes, citing the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the bill 'would cut taxes on average by about $2,800 in 2026,' but '[m]ore than two-thirds of the total cuts would go to those with annual incomes of about $217,000 or more.'
'Those with incomes of $1.1 million or more,' it reported, 'would get nearly a fourth of the cuts.'
Many of America's millionaires support the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, they are not particularly focused on the plight of those who will be the biggest losers if the president and his Republican allies get their way.
The losers will be people at the other end of the income scale — and the other part of the Democratic coalition. 'Americans making about $17,000 to $51,000,' USA Today says, 'would lose about $700. Those with an income of less than $17,000 would lose more than $1,000 on average.'
That would come from the deep cuts the House bill would make in the social safety net. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries got it right when he said that passage of the bill would 'cause millions of Americans to lose healthcare and food assistance.'
Polls show that the vast majority of Democrats in the country oppose Trump's plan. But a party whose support is most heavily concentrated at the two extreme ends of the class divide would have to show great dexterity in bringing them together to oppose the Republican plan.
Alas, such dexterity is in short supply in today's national Democratic Party. That is why it is not clear at the moment that it can stop the plan from being enacted into law.
The party is, however, likely to try to use 'The One Big Beautiful Bill Act' as a rallying cry to try to win back the House of Representatives in the 2026 midterms. But by then the damage will have been done, and the prospects of undoing it will be bleak.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.