Latest news with #WorkingClassProject
Newsweek
17 hours ago
- Politics
- Newsweek
Democrats, Stop Talking at Workers. Start Listening to Them
In the 2024 election a clear message was sent to the Democratic Party and elected officials writ large: connect with the working class or fail. Now, with a Trump budget that slashes assistance to millions of working families who aren't paid enough to afford basics like food, health care, and rent—all to fund trillions in tax breaks to the wealthiest, most comfortable individuals and corporations in our nation—the need to hear from working people and build an agenda that responds to their needs is more urgent than ever before. While the Bernie-AOC "Fighting Oligarchy" tour, the New Economic Patriots caucus, Sherrod Brown's Dignity of Work Institute, and Mitch Landreiu's Working Class Project are all evidence of a desire to focus on working people, there remains a glaring need for elected officials to engage in an ongoing and personal conversation with workers—and to simply listen. The U.S. flag waves in front of the White House. The U.S. flag waves in front of the White House. Marina, a young woman from Sacramento, Calif. who works at Chipotle while pursuing her nursing degree, put it: "They don't seem to be asking questions they should be asking [like] what's going on in your workplace? What could be changed? Questions can be asked [about] any job. I would like to see them showing more interest in our day-to-day life." That's why our organizations and many allies are launching #Listen2Workers, a campaign designed to connect workers in California and across the nation with people in power, jumpstart these conversations, and make working people's needs and desires crystal clear. We will have politicians interviewing workers—beginning with California State Senators María Elena Durazo and Monique Limón, and Assemblymembers Matt Haney and Buffy Wicks—share videos and writings from union and non-union workers alike, organize town hall-like forums to further this critical dialogue, and make sure the public and workers see who is listening, who is fighting for them, and who isn't. Only through consistent, personal engagement will legislators regain trust at a moment when trust in government is steadily declining, and less than half of working class people still believe in the American Dream. That makes participating in this campaign both the right thing to do and a political opportunity as well. To learn what keeps workers up at night all one must do is ask them. Service workers, care workers, farmworkers, gig workers, and other blue-collar workers are worried about wages that don't keep pace with the cost of living, their benefits, and opportunities for advancement. Many fear retaliation when they speak up about workplace conditions. They want their children to go to college but tuition is out of control. Too many now must worry that they will be separated from their children. They see their families' dreams remaining forever out of reach no matter how hard they work as they watch the chasm between the haves and have nots grow deeper. "I hope my children can live in peace, move out on their own, and live their own dreams," said Curtis, a hospital security guard outside of Sacramento. "Right now, I'm afraid they can't. They can't afford it." There is nothing revolutionary about listening. Worker organizers are constantly doing it in order to assess and respond to rank-and-file needs. A decade-long organizing effort by fast food workers recently culminated in California with a raised wage, new worker protections, and a seat at the bargaining table for the first time. Similarly, a recent contract for child care providers included a first-of-its-kind retirement fund for family child care providers and historic rate reform. All of these campaigns began with listening and understanding workers' needs. Democrats have never had a problem with getting good crowds or talking about policy ideas. But they do have a problem with showing up regularly for working class people and listening—making it routine—and developing proposals based on the real stories we are hearing on the ground. And for all our talk of inclusivity, too often we speak in a language that people don't connect with—as if we are drafting a post for our LinkedIn followers, or speaking with nonprofit and philanthropic elites; too many buzz words and talking points, too much jargon and consultant-driven language. Instead, by maintaining an ongoing conversation with working class people, elected representatives can break out of inside baseball bubbles, regain trust, and build grassroots power. Just #Listen2Workers. Tia Orr is the executive director of SEIU California. Devon Gray is the president of End Poverty in California. The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
Vox
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Vox
The daunting task facing Democrats trying to win back the working class
is a senior politics reporter at Vox, where he covers the Democratic Party. He joined Vox in 2022 after reporting on national and international politics for the Atlantic's politics, global, and ideas teams, including the role of Latino voters in the 2020 election. Demonstrators hold signs while walking the picket line before Sen. Elizabeth Warren arrives at the United Auto Workers strike outside the General Motors Co. Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant in Detroit, Michigan, on September 22, 2019. Anthony Lanzilote/Bloomberg via Getty Images It's perhaps the most urgent reason Democrats lost in November: The party has solidly lost the support of working-class voters across the country and doesn't have a solid sense of how to win them back. Now, a group of Democratic researchers, strategists, and operatives are launching a renewed effort to figure out — and to communicate to the rest of their party — what it is that these voters want, where they think the party went wrong, and how to best respond to their concerns before the 2026 election cycle. Led by Mitch Landrieu, former Democratic lieutenant governor of Louisiana and former mayor of New Orleans, the Working Class Project plans to offer guidance over the next few months on how to build 'a more sustainable majority' in future elections. Their challenge is daunting. In November 2024, Trump not only rallied the white working-class base of voters that first got him elected in 2016. He also cut into Democrats' working-class support among voters of color: Nearly half of Latino voters and a historic share of Black voters backed Trump (anywhere from a tenth to nearly one in five). Exit polls from November also show that Trump won over new support from both lower-income and middle-income voters — those who make less than $100,000 per year, and particularly those who make less than $50,000 per year. Last year marked the first time in nearly 60 years that the lowest-earning Americans voted for the Republican presidential candidate over the Democratic one. Some of this can be explained away by pointing to the confluence of factors that made last year's election unique: the historic age and unpopularity of the incumbent president, the late-in-the-game candidate switch-up, high inflation, post-pandemic malaise, and Trump's specific appeal. But Landrieu and the Working Class Project want Democrats to resist these excuses — and to accept that their decline with these voters predates Trump. 'Since President Obama was first elected in 2008, Democrats have seen over 25% in net loss of support among working class voters,' Landrieu explains in the project's launch announcement. 'In other words, for two decades, Democrats have been on a downward slide among the very voters whose interests we champion and who benefit most from our policies.' What this effort looks like Housed within the liberal opposition research firm and Super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, the Working Class Project is primarily focused on research, polling, and focus group works. They're focused on reaching and listening to voters in 21 states: the traditional seven battleground states, seven safely Democratic states with large shares of white and nonwhite working-class voters (which drifted right last year), and seven solidly Republican states. Some of these focus groups have already been conducted — the group began this work in February after Trump's inauguration — and they plan on interviewing labor, faith, and local leaders as well. The group is also planning a longer-term study with an in-depth focus on a handful of dynamics unique to the 2024 election that most of the party still seems adrift on. That includes following and finding out the motivations of young white, Black, Latino, and AAPI men who Trump won over, and what their media consumption habits look like. They also say that they'll conduct longitudinal research on working-class people in these states to track their behavior over the course of Trump's second term to track their reactions to things like tariffs, taxes, and immigration. 'With this deep listening to working class voters across 21 states, we'll identify messages, messengers and new mediums to rebuild the Democratic brand and write a blueprint for victory that we'll deploy using every tool in our toolbox,' the group said. Their effort, of course, isn't the only one on the left trying to discern and solve the party's branding, messaging, and policy problems. But their framing is a bit different. Democrats face a numbers problem in 2028 and beyond The group's memo says they chose those 21 states because they are the fastest-growing and stand to gain the most from congressional reapportionment in 2030. They include seven 'growth' states where Democrats are no longer competitive at the statewide level: Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, and Texas. And it's those states where Democrats will need to seriously compete if they hope to win the presidency or hold the Senate after 2030. It's also in those states where Trump's 2024 gains — if they hold — would make it impossible for Democrats to be competitive without winning back more working-class voters. To be sure, Trump himself is already doing some of this work for his opposition. His approval ratings have swung sharply away from him in at least nine of those 21 states, according to polling estimates conducted by data journalists at The Economist. And his chaotic handling of tariffs, inflation, and the economy in general is likely contributing to this discontent among his 2024 coalition. But Democrats will have to do more to take advantage of this skepticism with Trump. The Brennan Center for Justice's reapportionment projections for 2030 suggest that with population losses in solidly Democratic and swing states, a future Democratic presidential candidate will face difficult odds for an Electoral College win after those votes are reallocated to match census estimates. After 2030, the Center estimates, 'even if a Democrat in 2032 were to carry the Blue Wall states and both Arizona and Nevada, the result would be only a narrow 276–262 win' making Democratic gains with men, working-class voters, and voters in the South and the Heartland an existential challenge.
