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    Why Is the Democratic Base Eroding?

    More from our inbox:Income Inequality and Test ScoresHelping Kids Thrive With Full WIC Funding Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Democrats Are Their Own Worst Enemies,” by Pamela Paul (column, Nov. 3), about why polls are showing a loss of support for the party among minorities and the working class:Ms. Paul writes that “the Democratic Party cannot win and America cannot flourish if it doesn’t prioritize the economic well-being of the American majority over the financial interests and cultural fixations of an elite minority.”That, she says, is the reason that “the Democratic Party’s reliable base — the working class, middle-class families, even Black and Latino Americans and other ethnic minorities — have veered toward the G.O.P.”Is she talking about the same G.O.P. that, under the former president, passed legislation that gave enormous tax breaks to the wealthiest in the country? Is she referring to G.O.P. legislators who now want to reduce funding for the I.R.S., an agency that serves as a watchdog against unfair tax manipulation that leaves the middle class with a proportionately greater tax burden than the richest?If so, it is hard to imagine that the G.O.P., as opposed to the Democratic Party, is prioritizing the economic well-being of the American majority.Sheila Terman CohenMadison, Wis.To the Editor:OMG! I had no idea how crazy the Democrats really are! As Pamela Paul reminds us, they are out of touch with the “broadly shared beliefs within the electorate.”Democrats support legal immigration and care for refugees. They think Social Security is a good idea. They think everyone is entitled to equal protection under the law regardless of race, gender or ethnicity. They think that people who want to impose their religion on this country are just wrong. They think that people are entitled to autonomy over their own bodies and health care. They recognize the rule of law.And the worst part is they are right up front about it. Thank you, Pamela, for helping me feel better about how I plan to vote.Richard W. PoetonLenox, Mass.To the Editor:Pamela Paul is correct that there is room for robust debate about what policies the Democrats should adopt to better help most Americans, but she misses the bigger problem. The Republican Party is full of one-issue voters who will vote to promote racist policies, misogyny or guns regardless of whether most Republican policies are good for America or not.Many Democratic voters have been quick to say they won’t vote for a Democratic candidate since that candidate promises to do only seven of the 10 things they want. Especially with the Electoral College and gerrymandering favoring minority rule, everyone who recognizes the danger that the current Republican Party poses to our freedoms must vote for the Democratic candidate, even if they want some different policies.Until the current Republican Party is out of power, any debate within the Democratic Party must take a back seat to saving our country from election deniers.Richard DineSilver Spring, Md.Income Inequality and Test ScoresNew SAT Data Highlights the Deep Inequality at the Heart of American EducationThe differences in how rich and poor children are educated start very early.To the Editor:Re “‘18 Years Too Late’ to Solve SAT Gap” (The Upshot, Oct. 30):It is unsurprising that SAT scores correlate strongly to family income. A huge portion of top scorers come from the richest families. Only 0.6 percent of all students from the bottom 20 percent of family income score above 1300 out of 1600.This data dispels the myth that the SAT boosts access to higher education by identifying “diamonds in the rough” from historically underrepresented populations. They are far outnumbered by students from wealthy families taking full socioeconomic advantage to achieve higher scores. The “rough” — in the form of under-resourced public education and family poverty — completely obscures the diamonds.Furthermore, the SAT is a very weak predictor of undergraduate performance. Grades work better. The test is a strong measure of accumulated opportunity rather than college readiness. Relying on SAT results to prejudge future educational performance locks in inequity.That is one reason that nearly 90 percent of U.S. four-year colleges and universities now have SAT/ACT-optional or test-blind policies.Of course, such policies alone will not solve the college access problem. Admissions offices need to scrutinize other determinative factors. A fair process should not provide the greatest opportunities to teenagers who have already had the most advantages in life.Harry FederBrooklynThe writer is the executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest).To the Editor:Again and again, research has shown that poverty and income inequality are the most powerful influence on school performance. How could it be otherwise in a country without a real safety net, with parents working two gig jobs and juggling which bills to pay, with no secure access to health care, rampant evictions and parking lots for employed people who have to live in their cars? Yet the public refuses to believe this, and at best seeks to bolster schools in the hopes that they will make up for fundamental deprivation.It is deeply distressing to see how many reader comments declare that wealth reflects genetic superiority and other “virtues.” In an era of barely taxed billionaires building self-perpetuating stock market fortunes on the labor of warehouse workers and A.I., that view is not only undemocratic and ahistorical. It’s also dangerously complacent.Nina BernsteinNew YorkThe writer is a former New York Times reporter.Helping Kids Thrive With Full WIC FundingTo the Editor:Re “Infant Mortality Up for 1st Time in Two Decades” (front page, Nov. 2):The increase in America’s infant mortality rate is a deeply alarming sign that policymakers do not adequately prioritize children’s health and well-being.Sadly, it is not the only sign.The child poverty rate more than doubled last year. Nearly 9 percent of households with children were food insecure in 2022, up from 6.2 percent the year before. Children’s reading and math scores have plummeted since the pandemic.No single program can fix all of this. But the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which serves about half of all infants born in the United States, should be considered our first line of defense.A 2019 study found that WIC participation is directly attributable to a 16 percent reduction in the risk of infant mortality. WIC participation also lowers the risk of poverty, reduces food insecurity, improves nutritional intake and strengthens kids’ cognitive development.Yet new data from the Department of Agriculture finds a significant gap between WIC eligibility and coverage. For instance, only 25 percent of 4-year-olds eligible for WIC are actually enrolled.All children deserve to grow up healthy and thrive. Full funding for WIC is an essential step toward that goal.Georgia MachellWashingtonThe writer is interim president and C.E.O. of the National WIC Association. More

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    What Voters Want That Trump Seems to Have

    So about that poll. You know the one: the Times/Siena poll showing Donald Trump with an edge over President Biden in five out of six swing states, and suggesting a softening of support for Mr. Biden among Black, Latino and young voters.The results have been met in Democratic and other anti-MAGA circles with horror, disbelief and panic. How could they not be? Whatever disappointment voters have with Mr. Biden, the idea that any of his 2020 backers would give his predecessor another shot at destroying democracy feels like pure lunacy.It is best to take horse-race polling this far out from Election Day with a boatload of salt. There are too many moving pieces. Too much that could happen. Too much of the public is not paying attention.But some of the data points to the unusual dynamics at play with a defeated president challenging the guy that America dumped him for. It isn’t just that Mr. Biden has weakness among less engaged voters, or that some respondents weren’t embracing Mr. Trump so much as rejecting Mr. Biden. What struck me is that despite his own raging unpopularity, Mr. Trump is positioned to serve as the repository for protest votes, nostalgia votes and change votes, a weird but potentially potent mash-up of support that could make up for a multitude of weaknesses. He could wind up beating Mr. Biden almost by default.A re-election campaign is fundamentally a referendum on the incumbent. And for all his accomplishments, Mr. Biden is presiding over a rough time. Inflation is still taking its bite out of people’s paychecks. The nation is still in a twitchy, sour mood post-pandemic. People are worried about crime and homelessness and the surge of migrants at the southern border. They are still dealing with the toll Covid took on their kids. And the broader mental health crisis. And the opioid scourge. And the two wars in which America is playing a supporting role. Of course a big chunk of the electorate sees the country as headed in the wrong direction.When Americans are feeling pessimistic, the president gets blamed. The degree to which Mr. Biden’s policies have helped or hurt does not much matter, especially on the economy. He owns it. And here’s the thing: You can’t argue with voters’ feelings. Even if you win the debate on points, you’re not going to convince people that they or the nation is actually doing swell. Trying, in fact, often just makes you look like a condescending, out-of-touch jerk.In such gloomy times, many voters start itching for change, for someone to come in and shake things up. This commonly means giving the out party a chance. Think Barack Obama in 2008, after eight enervating years of George W. and Dick Cheney.This time, instead of a fresh face, the Republican Party looks poised to offer a familiar one. This has its downsides. Mr. Trump’s defects are excruciatingly well known — and ever more so as the multiple cases against him wend their way through the courts. But no one denies that he likes to shake things up. And just as Mr. Biden sold himself in 2020 as a break from the chaos of Trumpism, Mr. Trump can now position himself as the change candidate. To borrow a cliché from Mr. Biden, Americans won’t be comparing Mr. Trump to the Almighty but to the alternative. And for many voters, the alternative in 2024 is a Biden status quo they consider unpalatable.It does not help Mr. Biden that he comes across as doddering and frail. This opens him up to one of Republicans’ favorite charges against Democrats: weakness. And political smears resonate more when they fit within an existing framework.At an even more basic level, Mr. Trump doesn’t have to promise positive change so much as the chance to stiff-arm the current leadership. Plenty of protest voters may not be looking to punish Mr. Biden for a particular action, or inaction, so much as for their inchoate disenchantment with the way things are. The economy should be better. Life should be better. The people in charge should be doing better.Some protest voters will turn out to support anyone running against the object of their distaste. This is what plenty of people did with Mr. Trump in 2016 to express their lack of love for Hillary Clinton. Others, especially inconstant voters, may simply decide to sit out the race. If this happens disproportionately among groups who went for Mr. Biden in 2020, such as young and nonwhite voters, it works to Mr. Trump’s benefit. This is the low-turnout specter keeping Democrats up at night.Then there is the nostalgia factor. Political nostalgia is a real and powerful thing. People are wired to romanticize the way things used to be and, by extension, the leaders at the time. Usually, voters dissatisfied with a president do not have the opening for such a direct do over. Rarely does a president who loses re-election attempt a comeback, and only one, Grover Cleveland, has ever done so successfully. But this election, rather than exchanging the incumbent for an unknown quantity, voters can choose to go back to a devil they know, who hails from a pre-Covid age of golden elevators and cheap mortgages.Now factor in thermostatic voting, the fancy name for a kind of generic buyers’ remorse you see as voters frequently veer toward the opposite party from the one they backed in the previous election. Virginia, for instance, picks its governor the year after a presidential election, and its voters typically go with the candidate whose party did not win the White House. You also see this nationally in midterm elections, in which voters often punish the president’s team.Mr. Trump has the added advantage of the economy having been humming before the pandemic upended his last year in office. Inflation was practically nonexistent. Unemployment was low. The nation wasn’t neck deep in scary, sticky wars. Sure, he was a supertoxic aspiring autocrat who tried to subvert democracy by overturning a free and fair election and who is now facing dozens of criminal charges, not to mention a civil suit for fraud. But if, come fall of 2024, he asks voters that most basic of political questions, “Weren’t you better off when I was president?” an awful lot may answer, “Hell, yeah.”Twelve months is several eternities in politics. And none of this is to downplay Mr. Trump’s glaring flaws — or his manifest unfitness for office. But there are some political fundamentals working in his favor that go beyond his specific pros and cons. Anyone who isn’t at least a little afraid isn’t paying attention.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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    Why Less Engaged Voters Are Biden’s Biggest Problem

    His weakness is concentrated among those who stayed home in the midterms but who may show up in 2024.Higher turnout is not necessarily positive for Democrats. Adria Malcolm for The New York TimesIf you’re looking to reconcile the surprisingly strong Democratic showing in the midterm elections with President Biden’s weakness in the polls today, consider the political attitudes of two groups of respondents from New York Times/Siena College polls over the last year.First, let’s consider the 2,775 respondents from Group A:It’s relatively old: 31 percent are 65 or older; 9 percent are under 30.It’s split politically: 33 percent identify as Republicans compared with 31 percent who consider themselves Democrats. About 72 percent are white. Black and Hispanic respondents are at 9 percent each.It’s relatively well educated: 41 percent have a college degree. Next, let’s look at the 1,534 respondents from Group B:It’s relatively young: 26 percent are 18 to 29; 17 percent are 65 or older.It’s relatively Democratic: 26 percent identify as Democrats, compared with 19 percent who identify as Republicans. Only 54 percent are white; 13 percent are Black and 19 percent are Hispanic.Just 28 percent have a college degree.Mr. Biden probably won Group B by a comfortable margin in the 2020 presidential election, whether based on fancy statistical models or based on what those respondents told us themselves.But it’s actually Group B that backs Donald J. Trump in Times/Siena polling over the last year. Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden, 41-39, among Group B respondents, while Group A backs Mr. Biden, 47-43.OK, now the reveal:“Group A” is people who voted in the 2022 midterm elections.“Group B” is people who did not vote in the 2022 midterms.Is this a surprising finding? Yes. But it also makes sense of a lot of what’s going on in the polling today.Mr. Biden may be weak among young, Black and Hispanic voters today, but that weakness is almost entirely concentrated among the voters who stayed home last November. As a consequence, Democrats paid little to no price for it in the midterms, even as polls of all registered voters or adults show Mr. Biden struggling mightily among these same groups against Mr. Trump.These less engaged voters might just be the single biggest problem facing Mr. Biden in his pursuit of re-election, the Times/Siena data suggests. If there’s any good news for Mr. Biden, it’s that his challenge is concentrated among voters who still consider themselves Democrats — a group that, in theory, ought to be open to returning to the president’s side.Whom Voters Say They’ll Support in 2024 More

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    Biden Faces Backlash From Party’s Left Wing on Israel

    As a raw divide over the war ripples through liberal America, a coalition of young voters and people of color is breaking with the president, raising new questions about his strength entering 2024.The Democratic Party’s yearslong unity behind President Biden is beginning to erode over his steadfast support of Israel in its escalating war with the Palestinians, with a left-leaning coalition of young voters and people of color showing more discontent toward him than at any point since he was elected.From Capitol Hill to Hollywood, in labor unions and liberal activist groups, and on college campuses and in high school cafeterias, a raw emotional divide over the conflict is convulsing liberal America.While moderate Democrats and critics on the right have applauded Mr. Biden’s backing of Israel, he faces new resistance from an energized faction of his party that views the Palestinian cause as an extension of the racial and social justice movements that dominated American politics in the summer of 2020.In protests, open letters, staff revolts and walkouts, liberal Democrats are demanding that Mr. Biden break with decades-long American policy and call for a cease-fire.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please More

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    How to Interpret Polling Showing Biden’s Loss of Nonwhite Support

    Yes, there’s reason for skepticism, but also reason for concern for Democrats, particularly over turnout.Is President Biden really struggling as badly among nonwhite voters — especially Black voters — as the polls say?I’ve seen plenty of skepticism. Among nonwhite voters, a Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t fared as badly as those polls suggest in a presidential election result since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. In the case of Black voters, the disparity between the usual support for Democrats — around 90 percent or more — and the recent polling showing it in the 70s or even the 60s just seems too much to accept. Some skeptics believe they’ve seen results like this before, only for Republican strength to vanish on Election Day.But if we compare the polls with those from previous election cycles, Mr. Biden’s early weakness looks serious. His support among Black, Hispanic and other nonwhite voters is well beneath previous lows for Democrats in pre-election polls over the last several decades — including the polls from the last presidential election. Yet at the same time, his weakness is put in better perspective when judged against prior polls, rather than the final election results.Here’s how you should interpret what the polling really means for Mr. Biden’s eventual support among nonwhite and especially Black voters.Election results are the wrong benchmarkA major source of skepticism of Mr. Biden’s weakness among nonwhite voters is the sheer magnitude of the drop-off, based on the difference between the early poll results among registered voters and the estimated final results in post-election studies, like the exit polls.It’s an understandable comparison, but it’s a bad one. Millions of people are undecided in polling today, while all voters have made up their minds in these post-election studies. The registered voter polling also includes millions of people who won’t ultimately vote; the post-election studies typically include only actual voters.These two factors — undecided voters and low-turnout voters — help explain many seemingly weird differences between pre-election polls and the post-election studies.For illustration, consider the following from our New York Times/Siena College polling:Mr. Biden leads, 72 percent to 11 percent, among Black registered voters over the last year.Mr. Biden’s lead among Black voters jumps to 79-11 if undecided voters are assigned based on how they say they voted in 2020.He leads by 76-10 among Black voters with a record of participating in the 2020 general election.His lead among 2020 voters jumps to 84-10 if we allocate undecided voters based on their self-reported 2020 vote preference.For comparison, this same group of Black voters who turned out in 2020 reported backing Mr. Biden over Donald J. Trump, 89-7, in the last election.The upshot: The gap between post-election studies and registered voter polls narrows considerably after accounting for the inherent differences between the two measures — undecided voters and turnout.This lesson isn’t limited to Black voters. To take a different example, Mr. Biden leads by just 46-34 among young registered voters in our polling over the last year, but he leads by 57-35 among young validated 2020 voters if we assign undecided voters based on their 2020 vote preference. His lead among Hispanic voters grows from 47-35 to 56-36 with the same approach. Among Asian American, Native American, multiracial and other nonwhite voters who aren’t Black and Hispanic, it goes up to 50-39, from 40-39.Of course, we can’t assume that Black, Hispanic, young or any voters will turn out as they did in 2020. We can’t assume that undecided voters will return to their 2020 preferences, either. The point is that the differences between pre-election registered voter polls and the final post-election studies explain many of the differences between survey results by subgroup and your expectations. If you must compare the crosstabs from registered voter polls with the final election studies, here’s a tip: Focus on major party vote share. In the case of Black voters, Mr. Biden has a 71-12 lead, so that means he has 86 percent of the major party vote in our Times/Siena polling, 71/(71+12) = 86. That roughly five- or six-point shift in major party vote share is a lot likelier to reflect reality than comparing his 59-point margin among decided voters (71-12 = 59) with his 80-point margin from 2020.Why major party vote share? The logic is simple. Imagine that today 17 percent of eventual Biden voters are undecided and 17 percent of eventual Trump voters are undecided. What would that mean for a poll of voters who will eventually vote 86 to 14? They would be 71 to 12 in the polls today.Mr. Biden’s polling weakness is unusualThere’s another aspect of the skeptics case that I’m less sympathetic toward: the idea that we always see this kind of weakness among nonwhite voters, and it just never materializes.If you look back at polling from prior cycles, it becomes clear that Mr. Biden today really is quite a bit weaker than previous Democrats in registered voter polling from prior cycles. More

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    Consistent Signs of Erosion in Black and Hispanic Support for Biden

    It’s a weakness that could manifest itself as low Democratic turnout even if Trump and Republicans don’t gain among those groups.President Biden is underperforming among nonwhite voters in New York Times/Siena College national polls over the last year, helping to keep the race close in a hypothetical rematch against Donald J. Trump.On average, Mr. Biden leads Mr. Trump by just 53 percent to 28 percent among registered nonwhite voters in a compilation of Times/Siena polls from 2022 and 2023, which includes over 1,500 nonwhite respondents.The results represent a marked deterioration in Mr. Biden’s support compared with 2020, when he won more than 70 percent of nonwhite voters. If he’s unable to revitalize this support by next November, it will continue a decade-long trend of declining Democratic strength among voters considered to be the foundation of the party.Democratic share of major party vote among nonwhite voters More

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    It’s Not Your Father’s Democratic Party. But Whose Party Is It?

    Has the left’s half-century struggle to return the Democratic Party to its working-class roots become an exercise in futility? This is perhaps the most vexing question facing the party of liberal America.It is not an easy one to answer. In recent years, the Democratic electorate has moved in two directions.First: The percentage of Democrats with a college degree has almost doubled, growing to 41 percent in 2019 from 22 percent in 1996.Second: While the percentage of Democrats who are non-Hispanic and white has fallen to 59 percent from 76 percent over the same period, according to Pew Research, nonwhite Democrats — Black, Hispanic, Asian American or members of other minority groups — have grown to 41 percent from 24 percent.In terms of the entire U.S. population (as of July 2022), those described by the census as “white alone, not Hispanic or Latino” made up 58.9 percent of the United States — down from 69.1 percent in 2000 — while the percentage of Black, Hispanic, Asian American and other minorities increased to 41.1 percent from 30.9 percent over the same period.Have American politics reached a tipping point?Eitan Hersh and Sarang Shah, political scientists at Tufts and Berkeley, contended in their Aug. 1 paper, “The Partisan Realignment of American Business,” that both the Democratic and the Republican Parties have undergone radical reorientations:The ongoing development of the Democratic Party as a party not of labor but of socioeconomic elites, and the ongoing development of the Republican Party as a party not of business but of working-class social conservatives, represents a major, perhaps the major, American political development of the 21st century.In an email, Hersh elaborated on their analysis: “This is one of the most important developments in recent American political history because we seem to be in the midst of a realignment, and that doesn’t happen every day or even every decade.”One reflection of this trend, according to Hersh, is the growing common ground that cultural liberals and corporate America are finding on social issues:A company taking a position on L.G.B.T.Q. rights may at first seem like it’s a company not staying in its lane and getting into political questions unrelated to its core business. But if the company needs to take a position in order to satisfy its work force or because potential new hires demand political activism, then the decision is no longer just social; it’s economic.Another example: For a while it looked like the Republican Party could appeal to social conservatives but maintain the economic policy supported by business elites. But now, you start to see real attempts by Republican thought leaders to be more assertive in meeting the economic needs of their constituencies.As a result of this realignment, Hersh argued, a crucial battleground in elections held in the near future will be an intensifying competition for the support of minority voters:Democrats can win with college-educated whites plus nonwhite voters. They can’t win with more defection from nonwhite voters. The Republicans are making the argument that their cultural and economic values are consistent with working-class Americans and that their positions transcend racial categories.If the Republican Party “could move beyond Trump and focus on this vision (which, of course, is impossible with Trump there making everything about Trump), they’d be presenting a set of arguments and policies that will be very compelling to a large number of Americans,” Hersh wrote.Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has long argued that Democrats need to regain support from white voters without college degrees and to stop defections among working-class Black and Hispanic voters, argued that the socioeconomic elite — well-educated, largely white liberals — are imposing damaging policies on the Democratic Party.In a recent essay, “Brahmin Left vs. Populist Right,” Teixeira wrote:The fact is that the cultural left in and around the Democratic Party has managed to associate the party with a series of views on crime, immigration, policing, free speech and, of course, race and gender that are quite far from those of the median working-class voter (including the median nonwhite working-class voter).Instead, Teixeira contended:Democrats continue to be weighed down by those whose tendency is to oppose firm action to control crime or the southern border as concessions to racism, interpret concerns about ideological school curriculums and lowering educational standards as manifestations of white supremacy and generally emphasize the identity politics angle of virtually every issue. With this baggage, rebranding the party — making it more working-class oriented and less Brahmin — is very difficult, since decisive action that might lead to such a rebranding is immediately undercut by a torrent of criticism.I asked Teixeira whether the changing Democratic Party has reached a point of no return on this front, and he emailed back:A good and big question. In the short run it looks very difficult for them to shed much of their cultural radicalism and generally make the party more attractive to normal working-class voters. Over the medium to long term, though, I certainly think it’s possible, if there’s an internal movement and external pressures/market signals consistent with the need for a broader coalition. That is, if enough of the party becomes convinced their coalition is too narrow and therefore some compromises and different approaches are necessary. That may take some time.Michael Podhorzer, a former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., agreed that “There is no way to define ‘socioeconomic elites’ in which it isn’t obvious that both parties are dominated by socioeconomic elites.” He added that “since the 1970s, both left and right parties now represent different factions within the socioeconomic elites.”In the process, Podhorzer argued, “Labor and working people have been demoted from a seat at the table to a constituency to be appealed to.”The idea that the Democratic Party is a pro-business party, Podhorzer wrote, “is hardly a bulletin. It’s been pro-business since Carter. Deregulation (including Glass-Steagall, holding companies, communications, etc.) as well as trade agreements (NAFTA, China W.T.O., proposed T.P.P., etc.) are all Democratic Party ‘accomplishments.’”Podhorzer, however, took sharp issue with Hersh, Shah and Teixeira. “I find Teixeira’s constant harping on Democratic elites, as well as Hersh’s and others’ use of the term to be playing with fire at this moment,” he told me.The focus on cultural elitism, in Podhorzer’s view, masksbillionaires’ collective influence over the political process or the ways in which their success is responsible for immiseration and what we call inequality. This enables fascist politicians to shift the blame to intellectual and cultural elites, like liberals or people with college degrees, redirecting the inevitable resentments of the losers in the winner-take-all economy.For that reason, Podhorzer continued,centrist commentators and Democratic strategists who have aggressively and continuously diagnosed the party’s capture by a woke elite unwittingly — and without justification — affirm the fascist worldview in which cultural, rather than economic or political, elites are the source of their disappointments.However these disputes are resolved, there is clear evidence of the demographic realignment of the Democratic Party.Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at Tufts, writing by email, demonstrated the evolution of the Democratic and Republican electorates by citing data from the Cooperative Election Study, which he oversees:We ask workers what industries they work in, and just between 2014 and 2020 we saw some notable shifts, depending on the category. In 2014, 42 percent of people working in construction identified as Republican, and 38 percent called themselves Democrats, a four-point advantage for Republicans. Just six years later, that group was 49 percent Republican and 29 percent Democratic, a 20-point gap. By contrast, Republicans had a nine-point edge among people who work in finance and insurance in 2014 (48 percent Republican, 39 percent Democratic), but by 2020, Democrats held a three-point edge (45 percent Democratic, 42 percent Republican).The Republican advantage among manufacturing workers has grown to 13 points from seven points over those six years, according to Schaffner, and the four-point Democratic advantage among transportation and warehouse workers has turned into an eight-point Republican edge. Workers in professional, scientific and technical industries were evenly split in 2014, but by 2020, Democrats had gained a 15-point advantage. In the education industry, Democrats increased their advantage from a 14-point gap in 2014 to a 22-point advantage in 2020.Schaffner wrote that “these are pretty sizable shifts in partisanship, which fit the narrative that white-collar workers are shifting more Democratic at the same time that blue-collar industries are becoming more Republican.”There are, however, strong arguments that despite the ascendance of well-educated, relatively comfortable Democrats, the party has retained its commitment to the less well off, as evidenced by the policies enacted by the Biden administration.Most of those who challenged the Hersh-Shah thesis did not dispute the ascendance of the well educated in Democratic ranks; instead they argued that the party has retained its ideological commitments to the bottom half of the income distribution and to organized labor.Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at Yale, expressed strong disagreement with the Hersh-Shah paper in an email responding to my inquiry.“There is no question that the class profile of Democratic voters has become U-shaped, with both poorer and higher-income voters siding most strongly with the party,” Hacker wrote, but he went on to say:Even as the Democratic Party has come to rely more heavily on affluent suburban voters, its platform, legislative agenda and national elected representatives’ communications via Twitter have all remained highly focused on economic issues. In fact, the national platform and Democratic agenda have become substantially bolder — that is, bigger in scope, broader in policy instruments (e.g., industrial policy), and generally more redistributive overall.Hacker specifically challenged Hersh and Shah’s claim that corporate America is shifting to the Democratic Party, citing evidence of the Republican tilt of contributions by Fortune 1,500 C.E.O.s, by the Forbes Wealthiest 100 and in the distribution pattern of dark money.Steve Rosenthal, a former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. who is now a political consultant, agreed with Hacker on the pro-labor commitment of the Biden administration, despite the severe weakening of the labor movement in recent decades. Biden, he wrote by email, “has been the most pro-union, pro-worker president we have had in my lifetime.”Rosenthal acknowledged, however, that the union movement has suffered terrible setbacks in recent years, especially in Midwest battleground states:For decades, we’ve been saying both parties are too accommodating to corporate America. Perhaps the biggest change is not in how the parties operate or what they stand for but the decline in the labor movement. In the mid-90s, between 30 and 40 percent of the electorate in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio came from union households, and they were voting 60 percent-plus Democratic. I used to say even back then that the only white working-class voters who were voting Democratic were in unions.Since then, Rosenthal wrote, “their vote share has decreased precipitously, to a low of now something like 14 percent in Wisconsin to the mid-20 percent in the other states.”Julie Wronski, a political scientist at the University of Mississippi, contended that the Hersh-Shah paper creates a false dichotomy:The partisan business and labor interests are an either-or scenario. The Democratic Party can be the party of labor and the party of socioeconomic elites. The Republican Party can be the party of business and working-class social conservatives.Democrats can support labor interests, Wronski wrote by email,through initiatives to raise the minimum wage and bolster unions and can support the more progressive social issues of socioeconomic elites that relate to D.E.I. initiatives. Republicans can provide tax breaks and the like to businesses while still firmly espousing socially conservative positions on issues related to racial, religious and gender identity. Republicans can be the party of supporting red state businesses, while Democrats can be the party of supporting blue state businesses.Business, Wronski argued, is not so much realigning with the Democratic Party as it is polarizing into different camps based on “cleavages in how businesses interact with the political realm based upon social issues,” with “partisan polarization of businesses based on social issues and the group identities of the company’s stakeholders, employees and clients.”Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State, agreed by email thatthere is definitely a significant change in the party coalitions, though it has occurred slowly rather than in one critical election. The main demographic change is in education among white Americans: College-educated whites are moving toward Democrats, while non-college-educated whites are moving toward Republicans.This has not reversed the traditional class divide of the parties, Grossmann argued, “because high-income, low-education voters are the most Republican and low-income, high-education voters are the most Democratic,” while “nonwhite voters also remain much more Democratic.”Despite these shifts, Grossmann wrote that he does not “see evidence that the Democratic Party has abandoned redistributive politics or changed its positions on business regulation. Instead, they are increasingly emphasizing social issues and combining social concerns with their traditional economic concerns.”David Hopkins, a political scientist at Boston College, is writing a book with Grossmann. Hopkins argued in an email that “we are in the midst of a realignment, in the sense that the education gap between the two parties (separating degree-holding Democrats from degree-lacking Republicans) is now much larger than the income gap.”But, Hopkins stressed,party change on economic policy is the dog that hasn’t barked here. For all its conspicuously populist style, the Trump presidency’s biggest legislative achievement was a tax reform package that provided most of its benefits to wealthy and corporate taxpayers. And the Democrats show no signs of rethinking their traditional advocacy of an expanded welfare state funded by redistributing wealth downward from rich individuals and businesses — with Biden’s policy agenda ranging from greater education spending to a federal child tax credit to subsidized child care and prescription drug costs.Despite their new source of support among the well-educated affluent, Hopkins continued,Democrats still fundamentally see themselves as the defenders of the interests of the socially underprivileged. And despite their own contemporary popularity among the white working class, Republicans still define themselves as the champions of capitalism and entrepreneurship.Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth, cast doubt on Hersh and Shah’s claims in an emailed response to my inquiry: “There are clearly changes in the role of socioeconomic elites in the Democratic Party and the role of the working class in the Republican Party, but the evidence doesn’t show that either party has abandoned its traditional base.”On average, Westwood continued,the Republican Party still maintains a wealthier base than Democrats, and Democrats still capture more support from labor than Republicans. Similarly, Republicans continue to vote for business interests, and Democrats continue to back pro-labor regulation. It is hard to say we are at a turning point in party composition and focus while these things are still true.It is possible, Westwood wrote, that the Hersh-Shah paper “could be prophetic, but a complete picture of American politics suggests it is too early to assess if we have truly seen a major development in American politics.”In the meantime, as the Democratic Party continues to win college-educated white voters by larger and larger numbers, the development of most concern to those determined to maintain the party’s commitment to the less well off is the incremental but steady decline in Democratic support from nonwhite voters.Over the past three presidential elections, according to a detailed Catalist analysis of recent elections, Democratic margins among Black voters without college degrees have steadily fallen: Barack Obama 97 to 3 percent, or a 94-point advantage in 2012; Hillary Clinton 93 to 6 percent, or an 87-point advantage in 2016; and Biden 90 to 8 percent, or an 82-point edge in 2020. The same pattern was true for Hispanic voters without degrees: Obama 70 to 27 percent, or 43 points; Clinton 68 to 27 percent, or 41 points; and Biden 60 to 38 percent, or 22 points.The current Democratic Party may actually be the best coalition that the left can piece together at a time when American politics is notable for contradictory, crosscutting economic, racial and cultural issues. But can the party, with its many factions, outcompete the contemporary Republican Party, a party that has its own enormous liabilities — most notably Donald Trump himself?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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    How Affirmative Action Changed Their Lives

    Stella Tan, Sydney Harper, Asthaa Chaturvedi and Liz O. Baylen, Lisa Chow and Marion Lozano, Dan Powell and Alyssa Moxley and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicTwo weeks ago, the United States Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, declaring that the race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina were unlawful.Today, three people whose lives were changed by affirmative action discuss the complicated feelings they have about the policy.On today’s episodeSabrina Tavernise, a co-host of The Daily.Opponents of the ruling marching this month in Cambridge, Mass.Kayana Szymczak for The New York TimesBackground readingFor many of the Black, Hispanic and Native Americans whose lives were shaped by affirmative action, the moment has prompted a personal reckoning with its legacy.In earlier decisions, the court had endorsed taking account of race as one factor among many to promote educational diversity.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Sabrina Tavernise More