I recently attended a webinar sponsored by the Working Families Party, entitled Winning Back the Working Class. Everyone attending seemed to share the view that the working class has drifted away from the Democratic Party and that Democrats must change their messaging in order to win these voters back and prevail against MAGA Republicans.

The presenters provided sophisticated polling analyses, looking closely at the issues that matter most to working-class voters and what turns them off about the Democratic Party. The bottom line was that the Democrats needed to put forward a strong, progressive economic-populist agenda.

While I share the desire to derail MAGA in the coming elections, I find the “winning back” framework problematic. For starters, why do Democrats need to be convinced that a progressive economic platform should be adopted? A party that was truly in tune with the working class should arrive there on its own. And clearly it has not. Why?

In this case, the obvious answer may be the right one: the Democratic Party establishment does not believe in progressive populism. It is not comfortable, for example, with forcefully attacking job insecurity by guaranteeing a job at a living wage for everyone who wants to work and cannot find employment in the private sector. It does not want to provide universal health insurance or dramatically facilitate union organizing in order to empower working people.

Ideologically, Democratic leaders are more comfortable with a liberal version of trickle-down economics—one that lets corporations play the central role in the economy. It expects rising prosperity to flow from government policies that enhance private investment and profits. Getting rich is shared value and woven into the party’s culture as thousands of consultants, pollsters, and operatives compete for a share of the billions of dollars spent during each election cycle.

At best, the populist economic messaging is just a tactic for gaining votes. Working-class voters know it and look elsewhere.

Given that the Democratic Party is not fundamentally a working-class party, how will the adoption of more populist messaging change its character? It won’t—and, again, working-class voters know it.

In fairness to these progressive analysts, they understand that much more is needed. They want Democrats to recruit and run more working-class candidates, which would demonstrate a deeper commitment to working-class concerns. Over time, more working-class candidates could help transform the party into something closer to a working-class party and help solve the “winning back” problem. But everyone knows it won’t happen anytime soon.

The Working Families Party has been recruiting and supporting progressive candidates in Democratic Party primaries for many years. The party sees its mission, as best I can tell, as transforming the Democratic Party by advancing a working-class agenda within the Democratic Party and in state legislatures. It has been effective in states such as New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, helping secure increases in the minimum wage, paid family leave legislation, and higher taxes on millionaires.

But something important is missing from its reliance on polling-and-messaging. If the Working Families Party were a working-class party, then its working-class base—not pollsters—would be developing its platform through some kind of bottom-up, face-to-face process. One can imagine dozens of grassroots meetings during which working people discuss and debate the issues they want their party to fight for. Polling can certainly play a role in testing issues with a wider electorate and bringing new concerns to the base........

© Common Dreams