Tim Morris writes for the New Orleans Times-Picayune that Democrats seem to have abandoned their once loudly proclaimed support for the middle class.
Democrats are a good bet to retake the U.S. House of Representatives when midterm elections are decided in November, but it won’t mean they have fixed the problems and perceptions that cost them big with voters in the 2014 and 2016 cycles. They may even be getting worse.
Democrats were once known as the party of rural families, union members and the white working class. It is now associated with the coastal elites, nouveau socialists, the “resistance” and all manner of identity politics.
The point is that Democrats have turned their backs on the voters who once lifted them to consistent congressional majorities and occasionally into the White House. They may win in dozens of districts scattered across the country in the fall, it may even be a “blue wave” election. But they still haven’t come to terms with the fact that thousands of their former supporters believe that a wealthy, former reality TV star, casino mogul and New York real estate developer understands America’s working class better than Democrats.
Whatever the Russians did, it was Republican Donald Trump’s connection to the “heartland of America” workers and families that pushed him to an Electoral College victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.
