Working-class voters are flocking to the party that betrays them — here's why

Ever since the lights went out following the most disappointing and terrifying election in my lifetime, I have been looking for answers in all the dark places.

What could possibly lead so many people to vote for an overtly racist criminal and blubbering idiot, who poured Lysol on a raging pandemic, before spearheading an attempted coup, instead of the incredibly accomplished woman, who has actually spent the bulk of her professional life standing up for the rule of law and protecting our country instead of attacking it?

Maybe it’s just misogyny, and I can be done with my search for enlightenment. There are no doubt plenty of people in this damn country who still believe that in the Year 2025 a woman’s only place in the White House is the kitchen, but I sense there is something more sinister at play here.

Like many of you, I’m sure, I’ve had trouble following the news too closely since November 5th, 2024, because I get so goddam mad and depressed that after about five minutes or so I am on the verge of a heart attack and/or finding some innocent dog to kick. As a lifelong animal-lover, and journalist, my news consumption right now is just not healthy for any living thing in my proximity.

Why just this morning we are learning that special counsel Jack Smith believes he had more than enough evidence to convict the traitor, Trump, but simply ran out of time.

Via AP:

(Smith’s) report is unsparing in its details about schemes undertaken by Trump to undo the presidential contest, accusing him of an “unprecedented criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the election in order to retain power.”

Golly, imagine if the Justice Department he is part of had gone after Trump immediately following the attack instead of dragging its feet doing God knows what for nearly two years.

Because of our damn "justice" system’s refusal to react with alacrity to Trump's violent attack on January 6, 2021, our country suffered a blow from which it will never recover.

In fact, one man is above the law in America, and is now set to take a hammer to our democracy, and the guardrails that were supposed to protect us.

God help us, and to hell with you, Merrick Garland.

<Deep breath …>

See what I mean? The news is killing me right now …

Gory news aside, I have spent an inordinate amount of time poring over after-action writes, analysis, opinions, and what-if columns that offer strongly worded and high-minded educated guesses about what went so catastrophically wrong for Harris and the Democrats this election cycle.

I am developing a theory for these losses, which I’ll get to shortly, but up until now have been clicked on the intake mode, and willing to accept all plausible reasons for our demise.

My most recent deep dive into the search for answers was a piece in The Atlantic Monday written by Jonathan Chait headlined, “Maybe It Was Never About the Factory Jobs.” The subhead surmises: “The theory that populist economic policies can win back the working class for Democrats has been tried, and it has failed.”

It’s an exhaustive, well-researched write, but as is generally the case with these kinds of things I was left with more questions than answers, like this big one:

What the hell is it that Republicans have ever done for the working class that would turn these voters against Democrats?

I’m guessing the piece has a paywall, so if you don’t have the means, Chait spent a lot of time on the evils of “neoliberalism” and how Biden and the Democrats tried to run from it and toward the working class by getting things done on behalf of those American workers, who allegedly have abandoned the party.

Here is in small part how he put it:

A post-neoliberal party would curtail free trade, ratchet up enforcement of antitrust and other regulations, run a high-pressure economy with rising wages even at the risk of higher inflation, support labor unions categorically, and subsidize manufacturing employment to re-industrialize hollowed-out areas left behind by globalization—all of which Biden ended up doing.

“…all of which Biden ended up doing.” To little positive affect apparently, despite standing in sharp contrast to the Republican Party, whose approach to the working class provably looks like this, as I typed last June:

-Starting with Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party has made it a point of pride to loathe unionization and stand against unions every chance they get. Is there any entity anywhere that stands for workers’ rights more than unions?
-The Republicans have never seen a bill to raise minimum wage — or wages in general — that they didn't eagerly vote against.
-The Republicans hate regulations of any kind on big businesses, banks, credit card companies, etc., all of whom regularly screw the working class in more creative and dastardly ways than just about anything I can think of.
-The Republicans — particularly in Red States — regularly turn down federal monies aimed at job programs, and education programs that teach and improve skills. Only 13 House Republicans voted for the landmark, $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that is producing thousands and thousands of good-paying jobs in every single state. That has not stopped many Republicans who voted against it, for taking credit for it now. That’s another hallmark of these reprehensible people that doesn't get called out enough.
-The Republicans hate the thought that every American deserves the basic right to healthcare. How in God’s name is a working family without any medial insurance supposed to make it in this country if they are buried in obscene medical bills with no relief?
-The Republicans want everybody to reproduce, but would rather not give families a much-needed hand up in dealing with the skyrocketing costs of childcare. The American Rescue Plan’s Child Tax Credit that Democrats put in place cut childhood poverty in half in this country, and the Republicans torched it just as soon as they got power in 2023. How in the hell is that kind of venom directed at our children helping the working class?
-The Republicans passed exactly one piece of notable legislation during their demented, orange king’s four-year tenure: They lowered taxes on the richest Americans. And that benefits working-class Americans HOW?

The problem with pieces like the one Chait turned around is that it does a thoroughly polite job of battering Biden, and other Democratic leaders for their failures to connect with the working class, but fails to explain the reasons for the supposed gravitational pull of this key voting bloc to the Republican Party.

So three questions:

Where are the Republican achievements through the years that can come within the general vicinity of matching stalwart Democratic programs like social security, medicare, Obamacare, and the America Rescue Plan?
Why is it time and time again that Democratic administrations do better with the economy and provide more jobs than Republicans, but get so damn little credit for it?
Which party is openly aligning itself with fat-cat billionaires who step on the necks of working-class Americans, and are openly leveraging Republican Party leadership to hog the American pie for the themselves?

And if you want to argue that Democrats and all their regulations make things a little too tough on business owners, I can be sympathetic to a very limited point, BUT it sounds awfully funny coming from a party that wants to regulate what a woman can do with her own body, what kinds of books we can read, and is coming up with devious ways seemingly every hour to control how, where and when people vote.

So if nobody has been able to explain to me (us?) why so many “working class” Americans vote against their self-interests or, worse, not at all, maybe it’s time to look at something we haven’t considered strongly and honestly enough, and just leave it there for now:

Too many people in America are just a bunch of complete, uninformed idiots who could care less about their country.

Admit it: You have thought the same thing under the cover of your own roof.

Right?

Now I’ll really depress you, because I am going to introduce you to a guy who feels the same way: The guy who violently attacked America in 2021, and never had a glove laid on him by our “Justice” Department — the guy who was gallingly elected two months ago.

Yep, THAT guy.

There has never been a single person running for anything in America, who has had a lower opinion of the voters in this country than that orange psychopath.

Examples of Trump spitting on voters and this country is exhaustive. He positively delights in it. It’s the only time he seems happy. He’s belittled the military, the disabled, women, and the press. He’s even told Republican voters he thinks so little of them that he could shoot one of them on some corner and wouldn’t lose their vote.

He’s called America a shit hole, and a garbage can.

He does love the “undereducated” and dictators, though, so there’s that.

While Democrats go high, paint a soaring picture of America, and have detailed plans for improving our lives, Trump just treats the place like one his golden toilets that he can dump on, offers “concepts” of plans, and abuses his golf clubs while escaping work.

On Monday he will be back harrumphing around our White House telling us how bad everything is, while billing Americans for the trouble.

I might be wrong that a decided increase in idiotic people is the reason for America’s descent toward fascism, but I am confident as hell that many working-class Republican voters and the millions of Democrats who stayed home on November 5th, are about to get the government they deserve.

NOW READ: Why it's time to call out Never-Trumper Charlie Sykes

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow on Bluesky here.