How the multiracial working class won it for Trump

Donald Trump’s election victory has shattered the old Democratic coalition. Democrats have long believed they could coast to victory, election after election, with the backing of a ‘coalition of the ascendant’ – comprised of professional elites, young people, ethnic-minority voters and blue-collar workers. Since Trump’s first win in 2016, the white working class has been written off by the left as ‘deplorable’, racist and no longer worth engaging with. Now, with the 2024 election, more and more ethnic-minority voters have broken decisively for Trump. Ruy Teixeira – Democratic strategist and co-author of Where Have All the Democrats Gone? – has long been warning that such a reckoning was coming. spiked caught up with him to find out how Democrats lost the multiracial working class.

spiked: Was class the decisive factor in this election?

Ruy Teixeira: I would say so. If you look at the pattern of voting in this election, it’s clear that the big shift towards Donald Trump was among working-class voters. He tripled his margin among all working-class voters from four to 12 points. He moved his white working-class vote up from a 25-point margin to a 29-point one. And he did so much better among the non-white working class, particularly the Hispanic working class.

In this election, it looks like Kamala Harris carried non-white working-class voters by 33 points, which is 15 points less than Joe Biden did in 2020. That’s a big difference. If you look at Barack Obama’s election in 2012, he carried non-white working-class voters by 67 points.

What you have now is the multiracial working class becoming increasingly sympathetic to the Republicans and to Trump, and deserting the Democrats. That totally undermines the Democratic coalition. The Democrats aren’t able to make that up with college-educated voters in the suburbs. The math doesn’t work.

spiked: What has motivated non-white voters in particular to break away from the Democrats?

Teixeira: They don’t trust the Democrats economically any more. Clearly, the way the Biden administration unfolded just underscored that for them. They can’t be sure that the Democrats know how to handle the economy in a way that benefits them. They were definitely hurt by the extended lockdown more than the Democrats’ educated base was.

Culturally, non-white working Americans feel the Democrats are out of touch with them. They’re not interested in waves of illegal immigration. They’re not interested in lax law enforcement. They’re not interested in this crazy quilt of race and gender ideology that has become so prominent in the Democratic Party. That’s not the way they think about the world. They certainly don’t want to be called ‘Latinx’. Any one of these things, in and of itself, is not a deal-breaker. But together, they become a deal-breaker.

Non-white voters get the impression that the Democrats are not their party any more. They’re the party of those other people who probably look down on people like them – people who are just trying to get ahead in the world and provide for their families. They don’t want anyone telling them what to do or how to think or the right language to use. These are the quintessential normie voters. They’re not interested in all the baloney that Democrats seem to be associated with.

spiked: Are the Democrats capable of changing course now?

Teixeira: I think this is a bit of a wake-up call for them. There’s enormous debate within the party right now, of course, about where to assign the blame and how much the Democrats really need to change. You see people asking whether Harris lost because she was a woman or because she was black or because nobody likes incumbents any more. There’s a lot of excuses that can be put forward that make the loss seem not as bad as it is. But among certain sectors of the party, there is a recognition that we are out of touch. We are losing working-class voters. They’re not buying what we’re selling, therefore we have to sell something else.

That conflict will take quite a while to realise. The thing that may help it – and I’m not holding my breath – is the fact that Trump is Trump. The Republicans do not have a really clear and effective policy of how they’re actually going to govern. Their coalition is not united. Given the nature of American politics, it’s quite possible for the Democrats to make a comeback, if they do some course correction and take advantage of the mistakes that Trump and the Republicans will make.

To interpret this election – as great as it was for Trump and the Republicans – as a realignment is probably a mistake. It could easily go back the other way within two or four years. I don’t think the Democrats are dead yet, but whether they’re going to reorganise themselves and change their image and approach in a way that will allow them to finally vanquish Trumpian populism is still very open. Because that would take profound change, and they don’t seem to realise the extent of the problem they have to face. In all likelihood, they’ll sort of muddle through and just try to take advantage of Trump’s mistakes. But will they actually face the facts? Will they take a long, hard look in the mirror and realise they’re not the party of the working class any more? I’m a little sceptical that it’ll go that deep.

spiked: You’re a Democrat. But do you still think there’s a positive takeaway from this election, in that the working classes are finally making their voices heard?

Teixeira: Absolutely. This is true across the Western world. We’re seeing more and more rejection of the liberal-ish, educated elites who seem to dominate politics in so many ways, especially among the left-wing parties. This is really a huge deal. People are making their voices heard and rejecting whatever governance model and cultural ethos that is being pushed on them.

This really should result in corrective action and a change of approach. You can’t just write these people off as racists or xenophobes. This would not be a productive way to look at it. There’s a message here, and the message is that the political, economic and cultural model that’s being pushed in the US and in some other countries is not to the liking of working-class people.

If you want to get them on your side economically and politically, you have to do things differently. You have to be able to actually produce for them in a way that lifts them up, not just focus on the educated metropolitan areas. You have to have a different approach to culture, where you’re not insisting that everybody has to adopt the mindset and the language of the people who live in London or New York or Seattle or San Francisco. This does not compute and it will not work. You’ll have to have a much more pluralistic approach and get back to standard-issue values about patriotism, fairness, opportunity – things that everybody agrees on. That’s the road forward for the left, if there is a road forward.

Ruy Teixeira was talking to Lauren Smith.