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Politico

Democrats lament they didn't listen to working class well enough

Mia McCarthy
3 min read

Five days after a disastrous election, Democrats on Sunday were still grappling with their increasing disconnection from working-class Americans.

The few Democrats who chose to hit the Sunday show circuit offered some answers, pointing to identity politics and an anti-Donald Trump message as ineffective, in addition to their dismissal of issues like the economy and border security.

“The reason we didn't win, ultimately, is we didn't listen enough to people on the ground,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “People like [Reps.] Chris Deluzio [D-Pa.], Pat Ryan [D-N.Y.], who were saying, ‘Talk about the economy, talk about people's economic struggles, convince people you have the better policies and better vision.’”

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There was a notable absence from prominent Democrats on the Sunday morning shows, which leaned on those with a history of intra-party criticism like Khanna, who joined Congress by ousting a longtime incumbent from his Silicon Valley seat.

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) — one of the few Democrats to run against President Joe Biden in the Democratic primaries — said Sunday that Democrats made a mistake focusing their whole argument on defeating Trump.

“If that becomes our primary focus, we're going to lose perpetually because that's exactly, I think, what we've done wrong,” Phillips said in an interview with “Fox News Sunday.” “We've used condemnation of Donald Trump versus invitation to Donald Trump supporters. I've never known any industry, political or professional, in which a strategy of condemnation works better than invitation.”

And around the same time as the Sunday shows, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) became one of the first Democratic senators to also offer his insight into what went wrong: “We don't listen enough; we tell people what's good for them,” Murphy said in a post on X. Like Phillips, he noted that the Democratic Party needs to be more inclusive of outside perspectives.

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“Real economic populism should be our tentpole,” Murphy wrote in the post. “But here's the thing - then you need to let people into the tent who aren't 100% on board with us on every social and cultural issue, or issues like guns or climate.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who isn’t a Democrat but often critiques the party from the outside, published an op-ed in the Boston Globe on Sunday, saying Democrats have to pick between the elites or the working class.

“In my view, the Democrats lost this election because they ignored the justified anger of working class America and became the defenders of a rigged economic and political system,” Sanders said in the op-ed.

Sanders doubled down on the claim on Sunday morning in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” noting that many in the working class no longer feel like Democrats are fighting for them.

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“Bottom line, if you're an average working person out there, do you really think that the Democratic Party is going to the mat, taking on powerful special interests and fighting for you?” Sanders said in the interview. “I think the overwhelming answer is no.”

Exit polls and voter surveys show Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris among voters with lower incomes and lower levels of educational attainment. Among voters who never attended college, Trump won, 59 percent to 40 percent, according to AP Votecast. College graduates voted for Harris, 56 percent to 42 percent.

Similarly, voters who earn $100,000 a year or more — who made up about a third of the electorate — chose Harris by an 8-point margin, while those who make less than that titled slightly toward Trump.

Murphy, while offering his insights into how Democrats need to listen to more people, also noted the dismissal of Sanders’ criticisms may be pointed at a deeper issue within the party’s current coalition.

“When progressives like Bernie aggressively go after the elites that hold people down, they are shunned as dangerous populists,” Murphy wrote on X. “Why? Maybe because true economic populism is bad for our high-income base.”

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