Democrats have reached out to the white working class before — by neglecting people of color
The challenge for Democrats is not repeating the same mistake.
The consensus among political pundits after the 2016 election: Democrats should reach out to the white working class. That’s one of the key groups, after all, that carried Donald Trump to his shocking upset victory on Election Day. So winning this group over, the thinking goes, could stop Trump’s reelection or another Trump-like figure in the future.
But it’s really not that simple. As New Yorker writer James Surowiecki explained in a series of tweets, reaching out to the white working class in the past has often been coupled with racist messages against people of color (POC). That is, in fact, what Trump did — with proposals to ban Muslims from entering the US, to build a wall to stop Mexican immigrants he described as “rapists,” and to expand the stop-and-frisk policing strategy that was struck down by courts in New York for targeting minority residents. And that seemed to be what many of Trump’s supporters in the white working class liked about him, considering surveys show Trump backers tend to have hostile views against minority Americans.
Yet if Democrats try Trump’s approach, they risk neglecting and losing the base of minority constituents that they’ve built up over the past few decades, and effectively becoming the kind of candidate they’re now trying to stop.
1. Ppl. worry the concern with working-class whites will lead to PoC being marginalized for good reason: it's happened so many times before. https://t.co/OWpCgbXAGd
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) November 13, 2016
2. The history of US politics is riddled with reformers pushing black ppl.'s interests aside in order to keep or regain white support.
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) November 13, 2016
3. That's what happened in the wake of Reconstruction, as Republicans left blacks in the South to fend for themselves against Redemption.
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) November 13, 2016
4. It's what happened during the New Deal, as Dems excluded largely black agricultural and service workers from Social Security.
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) November 13, 2016
5. And it's what happened in the early '90s, when the Dems chose explicitly to pivot away from antiracism in order to win back Reagan Dems.
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) November 13, 2016
6. In '92, Bill Clinton was economically populist rhetorically, but he talked tough about crime and welfare and had Sista Souljah moment.
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) November 13, 2016
7. And he was only Dem other than Carter -- another folksy Southerner -- to win a plurality of white working-class vote.
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) November 13, 2016
8. So it's not unreasonable for people to worry that this focus on working-class whites will again lead to PoC being sold out once again.
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) November 13, 2016
9. It would be a good sign that this time will be different if Keith Ellison is named to head the DNC.
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) November 13, 2016
10. It would suggest that Dems are serious about a program that's economically populist while also being rigorously anti-racist.
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) November 13, 2016
11. Real question is whether Dems can follow through on that, and not choose, once again, to try to win back white votes at expense of PoC.
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) November 13, 2016
There is, as Surowiecki notes, a way out: It is possible to promote an economically populist platform while speaking out against racism. That’s something that Sen. Bernie Sanders, clumsily but surely, tried during his challenge against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries — by bringing together ideas like single-payer health care and free public college with promises to reform the criminal justice system. (Still, Sanders faced criticism for not taking systemic racism seriously enough on the campaign trail.) Perhaps another politician could fine-tune the mix of messages, although it’s an open question whether that mix will be as successful as Trump’s approach.
If not, though, there’s a real concern that people of color will get left behind once again.