Shortly after the major party nominating conventions wrapped up, The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof wrote a column that generated a fair amount of conversation. In it, the longtime center-left observer offered some guidance to Democratic officials and candidates about the party’s messaging.
“It’s difficult,” Kristof wrote, “to win votes from people you’re disparaging.” The column went on to note, “Since the Obama presidency, Democrats have increasingly become the party of the educated, and the upshot has often been a whiff of condescension toward working-class voters.”
This came to mind again this week, when David Axelrod, a prominent Democratic consultant and veteran of Barack Obama’s team, offered a similar post-election assessment to The Washington Post.
“The Democratic Party has become a metropolitan, college-educated party. And even though it retains its commitment to working people, it approaches them sometimes in a spirit of a missionary — that we’re here to help you become more like us,” Axelrod said. “Implied in that is disdain. I don’t think it’s intended, but it’s felt. And I think Trump has exploited that.”
My point is not to disparage Kristof or Axelrod, the latter of whom has far more experience than I do in steering a successful national campaign.
What’s more, it’s entirely possible that these assessments have a degree of merit. As the dust settles on the 2024 election cycle, the parties begin to examine the data in earnest, and new rounds of public-opinion research get underway, perhaps the evidence will suggest that this helps explain the scope and scale of Republican victories.
But I have a couple of concerns.
First, these assessments raise tricky practical questions. Democrats are being encouraged to champion the interests of working people — or more to the point, to continue championing the interests of working people — but to do so without “a whiff of condescension” or “implied” disdain.
How does that work in the real world? How, specifically, is the party supposed to execute such a pitch? I honestly haven’t the foggiest idea. By all appearances, Democratic senators such as Ohio’s Sherrod Brown and Montana’s Jon Tester spent years proving themselves to local voters as authentic and effective guardians of working-class communities and their interests. Their constituents fired them anyway, rewarding their hard work with a pink slip.
Second, it’s worth appreciating the degree to which Donald Trump has fundamentally rejected this kind of advice — and paid no price whatsoever.
From Black voters to Latino voters, from Jewish voters to Muslim voters, from women voters to union voters, Trump hasn’t just shown “implied” disdain, he’s shown outright, overt, unsubtle and deliberate contempt. His entire political career is rooted in racism, misogyny, Islamophobia and bigotry.
And yet, the available data suggests the Republican made gains — in some cases, significant gains — with the same constituencies that he’s denigrated for years.
All of which brings us back to what Kristof wrote in late August: “It’s difficult to win votes from people you’re disparaging.” Doesn’t Trump help prove the opposite?
