Shortly after the major party nominating conventions concluded, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times wrote a column that sparked a lot of conversation. In it, the longtime center-left observer offered some guidance to Democratic officials and candidates on the party’s message.
“It’s hard,” Kristof wrote, “to win votes from people you denigrate.” The column further noted, “Since Obama’s presidency, Democrats have increasingly become the party of the educated, and the result has often been a hint of condescension toward working-class voters.”
This came to mind again this week, when David Axelrod, a leading Democratic consultant and veteran of Barack Obama’s team, offered a similar assessment to The Washington Post after the election.
“The Democratic Party has become a metropolitan, college-educated party. And while the company maintains its commitment to working people, it sometimes approaches them in a missionary spirit – that we are here to help you become more like us,” Axelrod said. “That implies contempt. I don’t think it’s intentional, but it’s felt. And I think Trump has exploited that.”
It is not my intention to discredit Kristof or Axelrod, the latter of whom has far more experience than I do in running a successful national campaign.
Furthermore, it is entirely possible that these reviews have some value. Now that the dust has settled on the 2024 election cycle, the parties have begun to seriously examine the data, and new rounds of public opinion research are underway, perhaps the evidence will indicate that this is the scope and magnitude of Republican victories helps explain.
But I have a few concerns.
First, these assessments raise difficult practical questions. Democrats are encouraged to stand up for the interests of working people – or rather, to do so continue to defend the interests of working people – but to do so without “a hint of condescension” or “implied” contempt.
How does it work in the real world? How should the party actually implement such a pitch? I honestly have no idea. It appears that Democratic senators like Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana have spent years proving themselves to local voters as authentic and effective guardians of working-class communities and their interests. Their voters fired them anyway and rewarded their hard work with a pink slip.
Second, it is worth realizing the extent to which Donald Trump has fundamentally rejected this kind of advice – and paid no price for it.
From black voters to Latino voters, from Jewish voters to Muslim voters, from women voters to union voters, Trump has not only shown “implicit” contempt, he has also shown outright, overt, unsubtle and deliberate contempt. His entire political career has been rooted in racism, misogyny, Islamophobia and bigotry.
And yet the available data suggests that the Republican has made gains — in some cases significant gains — with the same constituencies he has denigrated for years.
“It is difficult,” Kristof wrote at the end of August, “to win votes from people you denigrate.” Doesn’t Trump help prove the opposite?
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
