The Bulwark Podcast - Ruy Teixeira: Biden’s Working Class Blues

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

The system feels rigged for the millionaires and the billionaires, and the populist red lights are flashing for 2024. Can the Democrats get back to being for the little guy, or will the man with the golden toilets convince them he's on their side? The Liberal Patriot's Ruy Teixeira joins Charlie Sykes.

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I'm sorry to tell you, you've probably come to the wrong place. We are joined by my good friend, Rui Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the transformation of party coalitions. Rui, you have been in progressive politics for a very, very long time. You bring a lot of street cred to this. But as I was mentioning to you right before we started, there's a lot of resistance, isn's kind of, you know, built in. And we're going to get lots of comments saying, well, I don't want to listen to all of this because if we just put our heads in the sand, apparently the argument is we just put our heads in the sand about these difficulties. They will just go away. They will magically go away.

But you're sounding the alarm for a reason, right? Yeah, I'm sounding the alarm for a very good reason, which is, you know, the Democrats are in a heap of trouble. Anyone who pays the remotest attention to the polls must realize that we are in this extraordinary situation where Donald J. Trump appears likely to be the nominee of the Republican Party. And Donald J. Trump also appears like he could very much possibility he could beat Joe Biden, the current maximum leader of the United States. And this should be frightening to people. People should be asking themselves, anyone who's a Democrat should ask themselves, well, if he's so bad, he was such a bad president. He's such a bad man. There's so many things wrong with him

and his party. Why, at this point, are the Democrats at best kind of in this stalemate with him? I mean, if he's this apotheosis of evil, why is that happening? And I think the most parsimonious explanation is people don't much like the Democratic Party that much either. And then you have to ask yourself, well, why is that? And why are working class voters in particular unenthusiastic about the Democrats and giving Trump the majority of their votes? And why are the Democrats even losing votes among non-white working class voters? Something's going on here. Right. Something is going on here. And I think there's been a lot of analysis of what's happened to the working class vote. But I don't think there's been a sufficient introspection on the part of Democrats saying, OK, so why is it that millions of voters from the Democratic coalition have left? It leads us to this moment. OK, let me just take a step back

because we are in the midst of a Democratic freakout. Now, I want to sort of break out the the legitimate concerns versus just the bedwetting. Right. So the big headline in The Washington Post today that everybody's talking about that's leading the Drudge report is the headline is anxiety ripples through the Democratic Party over Biden. A growing number of polls are showing voters concerned about President Biden's age and energy. Democratic lawmakers have hesitated to offer full throated endorsements of his running mate. Prominent commentators have ruminated on whether he should drop out of the presidential race. This series of political vulnerabilities, along with House Republicans announcing an impeachment inquiry and the Justice Department indicting Biden's son on gun charges is now sending waves of anxiety through parts of the Democratic Party as some fret about whether the man who helped oust Donald Trump from the White House may not have the vitality at 80 to successfully prevent a return. So now there's

the moment people are going, how could we possibly lose to this guy? I want to leave the age issue aside because I think we've done that. Let's talk about what you just mentioned, Bidenomics and the working class voters. You've written that it is important for Democrats to understand just how poorly the Biden economy has played with working class voters so far. You cite this Quinnipiac poll, found that Joe Biden has a 25% approval rating on the economy among white working class non-college voters versus 52% approval on the economy among white college grad voters. Now, there are some people who will say, well, that's just because they're dumb. They don't know what's understated. They can't read

the numbers. They're missing this. So tell me what's happening. And it's not just Joe Biden, is it? You've been tracking this now for years, this long erosion of support among the working class. So how does the white working class look at Bidenomics right now? They look at Bidenomics from the standpoint of what I might waggishly call their lived experience. Their lived experience of Bidenomics, the real world has not been great. Now, I know that the standard democratic take on this tends to be, well, you know, it's misinformation. The media is not covering this stuff right. Look, unemployment's down. Inflation is abating.

You know, all this cool stuff is happening. You know, they're building battery plants, you know, and why aren't people suitably grateful for that? Well, the fact of the matter is that they experienced a spike in inflation that is greater than most of these voters have ever experienced. And if you look at their actual, you know ever experienced. And if you look at their actual family incomes, if you look at their wages, they've really gone nowhere under Biden. In fact, they went down for a while because the real purchasing power went down because of inflation.

Inflation is still running a bit hotter than normal and gas prices are starting to go up again. And it's a little bit much to ask people to forget about all that just because, relatively speaking, things have gotten better. And, yes, it is a very tight labor market, and that's good. If you actually compare the performance of household income under Trump to household income under Biden, it was like way better. Under Trump, it went up 10% before the pandemic hit. And since Biden's been in office, according to the latest data, it's gone down. Now, once we get the final data from 23, it'll look a little bit better. But the fact of the matter is, as most people, particularly working class people, are concerned the economy functioned better under

Trump than Biden. In fact, in one post poll where they asked about, well, who did a better job with the economy? Donald Trump when he was in office or Biden so far? Two to one among working class voters, non-college voters as a whole, they said Trump was better. And this is consistent with a number of other polls. So you're asking working class voters who are already uncomfortable about a lot of the apparent priorities of Democrats in the sociocultural area, where Democrats are significantly to the left of where most of these voters are, and are sort of determined to implement this brave new world, whether working class voters are Ford or not. If you pile on top of that, that people, well, I guess maybe I'd give you a pass if things were frigging great, but they're not. If you pile on top of that, that people, well, I guess maybe I'd give you a pass if things

were frigging great, but they're not. This is my question is, you know, is it just the economic stupid? Because you also point out that this interacts with that general sense among these voters, that Democrats don't much like them and their uneducated, uncouth manner of speaking and thinking. They pick up on the disdain, right? So that's more, you're willing to cut somebody some slack if you think you like them and they like you. But that's not the moment we're in right now. Right. Well, that's part of Donald Trump's secret power. A lot of these voters feel he likes them. He may be, you know, kind of a loose cannon, but at least he likes them. I think they feel Democrats do not, in fact,

feel all that great about them. And I wrote this recent piece, which you saw, about the Democrats' Oliver Anthony problem. The country western singer. Yes. I retell some of the reactions to his famous song, Richmond, North of Richmond, because there's a line in it which seems to be critical of people who are on welfare and are eating a lot and really aren't actually, you know, disabled. This was piled on like a ton of bricks by a lot of Democratic commentators. It just shows he's a bigot. It just shows he doesn't have the correct attitude toward, you know, safety net programs. And just in various ways, I mean, despite the fact, you know, anyone who's listened to the song realizes it's fundamentally

critical against, you know, the way rich people are ripping off the working class. And they're controlling the country and they get what they want and we don't get what we want. And that sucks. My job sucks. I don't have to get paid enough. I mean, you'd think Democrats would, yay, great. You know, this is like a working proletarian is waking up and realizing that, you know, we need action against

the rich and the people who control the economic levers of power. But au contraire, as I said, they mostly denounced him for not having the correct point of view on some of these things and, you know, for not expressing it in the right kind of way. So when you have that kind of reaction to like this massively popular hit by this populist working class guy who incidentally says, you know, I am not on the right. I'm not on the left. I'm in the middle, man. I just think things are screwed up. You know, I'm not here witnessing for the Republican Party of the right. And so, you know, this to me, this was remarkable and emblematic. A small digression here, because in the before times, I knew a Republican politician from Wisconsin who, strange guy, who's gone really to the dark side, but had a visceral understanding of what blue collar rural voters were concerned about. And one of the things that he was pointing out was the tremendous amount of resentment of, okay, let me just back up here, that many of these

voters, he says, you go into communities and the average salary is about $38,000 a year or $40,000 a year. These are not rich people. These are people who are right on the margin, who work 40 hours, who are struggling, who are fearful of their job. These are not the rich people, but they look over at their brother-in-law who's on social security disability or getting food stamped or something. And the resentment is tremendous. It's not rich people who resent the welfare class. It's this blue collar sense. I actually wrote a book about this at one point. And one of the things that we've seen in places like Wisconsin has been this incredible shift of white, working class, rural voters away from the Democratic Party, because they don't feel that they are supporting them as the working class. They feel that they've created this vast safety net that plays them for suckers. Is this something that you see that you recognize or is this unfair? No, this is completely fair. I mean, yeah, the Democrats want to give them stuff and they'll

give people like us stuff, whether we're working or not, or whether we're like, you know, playing by the rules or not. And that doesn't make them feel good. It makes him feel like they're being patronized and looked down on. I mean, it's a very important point, Charlie, and it relates to this Oliver Anthony issue, is that a lot of the blowback for him came because he seemed to be critical of people who are on welfare and disability. And what people missed is, no, he's not talking about some black mother in the inner city. He's talking about people he knows, people in his community, people who are like, you know, who are sitting on their duff and not doing anything.

And they actually know these people. And to them, that's wrong. That's not the American way. That's not what it should be about. And if they feel Democrats are enabling that, then they're quite resentful. But there's no understanding of this among, I think, the Democratic elite. Two cosmic questions here. I mean, you know that when you bring these kinds of issues up, people will say, well, what's happening with rural white working class voters?

It's about race. It's fundamentally about race and racial animus. I mean, obviously, there's a component there, but I have a problem, particularly when you look at Wisconsin. The number of voters that voted for Obama twice and then voted for Donald Trump. Many of the dependents that they are describing, the people who are, you know, at the public trial, these are not inner city African-Americans. These are, you know, the white cleduses down the road who are doing all this. But give me your sense, though. What role does race play in the alienation of the white and rural working class? Right. Well, my view is that race has something to do with it, but it's vastly exaggerated. And I

think in sort of big picture terms, what people typically miss about this on the liberal side of the spectrum is they may not be completely delighted with people who have a different skin color than they do or live in a different with people who have a different skin color than they do, or live in a different place or come from a different country. But much more than that, they hate us. They hate, you know, the elites, educated elites in the big cities, who they feel looked down on them, and they're doing great, and they're doing crappy, and their communities are falling apart. And they feel like systems rigged against them and it's in the interest of a lot of these type of people. So, I mean, Catherine Kramer wrote a

good book about Wisconsin, The Politics of Resentment, where you really see exactly that. At one point in the book, she said, you know, it's like, wow, they really hate me more than they hate anybody else because I'm a Wisconsin professor of Madison. So, I think that that's really important to keep in mind, that it's this bitter resentment at the way the country has evolved, the way certain parts of the country have done better than others, about the educated elites who seem to control everything, including the very culture that they are expected to consume. And they hate that. And sort of involved in that may be some animus toward, you know, people who are black or brown or whatever.

I mean, this is really sort of the working assumption of most, I think, liberal Democrats at this point, is what a lot of this resentment is fundamentally and basically only about, resentment, a gout, the rising multicultural, multiracial America, and how, you know, it's a threat to their status. And this now becomes the spiral, because if that is your attitude, that is disdain, that is a certain amount of contempt, which then feeds that sense, well, you people don't like me. Yeah, you're not a complicated person. You're a hateful bigot. That's the deal. The other conventional wisdom now among Democrats is, okay, well, maybe these voters are just lost. They're lost forever. We need to stop talking about them because essentially our coalition has shifted and we're going to replace the working

class voters with the suburban educated voters, the college educated voters who may have voted for Republicans in the past. First of all, are they gone forever? Are those white working class, non-college voters gone forever for the Democratic Party? I don't think so. I mean, looking specifically at that question, I mean, we know that the Democrats actually did slightly better among white working class voters in 2020 than in 2016. And we know how well Obama did among them. You know, this black guy ran for president. Remember that? So no, I don't think these voters are gone forever. The only reason you'd think they're gone forever is if you bought into the

idea that their only motivating factor, the only thing that's salient for them is that they're a hateful bigot and they want to vote against the party that's for black and brown people. I don't think that's the way it is. I think it's much more complicated than that. I think what they're really looking for is a better life and a party that doesn't treat them like crap. And, you know, they're not that enthusiastic about the Republican Party either. Now, you know, I mean, Charlie, this whole thing would make more sense if these voters all loved the Republican Party and think there's nothing wrong with it. But that's not true either. They're dissatisfied with both parties. And fundamentally, as I say, they want a better life. So you deliver for them and they don't feel like you're looking down on them and you will get a bigger share of those voters. Does it mean you'll carry suddenly

the white working class? No, but you can do three, four, five points better, which makes all the difference. And we could also look at what's happening with non-white working class voters. If the Democrats, if this was all about race and not to some extent about class, why are non-white working class voters bailing out of the Democratic Party? There's something going on here that you really have to look at in class terms. And if you look at it in class terms, the Democratic Party as a party that supposedly stands for the interests of the working class and can advance those interests should be able to get a bigger share of these voters. Okay, so talk to me about that, because

you crunched the numbers on all of this. And this does seem to be at least a warning flag up here, that it's not just the white working class, you're seeing erosion of the black working class among Hispanics. There has been a school of thought among Democrats that demography is destiny, that, you know, eventually, you know, there will be this tsunami of young people and women and minorities who will all vote for Democrats. But there are some warning signs there. So let's talk about Hispanics for a moment. This was the big shock, right, that Hispanics in South Texas were suddenly voting for Republicans.

So how does this relate to this? Why would Hispanic working class, black working class voters vote for the party headed by Donald Trump. You understand the cognitive dissonance of that is really, really powerful. A lot of Democrats having a hard time with this. Back to something we were talking about earlier. If you look at the performance of the Trump economy compared to the Biden economy or compared to, I mean, they basically, even in 2020, there was no Biden economy compared to, of course, but a lot of Hispanics were pretty happy with how the economy had gone under Trump. They just kind of forget the crash of the Trump economy in that last year.

I mean, that was pretty awful. COVID, man. Yeah. He got a bit of a pass for that. They remembered what had happened prior to that. And I think, you know, that's not unreasonable on their part. And they also felt that Trump, you know, in a cultural sense, may have been closer to them than the Democratic Party as is evolving was. I mean, the Democratic Party became associated with everything from def and Trump in 2020, you know, were actually not really down with this idea that borders should be basically quasi open. They actually believe that there's a necessity for border security and very strong border security.

And the fact that Trump stood for that and a lot of these people were border guards themselves. I mean, don't get me started on all the ways in which the Democratic Party, you know, and its association with a certain set of issues was actually not considered to be in the wheelhouse of these voters who fundamentally were patriotic, upwardly mobile, hardworking, believed in their communities and believed in the American dream. They felt the Democrats were not actually having their back on all this stuff and didn't really believe the same things they did about their culture and their country and the route to upward mobility. I mean, it goes even to like, where do some of these people, if you're talking about South Texas, look at how many people work in resource extraction, right? I mean, the Democrats are associated with basically getting rid of fossil fuels. You know, why on earth would you not expect that to have some effect on some Hispanic voters? But I mean, we should be careful about this particular demographic, Charlie. If we look at the trends that are affecting Hispanics, it's not just

in South Texas, and it's not just in South Florida. And that's what I think connects it to these cultural and other issues we've been talking about. It was all over the country. It was in Philadelphia. It was in Detroit. It was in California. It was in New York, it was everywhere. The Democrats fell off a cliff among Hispanic voters, which didn't mean they didn't carry them, but it did mean they lost 10, 15, 20 margin points all over the country, which is a huge amount. So, I mean, when you say that they have more in common culturally with Donald Trump, of course, you know, a lot of us go, how do you look at the guy with the golden toilets and, you know, the, all of this stuff and think you're culturally attuned?

But what you're talking about is these cultural wedge issues. And you've gone through them. What does the bundle look like? The border, crime, gender issues. And race. And race. I mean, one of the great mistakes of the Democrats has been to think of Hispanics as so-called people of color, right? They're all sort of part of this big bundle, you know, Asians, blacks, Hispanics. So everybody who's non-white,

you know, must be absolutely outraged about this white supremacist society we live in. And we'll vote on that basis if they are forcibly reminded about how racist the other side is. But that's not true, actually. A lot of Hispanics don't really look at America as a white supremacist society at all. They believe racism comes from individuals, not structures, not society as a whole, which, of course, is the current democratic mantra. This has been tested a number of times. And if you ask people, well, do you think racism fundamentally comes basically from

individuals who hold racist views, or do you think racism fundamentally comes basically from individuals who hold racist views? Or do you think it's, you know, baked into the structure of our society, you know, and the structures of the society, whatever? I mean, that's not the exact wording. But, you know, Hispanics, by and large, endorse the idea. It comes from individuals. And they don't like that, of course. Nobody likes racism. It's directed at them.

But they don't feel like that is, you know, the fundamental nature of American society. They like America. They're patriotic. They think there's plenty of opportunity for upward mobility. They want their barriers taken out of the way and they want opportunities, but they don't look at it as, you know, we're part of this benighted mass of non-white people who are being ground under the heel of the white supremacist rulers of our country and the society, you know, that has all these structures that are fundamentally racist. So, you know, I think race is very important. You have to understand that this is not a plus factor for the Democrats now among a lot of Hispanic voters, especially working class voters who don't look at the world the way democratic

liberals do, right? I mean, there's a lot of data that shows that liberal college-educated whites now have the most, you know, sort of anti-racist, quote-unquote, views of any constituency in the country, right? That Hispanics are far less likely to endorse aggressive anti-racist statements than liberal whites are. for years with a Michelin X-Ice snow tire. Get a $50 prepaid MasterCard with select Michelin tires. Find a Michelin Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca. This message comes from BetterHelp. Can you think of a time when you didn't feel like you could be yourself? Like you were hiding behind a mask at work and social settings around your family?

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That's betterHelp.com. Okay, so you've written about how the Democrats have, as their coalition changes, have become more influenced by the highly educated elites, the much more progressive elites, who have an outsized role in determining where the party is. It does seem as if the average Democratic primary voter is far more centrist. We've seen this in election after election, which again is one of the reasons to have this conversation. But Joe Biden himself, how do you evaluate the Biden presidency? Did he govern as a centrist or did he move too far to the left under the influence of this progressive elite? What is your analysis of Joe Biden? Because to me, Joe Biden,

I look at him and there are moments when I go, this is going to be the last centrist, because he actually has a lot of instincts about the issues you're describing, right? I mean, of the working class and kitchen table stuff. And so why is a lot of this hitting him? Well, I think you have to look at how he has governed rather than sort of what his instincts are. And I agree with you, Charlie. I think his instincts are basically as a centrist and as a sort of, you know, old style working class oriented Democrat. But I think as he's governed, it's been quite different. I think he basically has taken on board a lot of the priorities and even language of the progressive wing of the party.

Give me an example of that. Well, I mean, there are so many examples. I mean, he's talked about the structural racism and all that kind of stuff. He remember when he went to Georgia and talked about, you know, this is Jim Crow 2.0 and like Bull Connor because of the voting bill they passed, which was actually relatively anodyne. It wasn't that big a deal, but he's willing to ramp his rhetoric up to 11. Look at his stance on trans issues, right? I mean, I grant you this is not the determining voting issue, but it does say a bit about where Biden has taken on the views of the left wing of the party. I mean, look, he invited Dylan Mulvaney, the famous Bud Light influencer, to the White House for a chat.

I mean, this is the same guy who, you know, woke up one day, decided he was a woman and did a series of famous TikTok videos on reliving his girlhood. Right. I mean, this is pretty weird. But, you know, Biden has said that the trans issue is a civil rights issue of our time, which to my mind really is, appropriate to compare the civil rights movement to what this particular set of issues is all about. And, you know, the administration has been four square in favor of all this stuff, which is massively unpopular among a lot of the working class voters we're talking about. I mean, look at the whole issue of clean energy, too. I think this is a long discussion, but Biden is certainly down with the whole idea we're in this massive climate emergency. We must have this extremely rapid transition to renewables and everybody must get an electric card. Maybe you should think twice about having a gas stove. So he has said nothing in his time

in office that would lead one away from the view that he basically endorses a whole democratic view on the transition to clean energy. Now he's done a few things that are more sensible as he's, you know, his presidency has gone on, like the drilling arrangements in Willow, but he gets this enormous blowback from parts of the Democratic Party whenever he says anything remotely accommodating even about fossil fuels. How is the UAW strike going to play in them? And this seems like one of the issues. Great example. I mean, a perfect example, because Trump is parachuting in right today, because he sees an opening, you know, and he's saying they're going to make these electric cars in China, which is not true. But I remember the impact that Hillary Clinton's comments had in

2016, when she was, you know, talking about, we're going to put all the coal miners out of work. Now, she had a longer explanation, but that was the soundbite. You know, Trump and the Republicans are really looking to have a wedge here with the auto workers. So how is this going to play? It is a great example because, you know, the Democrats back in 2019, you know, when the Green New Deal was first being talked about, Nancy Pelosi famously referred to it as, well, this green dream or whatever they call it. You know, she wasn't particularly excited about it. But in the process, since then, the Democrats have really taken on the whole Green New Deal approach. And really, the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, is essentially a soft, scaled-down version of the Green New Deal.

And the theory of the green new deal has been you know we're going to basically throw a lot of money at this rapid transition renewables and electric vehicles and as we implement this green new deal there will be great jobs for everybody everybody will be happy prices of energy will go down and it will be uh you know heaven on earth but the problem is that the actual implementation of this quasi Green New Deal, this IRA, actually raises a lot of very thorny questions, particularly for members of the working class, whether they really will benefit from it. And I think a lot of UAW workers are worried that, A, a lot of these EV plants are going to other places that are not,

you know, going to be staffed by union workers because of the very nature of the states they're going to. And it has not escaped the notice of the UAW and its leadership that a transition to electric vehicles will probably at the end mean just fewer autoworkers, at least less of them, because it takes less workers to make these EVs. And, you know, sort of there's bubbling underlying resentment among many working class voters in general about, well, what if I don't want an EV? I like my car. The idea that we're going to have this super rapid transition to electric vehicles, I think, flies in the face of the reality of what consumer behavior. I mean, this is the problem of rapid change, right, is that it creates anxiety. And particularly

if you are a blue collar worker in America, you have been feeling under siege. You've been feeling vulnerable for a long time. So somebody comes in and says, we're going to upend your entire industry. Trust us. People shouldn't be surprised. So far, the UAW leadership doesn't seem to be buying into this. And I think this is just the tip of the iceberg, Charlie.

I think there's more coming along this line. Like what? Oh, I just think, you know, working class resentment toward the spillovers from the energy transition that the Biden administration and Democrats are trying to push forward is just beginning. I mean, look, in New York State, they just had to raise the rates of a lot of basically electricity people buy because the increased subsidies that have to go to the people implementing the clean energy stuff. And so, I mean, and look at all the gas stove bans that are now being implemented in a lot of places. And look at, you know, you're supposed to get a heat pump. People hate that stuff. This is an important point because people make, I know a lot of people on the left, including some of my colleagues, make fun of the whole issue of the gas

stoves. But this becomes very symbolic for a lot of people, which is like, wait, don't I get to choose? We talk about tolerance and diversity. I would like to have my gas stove. And when the suggestion is out there that the government is going to come in and tell you what kind of stove you can have, again, it's not the end of the world, but it's symbolic. The reaction is far greater than the actual substance there, but it does become a stand-in for a lot of what you're describing. Look, I mean, if electric stoves are so great, if heat pumps are so great, if electric vehicles are so great, well, let consumers decide. Let the market speak. And over time, if these things

are as great as people say they are, then people will purchase them and get rid of their old stuff. But the idea that, you know, you're not going to have a choice, you're essentially going to be dragooned into getting these devices or vehicles, I think, sits very poorly with people. And, you know, we shouldn't forget about the issue of energy prices, Charlie. Again, this is an example of something Biden has bought into and sort of has this whole talking point, solar energy is so cheap, they're giving it away. But the fact of the matter is, basically, the higher the density of renewable energy and grids, the more energy prices have tended to go up for a variety of reasons, which we can't really get

into now, too complicated. But that's the empirical reality. So the empirical reality is energy prices haven't gone down. They've gone up. It's not abundant and cheap. It's less abundant and more expensive. And then they're telling you, you've got to buy an electric vehicle. You've got to get a heat pump. You've got to get an electric stove. I mean, this is just tailor-made, as you say, for someone like Donald Trump to parachute into it.

Maybe he doesn't have the solution, but, boy, he knows how to take advantage of resentment among their among people. So, and I just want to connect it to this whole thing about the climate emergency. If it wasn't for this conceit that we were in this massive climate emergency, we have to press the accelerator on this stuff and we must move this forward as fast as possible. Otherwise, Armageddon is lurking. This wouldn't be such a problem because you could roll out this stuff gradually. You could let, you know, this energy transition take place, as indeed it will in the end over a fairly long period of time, and where people don't have to be forced to do X, Y, and Z, where you can gradually remake the nature of the grid and include nuclear, I might add, which is

yet another discussion. So what's the hurry? The hurry is that people have convinced themselves that, you know, this must be done and must be done fast. And anybody who stands in the way of progress, you know, let's just run them over. So the UAW is saying, no, don't run me over. I'm not in. This hits different groups in different ways. I mean, you know, you quote some recent reporting by Ron Brownstein, you know, to explain how people look at the economy so differently. Big, you know, chasm between attitudes between the working class and college graduates. You quote him saying, frustration over higher prices is especially acute among voters with fewer resources and less financial cushion, which generally include those with less education.

Nobody likes spending more, but the degree to which you can absorb inflation. Those at the higher end of the economic scale have less difficulty doing so. And, you know, you also quote from a British journalist in the Financial Times who writes that Biden may have over-interpreted his mandate when he won. He was supposed to end the dark carnival of Trump and lead the country out of the pandemic. But the spending and the subsidies has allowed Republicans to draw this circumstantially plausible, even if you think ultimately false link, between the administration and rising consumer prices. Okay, so let's get to, again, the politics of this. As you point out, it's not surprising that Biden is losing working class voters by 14 points in recent polls, but he's carrying college graduates by 18

points. Biden lost working class voters by just four points in 2020. So this is bad. He's losing more of the working class. Yes, I think the word bad is appropriate. Right, really bad. So as Brownstein pointed out in his piece for CNN, middle class Joe looks like he's going to end up relying on upscale voters more than he did in 2020. And what I hear from a lot of folks is, OK, so we've lost the working class vote. They're all bigots. They're all cletuses.

And let's write them off. But it doesn't matter. This is the Democrats' replacement theory. We're replacing them with upscale college educated voters. So it's a wash. Is it, Rui? Can they just replace them? Well, I mean, by definition, it's not a wash in the sense that if you lose X amount of working class voters and you gain X amount of college educated voters, X percentage, you will lose because there are more working class voters and you gain X amount of college educated voters, X percentage, you will lose because there are more working class voters than are college educated voters.

For every point or two you lose among working class voters, you got to get two or three points improvement among college educated voters. Now that's mathematically possible, but is it easy? No. And in fact, it's quite difficult and it may not work. Most voters in this country are working class, defined in terms of college education. So if you're losing ground steadily among those voters, you really are putting yourself in a very difficult situation in terms of jacking up your percentages among college-educated voters. And let's not forget, there are a lot of actually vulnerable points for the Democrats themselves among college-educated voters. I did a piece for the Washington Post the other day where I analyzed the votes and inclinations of white college-educated moderates, which is most of white college voters. And they are not very

enthusiastic about the Democrats. The Democrats really have to run up the score among these voters to actually carry the white college-educated population by the margins they're increasingly looks like they're going to need. So even that's not an easy lift, right? I mean, I don't want to rehearse a lot of polling data here, but trust me on this. They are not enthusiastic about Biden, about the job he's done in the economy and a variety of other things. They don't like the Democratic Party that much, even though they don't like, to some extent, they like the Republican Party even less, which, of course, is the Democrats' secret superpower these days. It isn't that everybody loves them, it's that they hate the other guys even more. So this is not a good calculus. This is not good political arithmetic.

It's not to say it might not work, and who knows, maybe it'll even work in 2024. Maybe Biden will squeak out another. But is this the way we want to live our political life forever? No, I don't think so. I think that, you know, the party that really consolidates the working class vote, you know, will have the American political future. And I just don't see the Democrats doing that at this point. As you're pointing out, Charlie, they're even making this argument. Well, who cares?

Everything's fine. It's like that dog with a coffee cup in the flames of hell. You know, everything's fine. Yeah, it's fine. This is fine. It's like that dog with a coffee cup and the flames of hell, you know, like everything's fine. Yeah, it's fine. This is fine. If it's a flat or a squeal,

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Find a Michelin TreadExperts dealer near you at TreadExperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca Okay, so let's transition. You're a progressive. You're a Democrat. You want Democrats to win, right? I mean, people need to understand this is in the context of wanting Democrats to fix this product, correct? You are a lifelong Democratic progressive. I want to remind people

about all of that. So what should Democrats do? What should Joe Biden do in the next 12 months to win these voters back to change this dynamic? Pretending none of these things are a problem, pretending that nobody should care about inflation, pretending that none of these things are out of the mainstream, none of that I think is going to change the dynamic. So what is the agenda? What is the prosperity agenda that you recommend? I think it's very difficult at this point. I mean, I really have a hard time seeing Biden changing course on practically anything at this point. But if he did, you know, I think that the whole pitch around Bidenomics? I mean, I really, I think there's like some dazzling chutzpah to deciding you're going to embrace the sobriquet of Bidenomics in a situation where people basically detest the job Biden has done on the economy. I mean, it's, you know, it's impressive. I mean, I guess they're assuming things will turn around by the election time.

When I hear people talk about this on, say, on MSNBC, they talk about the messaging problem and what Democrats have to message. You're suggesting that there's a messaging problem, but there's also a substance problem. Well, given the substance problem, I think that the messaging problem does not devolve down to figuring out how to convey all the great achievements of Bidenomics more effectively. I think you have to some extent admit, yeah, look, I mean, hasn't gone quite as we wanted. Inflation is a problem, but we're really going to get it under control. And we're going to make sure that we mostly have the backs of working class voters. If that means we got to take our foot off the accelerator on some of the stuff

that we've been doing, that's fine. We're laser focused on, you know, the actual lives, you know, most people in this country lead and, you know, how they're doing economically. And we're really going to get inflation under control. And maybe we're going to cut back on some of the things we were going to do because of that. You know, we understand, we get it. Who are the Democrats who are getting this? I think some of the governors are a little bit more in touch with this than the Biden administration. John Fetterman, Sherrod Brown. Yeah. Josh Shapiro, people like Gretchen Whitmer, maybe. I mean, I think they're a little bit more circumspect about some of this stuff. Now, Whitmer, I mean, this is like the worst thing to happen to her, you know, the UAW strike and all that, and Michigan politics in general. But I think they're more sensitive to,

you know, sort of to put it gently, the mixed nature of the Biden economy and how things have gone under Biden. How you craft an economic-oriented message that speaks to people's discontent about the way things are and that's realistic about what people have experienced, I think that's a big problem. But I think you at least have to try to do that and not assume that your big messaging problem is you haven't been able to deliver the good news. Yeah. You're with as much panache, you know, or the right magic words. I mean, I think that's ridiculous, but I think you also should do some things to signal you are moving to the center and cultural issues. You are going to tighten up the border. You're going to radically reform the asylum system.

You know, you're going to, you know, maybe make some sort of signals on the trans issue that you're not totally down with the medicalization of minors. And, you know, we need to compromise. You need to compromise on these kinds of issues. And on crime, you're really concerned about crime. I mean, one of my favorite little tropes in one of yours, Charlie, has been the Democrats could use a sister soldier moment on some of the issues about crime, which are not going away. And there are like sacrificial lambs out there in the democratic universe who would make an excellent sister soldier. And that would actually capture people's attention. You know, so people don't think your main concern about, you know, crime is we've got to make sure we treat criminals fairly. And, you know, maybe like open drug use is like part of our harm reduction strategy and all this. There's a lot of low hanging fruit there for the Democrats to cut

a somewhat different cultural profile than the Democrats currently cut. Do I believe they'll do any of this? No. That's why I think it's going to be a dogfight right through November 2024. So the larger question is, can Democrats seize back the populist message that we are for the little guy? Because I think this is one of those moments where people are looking around and going, okay, the system is rigged. It is rigged for the rich, the billionaires, the millionaires, the oligarchs. There's an asymmetry of power that people at pretty much every level of life experience. And yet somehow Donald Trump has convinced millions of Americans that he of the golden

toilets and of Mar-a-Lago somehow is the voice of the little guy. Can Democrats turn that around? I mean, they're running against a billionaire who doesn't pay any taxes. I think the inability to turn this around, that we don't need a society that is run without necessarily buying into the Bernie Sanders line. But I mean, Bernie Sanders tapped into something. Donald Trump tapped into something. So can Joe Biden tap into that, middle-class Joe, or is it too late? It is my regretful duty to inform you I think it's too late. I mean, I think we should be talking about a few years down the line. Let's think a few moves ahead in the chess game. I think the Democrats can totally recover from where they are now. And as I say, I think it's, you know, maybe a slightly

better than even bet that Biden does manage to get reelected. But I think that, you know, we're really talking about trying to change the image and approach of the Democratic Party in 2024 and beyond. I mean, I'd be very happy if they did it before then. I do think, as you point out, that the populist feelings roiling the population are out there, particularly working class voters. The Democrats should be able to take advantage of them. But back to Oliver Anthony, if your reaction to Oliver Anthony's song is, you know, that racist son of a seacook, I mean, this is not a good sign. Not a good sign. So I think Democrats have to, you know, sort of get back in touch with their inner centrist or something, or their inner Bill Clinton, or their inner Barack Obama, for

crying out loud, and figure out how to take a different approach. It does strike me that, you know, in 2016, in retrospect, all of the flares were going up, the lights were that voters did not want same old, same old. They did not want the status quo. They did not want another Clinton. They wanted change desperately. And all the elites ignored all of that. And the elites were, you know, like, let's ignored all of that. And the elites were like, let's have Bush versus Clinton. And the voters said, to hell with that. We want something new. We got something new. And my gut tells me that 2024 is the populist red lights are flashing. And if the Democrats do not figure out a way to show that they don't despise,

they don't think that the voters are stupid, that bad things are going to happen. Rui Teixeira, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. Rui is senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and you can read his work on the liberal patriot on Substack. He's also co-author of the forthcoming book, Where Have All the Democrats Gone? Rui, thank you so much. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes.

We will be back tomorrow and we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.