Inviting the working class to the progress party
Progressives need to include the white working poor in their messaging
By Kyle Anderson
Head of Logistics
Senior Writer
In a modern political space, it seems like there’s nothing on which we can all agree.
Based primarily in online debates, influencer culture, and flashiness, our modern style of politics is intentionally toxic and alienating — which is why our messaging needs to be more inclusive than ever before.
Believe it or not, I do think most Americans agree on a lot of things. We’ve even seen a lot of it in the headlines lately.
61% of Americans believe abortions should be legal in most or all cases.
Between 84% and 94% of Americans support universal background checks and 72% support red flag laws.
69% support renewable energy, and a whopping 93% believe the government should provide some form of healthcare to American citizens. 63% support the public option or universal healthcare, while 30% support continuing Medicaid and Medicare coverage.
Given the broad support for what are, ultimately, left-wing policies, it can seem like an enigma as to why these policies can’t gain legislative traction.
The answer, however, is actually quite simple: money and messaging.
The money half of this seems pretty clear to me: oftentimes, opposing these positions can prove immensely profitable for companies and corporations.
With respect to guns, for instance, loose gun laws help bolster a nearly $28 billion firearms industry and hundreds of billions more spent on security against violent crimes like security cameras, security guards, home security systems, and investigations into gun-related crimes. When you consider the fact GOP candidates rake in millions every year from the firearms industry, it’s easy to see why they’d stand against any laws regulating the sale of firearms.
Similar statistics could be drawn for the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare legislation, religious groups and abortion rights, and dozens of other issues. Indeed, the post-Citizens United era of campaign money politics have led to an increase in divisive messaging so, in part, political candidates can keep their coffers lined for the next election cycle.
However, some of you who pay more attention to elections may be asking how candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can be ourtraised nearly 18-to-1 and still win their elections.
The answer? Really. Good. Messaging. Here’s what I mean.
Indeed, good messaging can trounce big money, and has proven to do so dozens of times. In the cases of some, good messaging can directly lead to big money (see both of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns, for example) for those races where grassroots doorknocking alone isn’t as practical.
The biggest messaging pitfall of widely supported liberal causes is the pension for inclusivity, which while justified and absolutely correct, can also exclude voters who seem to be the most important in recent election cycles.
Generally speaking, messaging from progressives tries to be as inclusive as possible, stressing the disproportionate impact America’s policies have had on people of color, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and other historically oppressed and marginalized groups across the country.
While this message and conversation is righteous, just, and absolutely necessary, this stress on inclusivity comes at one big cost: the white working poor.
I’m from Northeast Ohio, deep in the thick of the Rust Belt where the primary industry has changed four or five times since the end of World War II. The white working poor are not necessarily the dominant demographic here, but they exist in significant numbers. According to the US Census, 42.8% of Youngstown residents are white, and the average per-capita income is just under $19,000 a year.
These people are often born into struggling families, have low-quality educations, and lead very precarious lives from paycheck to paycheck. The result is what I call a sort of political nearsightedness.
In other words, they really couldn’t be bothered with sweeping structural change. They merely care about whether they still have a roof over their head and food on their table tomorrow night.
This makes them a very easy target for negative political messaging. Why do you think the right runs ad after ad on TV stations like Fox, which are predominantly watched by the working poor? Only 29% of Fox News viewers have a college degree, and 24% self identify as blue-collar workers, compared to only 14% of MSNBC viewers.
With these kinds of viewership demographics, it’s easy to stress time and time again that the government is coming for their hard-earned paycheck. It’s an easy narrative to sell, and the white working poor seem to be buying.
The reason is that progressive messaging, for all its inclusivity, can make them feel uninvited to the progress party, often by no fault of their own due to their poorer-than-average education.
It’s a much harder sell that policies focused on dismantling the countless structures of racial, political, and economic oppression (which do, indeed, disproportionately impact people of color and LGBTQIA+ community) will ultimately help them too.
Naturally, the simple answer here is to include the white working poor in that message.
Bernie Sanders did this to fantastic effect in his presidential campaigns. It’s the reason some believe he would have been able to beat Trump had he been the nominee in 2016, and also why there is a somewhat surprising and oft-lamented overlap between Trump and Sanders’ supporters.
If you do a quick sweep of interviews with people who switched their vote from D to R in 2016, odds are, they’re members of the white working poor.
Other progressive campaigns have seen a wide degree of success by including the white working poor in their messaging, like the efforts to stop the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which runs through West Virginia.
Since many of those affected happen to be members of the white working poor, they are included in the messaging, and seem more than happy to tag along on an anti-corporate, environmentalist campaign that many would not expect West Virginians to support.
Clearly, there’s no downside to tagging them onto the messaging, so why not do it?
Obviously, this is only a small step in the right direction, but I believe, a crucial one. In the last few elections, all eyes have been glued to states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and (though much less these days) my home state of Ohio.
I think letting the white working poor know that they too will be helped by progressive policies could go a long way to getting these things done, putting money in the pocketbooks of hard-working Americans, and uniting a political divide that seems to be growing endlessly wider and wider.
Kyle Anderson is a senior majoring in Political Science and double-minoring in Journalism and Photography. He is also GWPR’s Head of Logistics.
