Why working-class voters have been shifting toward the Republican Party
I think the Professor (Paul Clark) who NPR interviewed echoed the same thing I've said for the past 2 years... which is that for a lot of working class people, they're not purely prioritizing economic issues anymore amid the backdrop of some of the social issues really testing the fragile boundaries of the Overton Window (and at a rapid pace)
PAUL CLARK: It predates Trump, but I think Trump really tapped into it and accelerated the transition. I think the economic issues are certainly part of it. These workers feel like they've been left behind. Globalization has benefited many groups, but not them. There's a certain resentment and anger, and I think Trump has tapped into that. I also think that he's touched on some changes in terms of working-class voters prioritizing social and cultural issues - DEI and racial issues, the number of immigrants coming into many working-class communities, transgenderism, guns, abortion. Trump has really become a part of working-class culture in this country.
The James Carville "it's the economy, stupid" only works if boundaries aren't getting tested in a bunch of other avenues.
While he certainly got a lot of mileage out of that quote when he coined it back in the 90's, Bill Clinton (and the people who supported him) weren't pushing the boundaries on a bunch of other things.
All other things being equal, that catch phrase works perfectly.
But what about when all other things aren't equal, how does that play out?
Democrats have been the party of "social progress" for quite some time (since right after the Southern Strategy)
But that has always been a "thread the needle" type of situation. Where they have to present a package that finds the right balance of "how much (sometimes unpopular to the masses) social change can I push for, that it doesn't negate the superior economic benefit I'm providing to the working and middle class"
To highlight the extreme polar opposite ends of that spectrum:
"I'm not going to change anything on social issues or even have an opinion on them, we'll keep the status quo, but these are the policies I have that'll put an extra $6/hour in the pockets of working class Americans"
<----->
"I'm going to legalize heroin, lower the age of consent to 12, and legalize polygamy...but I'll get you an $6/hour raise"
Neither of those are going to be a winning formula, because people do have interests in both...
The key is finding the right mix of "how much social change are some people willing to accept in exchange for better economic situations"
I would suggest that Bill Clinton and Obama were able to tread that needle correctly, Democrats circa 2022 through present have not.
