The Democratic Party Needs To Be Woke (To the Realities of the American Electorate!)

The Democratic Party definitely needs to be woke. But it's not to the panoply of boutique "social justice" issues so dear to the hearts of so many progressive activists. Instead, they need to be woke to the realities of the actually-existing American electorate and the Democrats' ongoing class problem. Hopefully, some of the analysis coming out of the 2020 election will help make that happen.

Take for example the detailed analysis in the New York Times of neighborhoods dominated by Latino and Asian working class voters. Their analysis of data from 20,000 precincts in 20 cities indicates strongly that Democratic performance seriously deteriorated among Latino and Asian working class voters, as has also been indicated by other precinct-level analyses and currently available survey data.

This is a huge problem. Many liberal Democrats have waved away Democrats' large and ongoing problem with white working class voters because, well, they're white and therefore it must be about race. Nothing we can do about that! Besides, we've still got the nonwhite working class so everything is fine.

Maybe not. As I say in the Times article:

"Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, said he worried before the election that Democrats’ focus on racial justice issues came at the expense of outreach about easing the lives of hard-pressed workers.

“In general, it suggests that Democrats’ theory of the case — that their electoral problems were all about race rather than class — was incorrect,” he said."

That's right. The theory of the case has been wrong. Time to get woke.

NYTIMES.COM

Immigrant Neighborhoods Shifted Red as the Country Chose Blue