In the last week before the elections, Joe Biden visited the area of south-western Pennsylvania with the aim of not winning it so far as to reveal to the overwhelmingly white electorate of the area that his party was at least willing to try.
“A lot of white, working class Democrats thought we forgot,” Biden said after touring a syndicate during a swing in Westmoreland County late September. “I’m left behind their sense of being.”
Democrats have offered peers like that since the New Deal was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and an alliance with popular voters was forged. That bond was rooted in the view that the policies of the Democrats would improve the lives of the workers.
But that relationship has constantly collapsed, with working class voters now casting Democrats as the cultural elite party which speaks to them and rejects their values. Such resentment has even pushed workers to vote against their apparent economic self-interest, since GOP tax policy often focuses on the well-being and enterprise.
Biden and his party now hope to gain at least a larger number of working-class voters by pushing the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief and economic stimuli — which will have a heavily-weighted benefit for lower- and middle-income Americans.
The President flies to Delaware County, outside Philadelphia, on Tuesday to help foster new assistance.
Nevertheless, that argument — which Republicans reject as a “liberal wish list” — is being tested in places such as Westmoreland County. The county was a Democratic stronghold more than 250 miles west of it until its industrial base shrank.
“These are the kinds of problems that we should focus on a little more in this field,” said Paul Adams, a former Democrat county official.
“Even though we have sympathy for other matters,” Adams said, referring to greater efforts to combat racism and promote homosexual rights, “it’s hard to get involved with that of the local population.”
Democrats are strongly opposed to this criticism of direct payments of $1,400 to most Americans under COVID-19 law. The package also dramatically increases family tax credits, supports unemployment benefits, reduces taxes on student debt and reduces the cost of covering Obama’s health legislation.
Ed Rendell, Pennsylvania’s former Democratic Governor, said the legislation is “a good first mile down the road,” not just to solve the problems of the party with the working-class voters.
“We have a duty to make the case — that I believe we have always done a (terrible) task — that we are the working guy party,” said Rendell. “And smoke and mirrors are used by the Republicans.”
The law could reduce the country’s poverty rate by one-third according to some estimates. This could have an outsize impact on Western County, where less than 65 people receive more federal disability benefits than a national average and less than 1/3 of those with a college degree, according to federal estimates.
The town of Jeannette used to be the “glass capital of the world,” but almost all these factories have been gone for a long time. In 1988, the nearby Volkswagen plant was shut down and 2 500 jobs were destroyed.
However, the strong economic incentives in the relief project collide with former President Donald Trump’s structural support here. The hillsides of the hilly roads still lie beyond the hulky husks of abandoned bottlework – often carefully preserved against winter snow. Last summer, the Democratic County Sheriff became a Republican, stating that his old party did not strongly support enforcement during protests over police brutality and racism.
Like Biden, Trump campaigned for nearly 30 percentage points in Westmoreland County and won the county. But Biden received approximately 11,000 more votes than Hillary Clinton had in 2016. This is significant because Biden won only about 80,500 votes for Pennsylvania.
Bill Bretz, the President of the Republican Party County, said that other policies in Biden’s administration have reversed the new direct economic benefits. This includes the nixing of Keystone XL, which raised concerns that natural gas producers in Pennsylvania could face similar limitations in the name of combating climate change.
“There are many people who are still registered Democrats, who still hold on to the Democratic values of the working class,” said Bretz. “But the national democratic platform violates their sensitivities.”
People like Mary Wilmes, who owns a gift shop in Greensburg County’s seat, do not like to talk about politics to customers. But she offered praise for Biden and his stimulus work. “He gives you the feeling that he cares about people,” she said.
“It’s not like before,” added Wilmes, “when it’s all about itself, what we have been.
The white working class helped fuel Trump’s rise in 2016, but since 1992, these electors have actually been republicans, according to research by Noam Lupu, Professor of Political Science at University Vanderbilt. African Americans remained consistently loyal to Democrats, but Trump witnessed his support among Latinos improving in 2020. This could show that a wider shift away from the Democrats could echo some Hispanics.
“I think it is a tough coalition to maintain for the Democratic Party: working-class voters, who really focus on economic interests but at the same time very progressive social positions for urban, educated voters,” said Lupu. “I think Biden has a chance to rebrand the party a bit.”
The working class usually refers to those without college degrees who have lower salaries. This can also mean better educated middle-class employees who don’t like to define themselves as rich or poor. According to AP VoteCast, a national electorate survey, Trump won 62 percent of white voters without a university degree in November.
During the campaign, Biden tried to contrast what he called the sensitivities of the working family of his hometown of Scranton (Pennsylvania) with the major city values of Trump’s Fifth Avenue. Biden also promised to be “the most pro-Union president you ever saw.”
“Some working class people have seen politics fail in their families and it is sometimes the Democrats and Republicans that are in charge,” said Rick Levy, the president of the Texas AFL-CIO. “It’s creating a demagogue opening saying ‘I can fix it.'”
Some Top Republicans have begun arguing that theirs is indeed the working class group, mixing economic attraction with key social issues such as promoting gun rights and opposing abortion, as well as emphasising the opposition to cancelling some of Dr. Seuss’s books and removing “Mr.”
“We’re a working-class party now,” tweeted the night electoral Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley. Hawley also proposed legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 for progressive democrats.
The GOP was recently declared by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas as “the steel workers and builders’ party and taxi drivers and cops and firefighters and waitresses.” He has proposed a $10,000 bond to help parents living in areas where schools are shut down due to the virus to pay for education elsewhere.
The online giant’s leadership has been accused of conducting a “cultural war against working class values” by Sen. Marco Roubi, R-Fla., at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama.
Levy said Democrats now have the option of pointing to specific provisions in the relief law which also shows that the GOP “will never support people of the working class.”
Some say, however, that the stimulus package could be hollow in the long term.
“It’s good now,” said Lucas Szekely, a 19-year-old Irwin community college student west of Jeannette about another check for stimulus. “But you can’t continue to do it forever.”
