A Washington think tank is warning the Democratic Party that its reputation with middle-class voters remains in tatters even as President Trump’s approval ratings deteriorate.
Third Way, a centrist Democratic outfit, traces the party’s problems to 2010. That year, President Barack Obama’s relentless pushed healthcare reform amid a lingering recession. Republicans responded with an opposition campaign that asked: “Where are the jobs?”
The episode left the impression that the Democratic Party was more concerned with helping the poor, and to a degree, the wealthy, than creating jobs and economic opportunity for the middle class.
Middle-class Americans with a history of, or open to, voting for Democrats shared those views, which, notwithstanding Obama’s reelection, hardened in the years since, boosting President Trump in 2016 and thwarting a Democratic resurgence since his inauguration.
That’s the conclusion of a new Third Way report that is based on focus groups with persuadable voters from battleground states who supported Obama and Trump, but also with voters the think tank referred to as “Rising American Electorate” voters, among them African Americans, Latinos, and Millennials.
“People think Democrats care about safety-nets and the poor — but not the middle class,” Lanae Erickson Hatalsky, vice president for social policy and politics at Third Way and co-author of the study, told the Washington Examiner in an interview to discuss: “Get to Work, Democrats: Become the Jobs Party.”
Erickson Hatalsky said that, while she and others in Washington might think Trump “doesn’t have his eye on the ball,” middle class voters with a history of voting for Democrats, or inclined to vote for Democrats, see him differently. “They still feel he’s a jobs president, and that’s horrifying if you’re trying to win elections.”
The focus groups were conducted online in early May by the Democratic polling firm Global Strategy Group. Participants were between the ages of 30 and 64 and earned household incomes of less than $100,000 annually.
Erickson Hatalsky and co-author Ryan Pougiales described their key findings:
- Voters feel the Party is not looking out for the middle and working class.
- Instead, it’s prioritizing the poor (and to some extent, the rich).
- Voters intuitively view Democrats as anti-business.
- While many voters support Democrats on social causes, they want the Party to focus on jobs first.
Said one focus group participant in the “Rising American Electorate” category: “I have nothing against social rights but [Democrats] are focusing too much on that.”
Trump’s job approval in polling averages is sitting just under 40 percent, and Democrats lead the generic ballot for which party voters would prefer control Congress by nearly 9 percentage points.
But Erickson Hatalsky worries that talk of a Democratic wave in 2018 is premature, because middle-class voters, and voters who view themselves as middle class, aren’t satisfied with Democrats on the issue most important to them: jobs. At the same time, they believe Trump is delivering, or at least trying, and so far that it is good enough for them.
Democrats, her critical report suggests, have miscalculated with their laser-like focus on strengthening federal programs that comprise the social safety net. Proposals for a higher minimum wage and “free” college tuition, plus other items championed by progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., are similarly in error.
Why? Because middle-class voters perceive those programs and ideas as helping the poor, not Americans like them. Additionally, while they would welcome government action to improve their economic prospects, they prefer it come in the form of policies that help them help themselves, versus programs that require dependence on Washington.
Erickson Hatalsky said that many focus group participants were dismissive of Republican policies as well, but felt that “at least if they do something for rich people, it might trickle down to me at some point. If they do something for poor people, it won’t trickle up to me.”
“They want to feel like they have the tools to take care of their family and have tools to achieve the life they want, not that someone has handed it to them,” she added. “They see themselves as working hard and want to benefit from that hard work — and they feel like the government should be helping people who work hard like them.”
