Democrats could have taken the results of last week’s election as a moment to pause and reflect. They could have looked at a new CNN poll showing 60% of voters believe President Joe Biden isn’t paying attention to the nation’s biggest problems. They could have listened to Democratic strategist Ruy Teixeira, who pointed out that crime, immigration, and critical race theory are all real issues that actual voters care about.
Nah!
Democrats are not doing any of those things. Instead, they seem intent on learning nothing from their huge losses at the ballot box last week. They are instead blaming voters and escalating their condemnation of white people in general. They especially loathe white women for not voting Democratic, and they reserve the most venom for white women who lack a college education.
“Racism still works in Virginia,” former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee Howard Dean said soon after Glenn Youngkin was declared the next governor of Virginia on election night.
“It’s not the messaging, folks,” the Atlantic’s Jemele Hill added. “This country simply loves white supremacy.”
As exit poll data came in, Vox climate reporter David Roberts narrowed the blame, writing “Youngkin not only ran on racism — he ran on a very specific kind of racism targeted at white women. And white women came through for him.” Reacting to the same polling data, feminist author Mona Eltahawy agreed. “White women voters are footsoldiers of white supremacist patriarchy,” she wrote.
Perhaps feeling this hit too close to home, fellow feminist author Amy Siskind moved to absolve college-educated white women. “College-educated white women voted for McAuliffe by a bigger margin than Biden,” Siskind proudly noted. “Non-college white women gave it to Youngkin and the reason is simple: racism. They don’t want progress.”
“I join others in being dismayed and disgusted by these women,” Siskind finished.
Almost 60% of all voters in 2020 had no college degree. White voters without a college degree made up 35% of the electorate. This is a huge chunk of the voting-age population. Instead of listening to these fellow citizens and learning what their concerns are, Democrats just say they are “dismayed and disgusted” by them and, without justification, call them racists.
No wonder America is so divided. One party looks down its nose at more than a third of the nation. Whenever leftists lose, they claim it is because the unwashed masses, so far beneath them, are incapable of seeing their own self-interest and are unworthy of empathy or respect.
Republicans have not always listened to these voters either. They ignored non-college-educated voters’ concerns about unfair trade with China and low-skilled immigration across the southern border. Cheap foreign imports and labor undermine the wages needed to support a family.
For all his faults, former President Donald Trump taught Republicans to compete for and win voters without college degrees, and not just white ones, who traditionally supported Democrats when the party of the Left cared about or listened to them. Republicans have learned this lesson.
There remains more that Republicans can do to make their party welcoming. But their best allies are, for the moment, Democrats who think they are so smart and above everyone else that their only option is to condescend to more than a third of the electorate.
