White working-class communities, immensely harmed by the globalization of the American economy over the last two decades, in Pennsylvania are increasingly souring on the Democrat Party, the New York Times suggests.
With only days ahead of the midterm elections, working-class Pennsylvanians say Democrats are increasingly out of touch with their cultural values and economic needs as the party shifts to one centered around college-educated voters, corporate interests, and big dollar donors.
In Scranton, Pennsylvania — President Joe Biden’s birthplace — 30-year carpenter Steve Papp told the Times that it has been difficult for him to convince his fellow carpenters and iron workers in the local union to vote for Democrats this cycle.
Even as Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D), running against Mehmet Oz for Pennsylvania’s open United States Senate seat, has attempted to define himself as a defender of working-class communities and American union workers, local Democrats told the Times they are struggling to get such voters to vote Democrat.
The Times reports:
Justin Taylor, the mayor of nearby Carbondale, is another Obama-Trump voter. Elected as a 25-year-old Democrat almost two decades ago, he endorsed Mr. Trump in 2020 and grew increasingly more Republican, just like the city he serves. [Emphasis added]
Today, he is adamantly opposed to Mr. Fetterman, calling him a liberal caricature and the kind of candidate the left thinks will appeal to the people of Carbondale, a shrinking town of under 10,000 people that was founded on anthracite coal. “I think, quite honestly, he is an empty Carhartt sweatshirt and the people who are working class in Pennsylvania see that,” Mr. Taylor said. [Emphasis added]
Mr. Taylor is still technically a registered Democrat, he said, but he feels judged by his own party. “The Democratic Party forces it down your throat,” he said, “and they make you a bigot, they make you a racist, they make you a homophobe if you don’t understand a concept, or you don’t 100 percent agree.” [Emphasis added]
At the same time, white college-educated Pennsylvanians are falling in line more and more with Democrats like Biden and Fetterman.
One such voter, a 59-year-old woman who once owned a gourmet market outside of Scranton, told the Times she was raised a Republican but is now voting Democrat and for Fetterman, wishing he would wear a suit instead of his signature athletic shorts and hoodie sweatshirt.
When the woman went to change her party registration from Republican to Democrat, she said the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) attendant was baffled as most locals wanting to change their party registration are former Democrats switching to Republicans.
Democrats’ increasing distance from working-class Americans toward college-educated voters was seen in the last presidential election. As the Times reported, Biden won a majority of college-educated voters against former President Trump, and specifically, a majority of white college-educated voters.
“About 27 percent of Mr. Biden’s supporters in 2020 were white voters without a college degree, according to Pew Research, down from the nearly 60 percent of Bill Clinton’s supporters who were whites without a degree just 28 years earlier,” the Times reported.
Republicans have made enormous gains with working-class Americans by embracing a nationalist-populist policy agenda on a number of issues. In the current cycle, for instance, Oz has taken a position on wages that focuses on bypassing the low minimum wage to get working and middle-class Pennsylvanians high-wage jobs in the energy sector.
The GOP, though, still has much work to do in reversing its longstanding brand of favoring business interests over workers’ interests.
The latest CBS News/YouGov poll, for example, shows that nearly 5-in-10 registered voters believe the GOP puts the interests of the wealthy ahead of the American middle class — including 48 percent of swing voters.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.