President Joe Biden is admitting that working and lower-middle-class Americans typically favor Republicans today, blaming Democrats for “not paying attention” to them.
During a speech this week in Virginia, Biden made the admission that the nation’s mostly populist, working and lower-middle-class electorate prefers the GOP’s new wave of national populism over Democrats’ increasing embrace of upper-middle-class and wealthy values.
“Folks, too many people have been left behind in the past. Too many people, like my dad, too many people were treated like they were invisible,” Biden said:
Isn’t it kind of interesting why all of a sudden … blue-collar workers — all the guys I grew up with in Claymont and Scranton — they vote Republican. Not a joke. What happened? [Emphasis added]
BIDEN: "All of the sudden, Blue Collar workers, all the guys I grew up with, […] they're voting Republican? Not a joke. What's happened? They don't think we care. We're not paying attention." pic.twitter.com/uG5yhFbfV4
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) January 26, 2023
“I think a lot of it is because they don’t think we care,” Biden continued. “We’re not paying attention. It’s a little bit like what happened when I ran the first time as a 29-year-old kid for the Senate in 1972 and got elected. We had what I called ‘limousine liberals.’ A lot of people wanted to do an awful lot but they just forgot about my neighborhood, forgot about the neighborhood I grew up in.”
Indeed, pollsters have found that Democrats have become the party of elite values while Republicans, with an “America First” agenda centered on the quality of life of the nation’s working and middle classes, are more in line with most voters at lower-wage levels.
“What is driving the defection of working, middle-class voters — who make up the majority of the electorate — from the Democratic Party? The answer: Democrats’ priorities are substantially out-of-touch with this group specifically, and with those of the largely populist American electorate generally,” pollsters Douglas Schoen and Robert Green revealed after last year’s midterm elections:
These voters are most concerned with skyrocketing prices, the looming recession, and rising crime. They also view uncontrolled immigration as a major concern, and see it as intertwined with crime rates. [Emphasis added]
…
Three key everyday issues crowd out all the others with these voters, because they threaten individual advancement today: the deteriorating economy, increasing crime rates, and the migrant crisis at the Southern border.
[Emphasis added]…
Put succinctly, the Democratic Party’s priorities line up with less than one-third of the electorate—our “anti-populist” group. But most voters, 69 percent, are either fully or partially populist, and hold views that align with the 2022 Republican agenda. [Emphasis added]
The Democrats’ realignment as a party that represents elite values has also been seen in recent political donation trends. As the New York Times reported, in the 2020 election, Democrats dominated with dark money groups funded by billionaires.
“The analysis shows that 15 of the most politically active nonprofit organizations that generally align with the Democratic Party spent more than $1.5 billion in 2020 — compared to roughly $900 million spent by a comparable sample of 15 of the most politically active groups aligned with the GOP,” the Times reported.
Likewise, in 2020, the nation’s biggest banks and Wall Street executives lined up behind Biden against former President Trump.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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