But they dispute the argument made by “many analysts” that “the Democratic Party has managed this sea change by shifting from economic to cultural and identity appeals.”
Instead, Hacker and his collaborators write,
Even as Democrats have increasingly relied on affluent, educated voters, the party has embraced a more ambitious economic agenda. The national party has bridged the Blue Divide not by forswearing redistribution or foregrounding cultural liberalism, but by formulating an increasingly bold economic program — albeit one that elides important inequalities within its metro-based multiracial coalition.
Instead of downplaying or abandoning the party’s commitment to liberal economic policies, Hacker and his co-authors write,
Democratic elites have stepped up their emphasis on big economic programs and the active use of government to shape the economy, even as they have courted affluent suburban voters. Indeed, those aspirations have actually grown more ambitious as the party’s voting base has become more affluent and suburban, culminating in a breathtakingly expansive policy agenda after Democrats captured the House, Senate and presidency in 2020.
Hacker and his colleagues write that Biden’s 2021 proposals “constituted the most extensive package of economic benefits for low- and middle-income families in a majority party’s legislative agenda since at least the 1960s.”
The authors acknowledge that the changing composition of the Democratic electorate is altering the character of the party:
Given Democrats’ historical identity as the party of ‘the little guy,’ the most striking result of this shift is the growing share of highly affluent voters who back the party. The authors note that “by 2020, Democrats enjoyed roughly the same average vote margins (a 10—15 point edge) among voters in the top income quintile as they did among voters in the bottom quintile” while doing far less well among voters in the three middle quintiles.
With Democrats’ strongest base of support concentrated in cities, the need to remain competitive, Hacker and his co-authors write,
has made the Democrats’ growing reliance on prosperous metro areas (i.e., suburbs) both necessary and consequential. The party’s base has long been in cities, but the party has dramatically expanded its reach into less dense suburban areas that are economically integrated with major urban centers.
While Hacker’s argument that Democrats’ dependence on voters in upscale areas is “both necessary and consequential” is a subject of contention, Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, argues that the consequences of the strategy Hacker describes could prove problematic.
“To the extent that the nation’s political discourse is driven by highly educated people,” Lee wrote by email, “there is danger that opinion leaders are falling increasingly out of touch with the rest of the population.”
In the past, Lee continued,
There was not a strong party divide along educational lines, with highly educated people identifying as both Republicans and Democrats. This meant that the class of people prominent in opinion leadership roles (including academia and journalism) was broadly representative of the rest of the country. That is clearly less true today.
William Galston, a senior fellow at Brookings with extensive experience in Democratic politics, disagrees to some extent to with the approach outlined by Hacker. In an email, Galston wrote:
There are decisive arguments against this strategy:
1. The lines between the white working class and the nonwhite working class are eroding. Donald Trump received 41 percent of the non-college Hispanic vote in 2020 and may well do better this time around. If this turns out to be the case, then the old Democratic formula — add minorities to college-educated voters to make a majority — becomes obsolete.
2. The share of young Americans attending and completing college peaked a decade ago and has been fitfully declining ever since.
3. The “stop chasing the working-class vote” approach flunks the most important test — Electoral College math. The stubborn fact is that working-class voters (especially but not only white) form a larger share of the electorate in key battleground states, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania than they do nationally.
Galston provided The Times with data showing that while the national share of white working class voters is 35 percent, it is 45 percent in Pennsylvania, 52 percent in Michigan and 56 percent in Wisconsin, all battleground states Biden won in close contests in 2020 and states that the Democrats are very likely need again this November.