Tensions are rising between those who profess to want to redefine the “soul” of America and those who have traditionally provided them the votes to win elections.
A new report from the Manhattan Institute warns that increasing tensions inside the Democratic Party between woke White elites and working class voters threaten to tear the party apart.
Sociologist Zach Goldberg warns that, “those with a college education tend to be wealthier and have higher socioeconomic status than those without, but they also tend to be more socially liberal and more likely to prioritize post-material moral concerns over kitchen-table issues.”
There is certainly no shortage of evidence that the Democratic Party abandoning the working class and going woke has sent a stampede of white non-college voters in the other direction.
The GOP won non-college Whites by 24 points in the 2018 midterms but upped that to 34 points in 2022. Democrats also lost 17 points with college-educated minorities and 15 points with non-college educated minorities between the two most recent midterm elections.
Minorities make up the replacement voters who these “masters of the universe” elites plan on consolidating to offset the rejection by white blue collar of their vision for America.
But, banking on minorities to fill the void is risky, because minorities largely do not share the same unbalanced views on social issues as the ivory-tower elites steering the Democratic Party.
Pew Research polling shows only a third of Black Democrats believe gender identity is detached from biological sex, while nearly three-quarters (72%) of White Democrats claim to believe it.
Pew’s data also shows Blacks are growing more conservative, not less. The share of Black Americans who believe gender is based on biology is up 11% since 2017. That’s not an easy gap to close, especially with the unnerving elevation of the transgender movement by the far left in just the past few years.
The Democratic party’s insane social agenda is starting to push men to the right in increasing numbers too. The GOP won men by 4 points in 2018, but won them by 14 points in 2022. Minority men are shifting toward the GOP at a rapid rate. Democrats lost 11 points with Black men between midterm elections, going from 76 points in 2018 to 65 points in 2022. With Latino men the shift was more substantial. Democrats went from winning Latino men by 29 points in 2018 to just 8 points in 2022.
Even men who identify as Democrats are increasingly critical of the radical left’s embrace of radical feminism and the transgender movement, and younger men are particularly critical.
A 2022 survey out of the Southern Poverty Law Center found nearly half of younger Democrat men say “gender ideology has corrupted American culture” while just 20% of older Democrat men say so.
Younger Democrats are also concerned the transgender movement is a threat to children, with 42% of younger Democrat men saying that the transgender movement is a threat to children and 40% saying it is “trying to indoctrinate children.”
Democrats have largely abandoned attempts to win back working-class Whites, and are counting on minorities continuing to support them in droves. However, they are in a very vulnerable position if they continue to beat working-class voters over the head with their reason-defying social ideology.
A standard analysis of why Democrats are losing minorities at the margins is that their handling of the economy has been nothing short of catastrophic. That is certainly true, but there’s more to the picture. Minority voters are not on-board with the radical direction the party is being steered.
As Democrat elites continue to preach an ideology which denies biology and genetics, they are losing their grip on those very voters they depend upon to hold power. The message to those on the right seeking to win at the polls is that supporting traditional views of biology and gender is a winner with minority voters, and those who argue that cultural issues should be abandoned would deny conservatives one of the long sought keys to breaking the left’s minority voter stranglehold.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2023/02/increasing-wokeness-and-class-division-threaten-to-tear-the-left-apart/