"Flying the banner of “more economic populism” enables the Left to focus on economic issues while steering clear of more divisive debates around culture. As we have argued, and postelection survey evidence has suggested, the Democrats’ poor reputation with working-class voters is due, in part, to the perception that they are culturally out of touch. Denying this obvious fact is folly. And if Democrats want to win more working-class voters, they have to address the problem head on.

Still, if some economic populists risk ignoring their cultural liabilities, liberal skeptics of populism risk a different mistake: advocating for a return to Clintonism. After all, the New Democrats’ worship of the “knowledge economy” and the old Blue Dog coalition’s embrace of NAFTA and the job loss that took place thereafter were a big part of why working-class Democrats left the party.

Democrats need to address the economic interests of the working class, which means confronting the millionaires and billionaires and the warped economy they’ve created, while also speaking to the values of most workers. And that means confronting liberal cultural elitism.

In other words, the problem is that economic populism alone simply isn’t populist enough."

https://jacobin.com/2024/12/democrats-dealignment-populism-culture-class/

#USA #DemocraticParty #EconomicPopulism #CulturalElitism