FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with reporters as he departs for travel to Pennsylvania from the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, D.C. U.S., July 15, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst//File Photo
Democratic strategists are hoping that the far-right MAGA movement will suffer major rebukes via the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential race, but they have a variety of opinions on ways to achieve that.
Some progressive activists believe that Democrats need to double down on the economic populism of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), noting that they have no problem drawing sizable crowds. But many Democratic strategists point to more moderate figures like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as role models for winning by double digits in tough, competitive, difficult swing states.
In an article published by The Guardian on July 22, union leader Dustin Guastella — who serves as director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia and is also a research associate at the Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) — points to newly published CWCP research as a "path out of the wilderness" for Democrats who are still frustrated by Kamala Harris' narrow loss to now-President Donald Trump in 2024.
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"In a report published by Jacobin Magazine," the Teamsters leader explains, "we analyzed working-class responses to 128 survey questions from academic surveys stretching back to 1960. We looked at class attitudes toward major topics like immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, civil rights, social norms and economic policies. The result is the most sophisticated, comprehensive, and up-to-date portrait of American working-class social and economic attitudes available. And it provides the best evidence yet for the potential of a certain kind of populist politics."
CWCP analysis, according to Guastella, "can help shed light on what working-class voters actually want."
"Our work shows that working-class voters are, and have always been, decidedly less progressive than their middle- and upper-class counterparts when it comes to social and cultural issues," Guastella notes. "But the story is more complicated than it seems. It's not the case, for instance, that blue-collar workers are becoming more socially conservative. Instead of a rising tide of reaction, we show that working-class attitudes have actually drifted slowly toward more socially and culturally liberal positions over decades. At the same time, however, middle- and upper-class Americans have raced toward uber-liberalism, especially in recent years, opening up a yawning class gap on social attitudes. A first step to winning back workers is closing that gap."
Guastella continues, "On the economic front, the situation is different. Most working-class voters are what we call 'economic egalitarians' — they favor government interventions to level the playing field, they take inequality seriously, and they support programs that increase the economic and social power of working people."
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Guastella strongly disagrees with Democratic strategists who say that all Trump voters hold far-right reviews on social issues.
"Of course, many of these same voters have such conservative views on social issues that they would never vote for a Democrat," Guastella argues. "But are there any working-class populists in the Trump coalition who hold socially moderate attitudes? There are. 11 percent of them, to be exact. We found that about 11 percent of Trump voters maintained socially moderate and economically egalitarian views. Now, that may not sound like a lot, but it's a significant slice of the electorate, comprising about 5 percent of the total."
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Read Dustin Guastella's full article for The Guardian at this link.