Left behind: 5-alarm fire raised on younger voters

Something has been nagging at me for the better part of a week. I mean besides the 173 other things that have yanked at me since 2016, and whittled away at my faith in an America that doesn’t include some demented version of a MAGA cult bombing around the countryside making our lives miserable.

While researching a story on Republicans’ attack on our social security benefits, I stumbled into an eye-opening piece and trailing interview March 18, assembled by Ezra Klein of The New York Times with David Shor, who is the head of data science at something called, Blue Rose Research.

As Klein describes it, Blue Rose, “is a big Democratic consulting firm that does a huge amount of political surveying, data interpretation and message testing.”

The piece called, “Democrats Need to Face Why Trump Won” was long, informative and stuffed with gobs of eye-opening information that drilled into what was allegedly behind the party’s terrible losses in November.

I’d not heard of Shor before, but he comes off as a dangerously sharp guy who can put lucid words behinds all his numbers — one of those showoffs who is good at both math and English.

Klein’s piece spends a lot of time explaining how “Democrats are losing working-class voters.” But before I plow into this further, I want to do a little housekeeping, and explain how I have recently come to understand the term “working class voters” is a bit loaded, and aimed at addressing specifically white voters.

So indulge me for 23 seconds, while I let my friend, California Democratic Strategist Christopher Webb explain it, because I think it is worth hearing:

“Working class is not an insult, but to Black people’s ears, when we hear “working class,” we hear white working class.
Over time, that’s how it’s been used—working class equals white working class. So when we hear that phrase, it feels like we’re being excluded because you’re not talking to us or about us. The phrase working class has historically been racialized, often implying white working class in political and media discussions.
That’s why I prefer: ‘workers, working people, or working folk.’
It’s more inclusive. I’m not a blue-collar worker, but I am a worker. I need to work to earn a living—so why would we be excluded?
My wife calls us “working folk.”

Smart dude with a smarter wife. From now on, “working class voters” will be addressed as “working folk” at Enough Already, and thanks for your consideration.

Moving on …

In the past decade, Democrats have been losing the working folk faster than I have been losing the hair on my head.

Neither is a pretty story.

According to numbers provided by Shor’s group, in this year's presidential election 75-year-old white men supported Kamala Harris by 14 points over 20-year-old white men.

Read that again.

The first time I saw that, the flippant side of me said, “So, the get-the-hell-off-my-lawn gang have now become the snot-nosed kids watching Joe Rogan on their smart phones in their mothers’ basements. Ain’t that a kick.”

The dead-serious side of me said: “This is a really big, damn problem for Democrats, who not so long ago could count on this vote to pad their margins.”

Worse? Among all 18-year-olds, women of color are the only group Harris won. Trump even won nonwhite men in this age group by a narrow margin.

Yes, HOLY COW.

Even worse yet? Unlike the traditional get-the-hell-off-my-lawn crowd, the actuarial tables are far friendlier to these younger dudes, who are going to be hanging around in what’s left of America for a long, damn while.

We better start reaching them — pronto.

Look, as an older dude who was once a younger dude, I get the inclination of these kids to push back against people who are telling ‘em what they are supposed to feel, what they are supposed to say, and how they are supposed to act without first understanding their situation, and their capacity to think it all through.

There's a reason it’s mostly younger dudes who do all the dying on our battlefields. I was 17 when I joined the Navy, and not exactly a deep-thinker, so if you pointed at some enemy and told me to go get ‘em, I wasn’t considering a whole helluva lot about the significant downside in that scenario, I was just following orders.

And if it sounds like I am insulting these kids again, that’s fair, but it’s one of the privileges of once being a stupid, young guy who has somehow made it well into adulthood despite myself. I have earned the right to knock their heads together.

They will probably get that, even if you you don’t.

Guys …

The truth is Democrats are doing more for these lads than Republicans ever could. What they can’t seem to do is talk to them about that. I think guys like Rogan are pompous, opportunist a--holes, but they are effective communicators, and are reaching these kids in droves.

They figure finally, somebody is speaking to them.

Another interesting bit from Klein’s piece that caught my eye among hundreds of ‘em (seriously, his write and interview just blew my mind) was this:

“the lower your political engagement, education level or socioeconomic status, and the less engaged you are in politics, the more Trumpy you are. And that just wasn’t true four years ago.”

So it’s getting worse, not better.

It’s easier on the ears to listen to a blowhard like Trump stroke you, than it is to really plow into who the hell it is who put you in this predicament in the first place …

As a 65-year-old man, I am not going to sit here and pretend I know what it is exactly they want to talk about, or what it is they are so damn angry about right now. Besides, I never raised one.

I do have two grown daughters, though, who thankfully managed to avoid guys like that, and instead married men who know how damn lucky they are.

If I had to guess, though, they are mad and confused. They are probably feeling left behind. So when they see a racist cult leader who is beating on everybody except for them, it comes off as a welcome change.

Despite my worry, I do think this a relatively easy fix. I am not suggesting Democrats turn into the party of toxic masculinity, but I am saying they should make an effort to point out the good they are doing, and who most certainly isn’t.

I touched upon some of this in my previous column “Declaration of Independents.” There are Democrats and Independents talking about, and landing punches, on many of these issues where they simply have not been connecting lately.

Bernie Sanders has been on rewind on this stuff forever, and has been joined at the hip lately by New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). They have been drawing huge crowds, because they get what is running people off the Democratic Party.

Read almost any speech by Sanders recently, and you’ll come across this phrasing, or a close variant:

"Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous (2024) campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not."

“… the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing …”

If that doesn't explain young, male voters — among others — I don’t know what does.

We have a gigantic election here in Wisconsin next Tuesday, and Klein’s piece has been ringing in my ears. The future direction of our Supreme Court and this state are literally up for grabs.

The choice between Judge Susan Crawford, and Brad Schimel, a lowlife who has been bought and paid for by the despicable Elon Musk should be an easy one.

Except the race will be too damn close, like all the elections are in this nail-biter of a state.

What will these younger voters do?

Have they learned anything the past four months while Trump burns it all down?

Will they turn out?

These are suddenly tricky questions, because after looking at Shor’s numbers, it might be best if they just stayed home for now ...

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D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.