© (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)US President Joe Biden tours the Carrollton water treatment plant May 6, 2021, in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
They were once the devoted base of the Democratic Party, a New Deal coalition that came together with FDR's creation of a slew of federal programs aimed at modernizing non-urban areas and creating jobs - especially for those without college educations. But by the 1970s, they had soured on the Democrats, gravitating to GOP stalwarts like Ronald Reagan and eschewing a party increasingly associated with social issues.
Since then, working class America has had an uneasy at best, hostile at worst, relationship with the party that once claimed to protect its interests. Late-20th century Democratic leaders embraced free trade deals and offered up retraining programs to transition middle-aged manufacturing workers to new-economy jobs.
Even as Republicans touted tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, it was the Democrats who became tagged with the moniker of the party of elites. It didn't help that former President Barack Obama talked about working-class Americans who "cling to guns and religion," or 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton referring to a "basket of deplorables" backing Donald Trump.
"Democrats were felt (by working class voters) to be condescending and pro-free trade and worried about the end of the world. People who are worried about the end of the month are incredibly offended" that Democrats were paying more attention to things like climate change than jobs, says Joan Williams, author of the book "White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America" and a law professor at the University of California, Hastings School of Law.
President Joe Biden is trying to win back that vote - or at least, enough of it to give the party a more stable majority.
And he starts from a demographic and electoral hole: Trump won white, non-college educated voters by a more than 2-1 margin in 2020, 67% to Biden's 32%.
Biden improved his standing among labor union voters, winning that voter group by a 16-point margin, 56% to 40%, double the advantage Clinton had in that voter group in 2016 against Trump. But Biden lost the union vote to Trump in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Democrats long relied on the "blue wall" of the post-industrial Northeast and Midwest to win presidential elections, and lost in 2016 largely because Trump narrowly wrested Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania from the blue column.
While changing demographics - such as a growing non-white population and migration to the Sun Belt by younger, more left-leaning voters - are a central part of Democrats' electoral future, the party cannot write off the northern states, experts say.
While Biden was able to pick up Georgia and Arizona, for example, he still would have lost to Trump if he had failed to take back at least one of the three battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Peeling off just a portion of working class voters can make the difference.
"Most of us (Democrats) were hoping for our nominee to be a person who could not frighten away but really appeal to some of those white, working class guys," says John Austin, director of the Michigan Economic Center and a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program. While Biden won the nomination thanks to Black voters, "he may have not repelled a few of the working class whites who otherwise would go the other way," Austin says.
That's a tough task, experts say, since many in that voter group feel abandoned during deindustrialization and are facing minority status by 2045. Trump appealed to that group by demonizing immigrants and casting Democrats as the favorite of intellectual and social elites.
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But the president - perhaps because of his own background as the son of a struggling family in Scranton, Pennsylvania - appears to be making some inroads.
Biden's American Rescue Plan, a $1.8 trillion package to provide COVID-19 relief in the form of direct payments to households and extended unemployment insurance, remains very popular. And not only do polls show that his other big-ticket packages - an infrastructure and jobs plan, and an American Families Plan heavy on education subsidies and paid family leave - are popular, but they have support among lower-income voters and those without a college education.
A Monmouth University poll late last month, for example, found that 57% of whites without a college education back Biden's infrastructure plan compared to 39% who oppose it, while 53% back the American Families Plan and 44% oppose it.
Among income groups, people earning less than $50,000 a year were most supportive of both the infrastructure plan and the families plan, in the Monmouth poll: 76% support the infrastructure plan and 21% oppose it. On the families package, 74% of people earning less than $50,000 are in favor and 25% are against it.
"There's some ground softening with that group," says Patrick Murray, director of the poll. While those voters might be more conservative on issues like immigration and social issues, they care about kitchen-table economics, and "that's exactly what the Biden administration understands," Murray adds.
Biden's rhetoric is also part of his pitch. When he talks about Trump, he mentions that the former president reminds him of guys he knew growing up, who "thought they were better than you." He talks about raising taxes in the context of wealthy people paying their "fair share" - a softer version of the more aggressively populist message of his progressive primary opponents.
Republicans have been getting the white, working-class vote by "tapping into resentment of elites," Williams says. "Until Biden came on the scene, Republicans owned it, in a completely uncontested way."
Biden and other top White House figures have been traveling the country to promote his spending packages, focusing on places where blue-collar and union workers reside. Destinations included Utah and Nevada, where first lady Jill Biden was this week; blue-collar Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, where second gentleman Doug Emhoff went this week; Rhode Island and Wisconsin, where Vice President Kamala Harris was this week; and Central Virginia and Louisiana, where Biden was this week.
In Lake Charles, Louisiana, Biden talked about the problems traffic congestion and climate change caused the coastal state, but he quickly pivoted to the 16 million jobs he said his infrasture plan would create - and for "ordinary" American homes, "like the one I came from," the president said.
"A lot of you watching from home are thinking: Are these jobs for you?" Biden said. "If you feel left out and forgotten in a changing economy, let me speak directly to you," the president said, adding that the 90% of the jobs created would not demand a college degree and 75% would not require a two-year degree.
"Biden has an appeal - he has a policy appeal, but he also has an emotional appeal," says Harrison Hickman, a veteran Democratic pollster.
Democrats have often been reluctant to discuss class, fearful of being accused of creating class warfare, Hickman says. "Biden - he recognizes that class divisions are fairly permanent. The fact that he can acknowledge it and speak directly to it is a tremendous improvement," Hickman adds. "If there is a chance to get these people back, you have to do it that way."
Whether Biden can get working class voters to pressure GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill to back the spending plans is another question - and a less likely scenario as Senate Republicans vow to fight Biden's agenda.
But the effort - especially if even a scaled-back version of the infrasture plan passes and is successful - could help Democrats as they face a daunting midterm season that could deprive Democrats of their majorities in both chambers of Congress.
Moving just a sliver of white working class voters in key districts could make the difference, experts say. Republicans have had a strong hold on that voter group for decades.
"Can we see another shift? Absolutely," Hickman says.
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