Democrats May Have Won More Suburban Votes in the Midterms. That Doesn’t Bode Well.
If Democrats survived this week’s midterms because they increased their share of wealthier voters, it’s a bad omen for building a working-class coalition around left-wing politics. Something needs to change.
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Josh Shapiro gives a victory speech to supporters at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center on November 8, 2022, in Oaks, Pennsylvania. Shapiro defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano. (Mark Makela / Getty Images)
With the votes from Tuesday’s elections still being counted — and with so many questions surrounding the Republicans’ unexpectedly poor showing still lacking definitive answers — Jacobin’s Seth Ackerman decided to check in with Jacobin contributing editor Matt Karp to get his thoughts on what is shaping up to be a highly unusual midterm election. Over the years, Karp, associate professor of history at Princeton, has written extensively for Jacobin about the ongoing class dealignment in American politics and its baleful implications for the Left. While we don’t yet have the data to know for sure, Karp says, the signs so far don’t point to any significant change in that trend.
Seth Ackerman
On Twitter, someone relayed a pretty mind-blowing statistic highlighted by Matthew Dowd. Apparently, according to exit polls, those who “somewhat disapprove” of Joe Biden voted for Democrats by +4 percent this year, whereas in 2010, in the Obama midterm, among people who “somewhat disapproved” of Barack Obama, they voted Republican by +40 percent.
Matt Karp
Yeah, it’s interesting. There’s obviously some kind of abstraction between Biden and the Democratic Party going on. Maybe there’s a sort of general agreement that Biden is a different kind of president somehow. I don’t know quite what to make of that. Whether that actually says something about what the quality of disapproval for Biden is in its intensity or whether it has to do with a consciousness that doesn’t identify Biden with the Democrats, I’m not sure.
Sorry, but this article is available to active subscribers only. Please log in or become a subscriber.