Trump Stole Bernie’s Working-Class Story. Dems Should Steal It Back.

Donald Trump won this election by winning the working class, massively improving his margins among voters without college degrees, young men, and Latinos. These are precisely the groups that Sanders managed to inspire and win in each of his campaigns. Trump dominated the online and new media ecosystem exemplified by Joe Rogan; in 2020, Bernie went on Rogan’s show and won him over. Trump ran on rage, performing solidarity with the many Americans who feel anger right now; Bernie, too, is extremely angry, and he’s never been afraid to show it.

But this is perhaps the most vital thing to understand about Sanders’ approach. Human beings need stories. Stories, to be compelling—to anyone, but especially to people who are unhappyz—need villains. Trump has a story that features clear villains; like every fascist and rightwing authoritarian before him, he directs, channels, and amplifies voters’ anger towards groups that are easy to scapegoat, like immigrants and transgender people, as well as institutions that they feel have failed them, like the elites of both the Democratic and Republican parties. It’s simple, it’s visceral, and it works. Or at least, it works in a vacuum, when unhappy voters are not offered any other story about why their lives are harder, less secure, or more painful than they should be.

There’s no doubt that Biden’s outlook on matters of labor and industrial policy was a massive improvement on the Obama years. But Biden’s term also saw the end of Covid-era expansions of the child tax credit, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance, the reappointment of an austerity-focused Federal Reserve chairman, and a failure to take decisive action as corporations raised the cost of groceries, rent, and other basic goods. Perhaps most importantly, as Biden faded from view as the consequences of his advanced age grew more prominent, he ceased to be an effective storyteller for his own ideas. Trump, for all of his own cognitive lapses, tirelessly kept at one thing: He made working-class people central to his message, not an afterthought. He successfully revived the idea that he could break the corrupt wheel of elite politics. And he outworked Harris in telling a story that made working people feel important.