Election Defeat Autopsy

April 2025

Beginning in 1964, I voted Democratic in every Presidential election without fail. But each successive election has increased my disillusionment with the Party.  Over the last two election cycles I have come to appreciate the enormity of the Party's corruption, hypocrisy, and perverse priorities. Nevertheless, the specter of Trump made it too scary not to vote Democratic again.

It’s obvious to me that the Party orchestrated its own defeat. The Biden Administration's early display of incompetence (Afghan withdrawal) followed by a commitment to divisive policies and inflationary deficits eroded public confidence. This shows up in the Party's turnout hemorrhage between the '20 and '24 elections: Harris' vote total was 6 million lower than Biden's, while Trump added 3 million (mostly from new voters).  In other words, lots of previous Democratic voters were too disappointed to cast a ballot.

The essential reasons for the Party's defeat are embodied in this statistic:

Whites without a college degree, who make up 35% of the adult population, went for Trump 66% to 33%. The male wing of this group favored Trump 69% to 29%.

These non-college adults are the core of America's working class. Essentially, the 2-to-1 drubbing stems from the Party’s betrayal of the white working class in favor of identity politics and the ascendance of a college educated electorate.

Reasons for the defection of working-class whites.

The economic downfall of white men without a college degree.

In 1980 the income of a typical non-college white man was 8% higher than the national average. By 2022 it was 11% below average. In fact, his income actually declined in absolute term, from $75K to $61K.

Men's earnings collapsed because of competition from a skyrocketing supply of foreign labor, exacerbated by an emergent China. The competition operates through two channels:

• Globalization enabled American companies to outsource production to countries with abundant cheap labor. Lots of good paying industrial jobs went overseas. If those jobs didn’t leave it was because American workers lowered their wage demands.

• A continuing flow of illegal immigrants augmented the supply of less educated job seekers in the US economy.

These two sources of cheap foreign labor have devasted the bargaining power of working class Americans. Meanwhile, the rising demand for cognitive skills has escalated the wages of college graduates.

The Democratic Party abetted the downfall.

Both Clinton and Obama supported the neoliberal policies that fostered globalization, but never adequately compensated its many losers. Ironically, the resulting immiseration of the white working class was chronicled, not by a liberal Democrat, but by J.D. Vance in his “Hillbilly Elegy.”

Biden, on the other hand, betrayed the working class by opening the spigot of illegal immigration. The deluge was deliberately facilitated and encouraged. During the primary debates in 2019 Biden previewed his open border policy on national TV, where he promised "I would in fact make sure...that we immediately surge to the border all those people seeking asylum.”

The other Democratic contenders offered similar enticements to asylum seekers, such as free medical care. By declaring to the world that any asylum claim is a ticket to entry, the Party ensured an escalation in border crossings.

Pitched as a policy to rescue dispossessed migrants from Trump’s cruelty, the real purpose of border leniency was to expand the Party’s base of marginalized victims.

The Party refused to admit that unfair competition from economically distressed immigrants could harm American workers. Jared Bernstein, Biden’s economic spinmeister, repeated the trope that immigrants have little or no effect on overall wages; and anyway, they accept jobs that Americans don’t want.

But the facts say otherwise. In the occupations to which illegals gravitate, like roofers and maids, wages are unfairly depressed; yet in those occupations most of the workers are NATIVE BORN, which shows that many Americans do compete for those jobs.

Pandering to whiney collegians took precedence over the genuine plight of the working class.

Unlike China and Germany, America's economic growth is debt driven. This means that consumer spending on American goods and services is fostered by making it easy for people to borrow money. Since, consumers without a college degree make less income, more of their spending is financed by debt.

So, burdened by credit card, auto-loan, and medical debt, the working class watched in bewilderment as Biden proceeded to grant student loan relief to privileged college graduates.

It's worth noting that 85% of the $1.7 trillion in student-loan debt is owed by college graduates with a bachelor's degree or higher.

The ‘privilege’ of a college degree is the wage premium it delivers: the average recipient of a bachelor’s degree borrows about $30,000, but over a lifetime will earn $1.2 million more than a high school graduate. Obviously, this return-on-investment is more than sufficient to repay the loan.

The generous wage premium guarantees that, contrary to popular opinion, student loan repayment is NOT a crippling burden for the vast majority of college graduates. This is evident in the financial condition of college graduates.

For example, their ability to qualify for a home mortgage has not been impeded by student debt. To the contrary, the home ownership rate of college grads actually rose 3 percentage points from 1980 to 2020. But for high school graduates, it fell by 2%.

Despite their student loan liabilities, the net worth of folks with a college degree is about 5 times greater than those without a degree.

Also, a longitudinal study of freshmen found that borrowers who completed the degree defaulted on their loans at just one-fifth the rate of those who “dropped out.” Clearly, it’s the borrowers without a degree who struggle with debt. That's why their average credit score is 43 points lower than that of college graduates.

Despite Larry Summer’s warning, the Party proceeded to fuel a regressive inflation-tax through excessive deficit spending.

The inflation spike hit non-college workers disproportionately hard because most of their income is spent on necessities, the prices of which rose faster than other goods. From 2020 through 2023 inflation cut the purchasing power of working-class earnings by about 8%, as shown by the gap between the pink and green lines. (Meanwhile, the appreciating value of homes and stock portfolios helped college graduates offset inflation.)

The administration's expansion of EITC and increase in the Child Tax Credit was not enough to close the gap.

The White House chose to compensate with condescending messaging: the public should be grateful for the big investment in charging stations for those who are rich enough to afford an EV. And they should appreciate the Party's prioritization of woke extremism: stretching the DEI umbrella to include the participation of biological males in women's sports.

The specter of Lia Thomas: Kamala Harris’ Bud-Light moment.

The notion that the Party’s commitment to minority rights should extend to transgender participation in women's sports is the epitome of woke lunacy. And the argument that a little testosterone-tinkering can ensure competitive fairness is as scientifically bankrupt as RFK’s vaccine-autism theory.

The Party underestimated its vulnerability to this issue because it didn’t appreciate the breadth and intensity of voter antipathy. A recent NYT poll found that 79% of Americans oppose transgender intrusion in women’s sports, including 69% of Democrats. Every parent I know would be furious if their daughters had to compete against, or share a locker room with, a clone of Lia Thomas.

Recently Gavin Newsom wisely decided to join the opposition. If the rest of the Party doesn't follow suit by the mid-term elections, millions of parents will turn out to thank the Republicans for protecting their daughters and granddaughters from the desecration of female sports.

Unfortunately, the Party still can't resist political suicide. On March 3, 2025 Democratic Senators voted against a bill that would outlaw transgender athletes in women's sports. Republican will surely use it as ammunition in the 2026 mid-terms.

Identity Politics ostracizes the white working class.

Central to Identity Politics is the moral hierarchy of victimhood. Accordingly, Identity Politics villainizes working class men by relegating them to the hierarchy’s moral trashcan. As Hillary put it, “a basket of deplorables.”

In the world of Identity Politics, a person's moral stature is proportional to the level of victimization. At the pinnacle of the moral hierarchy are women of color, the victims of systemic racism and sexism. Of course, the lowest moral rank is occupied by white men, the obvious abettors and beneficiaries of racism and sexism.

However, that moral trashcan mostly contains non-college whites, because a big share of white collegians have moved up the moral hierarchy through redemption. They have acknowledged their white privilege and pledged fealty to the Party's DEI agenda. Prime examples are English professors and Hollywood celebrities.

So, it’s no surprise that the morally exiled working class would turn to the MAGA movement out of spite.

The Party's indiscriminate embrace of DEI also alienates non-college whites.

Thanks to the massive expansion of DEI industry, the humiliation of the white working class is now systemic. According to PEW surveys, 52% of workers are exposed to DEI training programs. So, imagine the reaction of a typical white worker when he is told that he enjoys a superior standard of living because of his 'white privilege;' or that the moral obligation to be anti-racist makes him a racist if he doesn’t support reparations.

A supplement to this post tracks the evolution of DEI and its rebuke by the supreme court.