Fareed Zakaria argues that Democrats may want to ‘stop trying’ to win over working-class voters
CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria said in a column published Friday Democratic Party influence with working-class voters has declined so much in recent years that it’s time to give up on appealing to that bloc.
“Democrats have many electoral advantages,” explained Zakaria Washington Post column. “They have a solid base of college-educated professionals, women and minorities. Many of the swing voters who have helped them win the popular vote in seven of the past nine presidential elections are registered independents and suburbanites.”
“Perhaps they should rely on their new base and shape a political agenda around themselves instead of mourning the working-class whites they lost decades ago,” Zakaria wrote in an op-ed titled: “Biden failed to win over the working class. Democrats I might want to stop trying.”
CNN anchor and political commentator Fareed Zakaria said the Democratic Party’s influence with working-class voters has declined in recent years. (Getty Images)
Zakaria argued that despite President Biden’s policy successes while in office, he has “failed” as a political leader.
“He is leaving office from among the lowest presidential rating in history, and his party lost the presidency, the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 2024 elections,” wrote Zakaria.
It is important to understand that the political failure is Biden’s economic policy, Zakaria explained.
“Biden’s presidency was an important test of a powerful theory that animated Democratic Party elites for nearly two decades — that the party’s turn toward more market-friendly economic policies was a mistake, and that the way to bring back the working class is to change that orientation,” he wrote. “Biden’s presidency pursued economic policies imbued with this new interventionist spirit. He passed massive infrastructure spending and climate change bills expressly designed to help non-college-educated Americans.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., criticized Democrats for abandoning working-class voters. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Zakaria wrote that working-class Hispanic and Asian-American voters, who felt ignored by Biden’s sharp left turn on issues like immigration and DEI, threw their support in 2024 to the Republican.
Zakaria’s article echoes the debate among Democrats about his relationship with working-class voters. In particular, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent candidate who caucuses with Democrats, said in November that the party had left blue-collar voters behind.
“It shouldn’t be a huge surprise that a Democratic Party that has abandoned working-class people will find that the working class has abandoned them,” Sanders said after President-elect Donald Trump’s victory.
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