Appealing to both working-class and educated voters simutaneously

[TML]

Two of the major components of the Democratic Party's current coalition are working-class voters and voters with higher education. The former group stands to benefit from Democratic economic policies, whereas the latter group has more exposure to people of different demographic groups and are thus more likely to be tolerant of them, which is another component of the Democratic party's main platform.

In recent years, however, it seems that Democrats have lost ground among working-class voters while gaining ground among voters with higher education. This has made me wonder: is it possible to appeal to both groups without losing substantial ground on either group, or is it the case that gaining ground on one group would almost inevitably mean losing ground on the other group?

[RINO Tom]

Of course it is.  Republicans got "burb-stomped" and were still able to win the $100,000+ vote in the 2018 midterms for a reason.  As a current Iowa City resident, I can say that economic leftism can still be very popular among highly educated people (who often times are in fields that DON'T benefit from right wing economic policies, even if they earn a lot of money), and even very affluent people who are socially liberal enough.

[Del Tachi]

If you believe in Marxist social theory, then the answer is a very resounding no.

[Averroës Nix]

Two of the major components of the Democratic Party's current coalition are working-class voters and voters with higher education. The former group stands to benefit from Democratic economic policies, whereas the latter group has more exposure to people of different demographic groups and are thus more likely to be tolerant of them, which is another component of the Democratic party's main platform.

Neither of these assertions are true.

Democrats spent much of the Obama administration pursuing policies that were antithetical to the interests of working class voters. Some of the more glaring examples were Obama's very public overtures toward Republicans about his willingness to cut Social Security Benefits; the total lack of accountability for the financial institutions that wrecked the economy in 2008; the lackluster and inadequate stimulus bill; and the TPP.

Even the ACA was poison for many working class households. Medicaid expansion wasn't for them, after all. It was for the poor. People in the working class are more likely to find themselves saddled with a high-deductible Obamaplan that they can't afford to use and that grows more expensive with every passing year.

The distinction between being working class and being poor tends to gets lost in these discussions. Democratic economic policies, with their self-defeating embrace of means-testing, impose extraordinarily high marginal tax rates on lower-middle income households and create a sense of guilt and stigma about accepting benefits. While they are clearly better for the poor than alternatives like proposed by Republicans - which mostly come down to "private charity" and "letting natural selection take its course" - this is not so for those who are a notch or two above poverty.

Education and tolerance don't necessarily go together. People with four-year degrees are better at observing the stilted identity politics etiquette of the professional-managerial class, but they perform no better on tests of implicit bias. The most heavily segregated neighborhoods in the country are filled with white people with advanced degrees.

Moreover, no one goes to greater lengths to isolate their children from people who are too different than parents with advanced degrees living in high-income suburbs. School segregation in 2018 isn’t driven by the anxious “hardhats” who turned out in the streets with baseball bats to oppose busing in the 1970s. Instead, it’s status-conscious upper-middle class professionals with advanced degrees – people who understand that a winner-take-all economy leaves no room for the average, who can afford to pay hundreds of thousands more for a house in the right “public” school district, and who will spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to get their child into the right preschool.

Obviously, the Democratic coalition continues to include working class voters, but they are disproportionately black, first- and second-generation immigrants, woman, and young people. But increasingly they align with Democrats less out of class solidarity than in recognition that, for one reason or another, they are openly threatened by the Republican Party's brand of right-wing savagery.

Moreover, today's working class heavily overlaps with the college-educated. Educational attainment is a much less reliable guide to class status than it was several decades ago.

[All Along The Watchtower]

I was under the impression that education is legally required for all Americans up to the age of 18.

[darklordoftech]

I was under the impression that education is legally required for all Americans up to the age of 18.

We're talking about college and graduate school.

[mvd10]

Give it a few years of united Democratic rule and a whole bunch of well-paid white college graduate men will be just as deplorable as whites without a college degree. The sheer amount of women with college degrees and/or poor college graduates (who will be a significant force in the future) will make white college graduates a Democratic-leaning group but I'm pretty sure we'll always have a big chunk of rich white males voting for the party that gives them tax cuts and kek. The 2032 Democratic nominee won't be ''public and private positions'' Harmless Hillary, it'll be AOC or someone like her.

[DavidB.]

TIL you can't be highly educated and working class

[Lord Halifax]

TIL you can't be highly educated and working class

Class is about more than just income, so even if you end up in a menial job after graduating you aren't really culturally and socially working class.

There are highly educated people from a working class background who may still consider themselves working class, this seems to be fairly widespread in the UK, but it's a bit artificial if they have a high income.

I suppose if you come from a work class background, go to university, but fail to enter a professional career and end up in a menial job you are highly educated working class. Though even then you would be different from your workmates.

[All Along The Watchtower]

I was under the impression that education is legally required for all Americans up to the age of 18.

We're talking about college and graduate school.

And?

[darklordoftech]

I was under the impression that education is legally required for all Americans up to the age of 18.

We're talking about college and graduate school.

And?

I was under the impression that you were confused by the claim that some voters are "educated" while others aren't.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

TIL you can't be highly educated and working class

The implication that the average product of the American education system can be accurately described  as 'educated' is also amusing.

[DavidB.]

TIL you can't be highly educated and working class

Class is about more than just income, so even if you end up in a menial job after graduating you aren't really culturally and socially working class.

There are highly educated people from a working class background who may still consider themselves working class, this seems to be fairly widespread in the UK, but it's a bit artificial if they have a high income.

I suppose if you come from a work class background, go to university, but fail to enter a professional career and end up in a menial job you are highly educated working class. Though even then you would be different from your workmates.

It's an interesting discussion and I do believe it depends on the country. I personally know quite a few people who are university-educated but grew up working-class and continue to fully stay part of that social circle without having many friends in any other social circles, even though they have university-level jobs (but they're in their 20s so their income would still not be high by any standards). They still have the same tastes, the same favorite pastimes, the same circles of friends as before entering university. Would they be working-class? I'm inclined to say yes. It'd perhaps be a different story if they had a much higher income or if their lifestyle had changed.

The relation between income and class on the one hand and education and class on the other hand is also interesting, because there's a huge generational gap here. Many menial workers (even menial workers my age, for that matter) make a lot more money than a lot of young people with a university education and a flexible white-collar job - like me. I think nobody would say this makes these menial workers any less working-class, and I also think it would be more than a little strange to claim I or someone like me would be working-class, but there is an interesting situation here.

In any case, I think the assumption in the thread title (i.e. one cannot be both working-class and highly educated - and that's already generous to the OP, as "educated" is an even poorer formulation) deserves much more thought.