Many Democrats appear reluctant to admit the magnitude and significance of the Democratic party's shifting class base. This is whistling past the graveyard, as the Democrats' compositional shift away from the working class is well-documented. Anusar Farooqui provides some interesting data along these lines on his Policy Tensor blog. His bottom line:
"Class partisan polarization has proceeded so far that it does not make any difference whether one uses income or education as a proxy for class — the GOP is the party of the working class, the Democratic party is the party of the affluent.....The constituents of GOP Congressmen are less educated, poorer and enjoy lower occupational prestige than the constituents of Congressional Democrats.....A vast socioeconomic gap exists between the parties. The GOP has become the party of the working class; the Democrats have become the party of the educated and the affluent."
The material in Farooqui's post is a bit technical but well worth slogging through. I think it's time for Democrats to face up to their class problem. When a left party is less working class than its conservative rival, it is a bug not a feature of that party's practice. And no amount of racial partitioning can make that bug into a feature.
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