Blueprint for a Political Revolution
If we’re going to change the United States, socialists will have to win the working class. And we urgently need a strategy and an organization to do just that.
Illustration by Cristina Daura.
For at least four decades now, workers have been steadily dropping out of party politics. In 1982, nearly half of all working-class voters identified as Democrats, but by 2018, that figure had fallen to less than a third, even as the Republican Party saw no uptick.
In response, the Democrats have attempted to supplement (and in some cases supplant) their traditional base with more and more middle-class professionals. As New York senator Chuck Schumer declared before the 2016 election, “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia.”
What’s Wrong With Fortress Fairfax?
Schumer was disastrously wrong in that case, but the results of the 2018 midterm elections appeared to vindicate his “Fortress Fairfax” approach: Democrats picked up seats in affluent suburban districts by running boring, centrist candidates. And they haven’t been alone in reorienting their appeals.
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