GUNTER: Democrats’ election strategies won’t work for Grits

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On Tuesday, the night of the U.S. election, David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s chief political strategist through two campaigns, told CNN that the Democrats lost so badly because they had lost touch with ordinary people.

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“We approach working-class voters as though we were missionaries. And our message to them is ‘We want to help you become just like us.’”

Canada’s Liberals and New Democrats have exactly the same problem. Indeed, “progressive” parties in much of the Western world have ceased to be the parties off the factory floor; they’ve become the parties of the faculty club.

The typical U.S. Democrat voter, like his or her Canadian Liberal or NDP counterpart, has a higher-than-average income, a better-than-average education, and does “brain” work rather than “hands” work.

There is a higher share of them with secure, public-sector jobs, too.

Their social status, economic security and greater education have caused them to believe they possess superior civic morals and social values. That’s where Axelrod’s missionary imagery comes in.

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“Progressives” think they must proselytize like Evangelicals sent to a foreign land. They must convert their fellow citizens to their way of thinking or, failing a willing conversion, pass laws that force their values on everyone else.

They recognize this attitude when they see it in Christian conservatives, but they never recognize it in themselves. The cancel culture of the left is the equivalent of the shunning culture of religious fundamentalists.

I think the biggest issue in the U.S. election was the cost of inflation the past four years. And even the effects of inflation reinforce some of this “progressive” detachment. Inflation hit middle- and lower-income voters harder. So did the pandemic.

Trump voters had less chance to work from home, so they either went to work in the middle of COVID or saw their jobs disappear. Blue-collar and service-industry workers were more than five times as likely to be laid off as civil servants, tech workers and public-sector employees.

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Because Democrats tended to be less affected by inflation and economic downturns, they voted for the party that promised to safeguard their advantages.

With a few minor tweaks, the same is true of Liberal and NDP voters in Canada. They’re more likely to be unionized bureaucrats and teachers than unionized tool pushers.

And because left-of-centre voters in both countries have fewer economic concerns, non-economic issues have become bigger for them. Transgender rights, open immigration, systemic discrimination/white privilege/“settler colonialism,” supporting Palestine and spreading climate alarmism are examples.

And because theirs are the elite views of the day, “progressives” see any message that doesn’t fall in line with theirs as misinformation or disinformation that should be banned from the Internet and public debates.

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That’s why Democrats in the U.S. and Liberals here favour online censorship laws.

All their social wokeness and smug “progressivism” caused the Kamala Harris campaign and the Democrats in general to lose touch with ordinary voters. Some exit polls showed half of Trump voters don’t really like him, but see his views are closer to their own.

The Democrats also suffered from the perception among a lot of voters that the U.S. economy is bad. It’s not nearly as bad as Canada’s. But inflation is making people everywhere feel as though prosperity is slipping away.

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In Canada, our per-capita Gross Domestic Product has shrunk in seven of the last eight quarters. Meanwhile, American per-capita GDP has grown for eight straight. Still, working-class, private-sector U.S. workers voted for Trump because they feel their economy isn’t working for them.

The Democrats also relied heavily on abortion rights to bring women to the polls and on claiming Donald Trump was a threat to democracy — a twin strategy that didn’t work well.

There are already signs in Canada that the Liberals intend to use the same strategies — abortion rights and claiming a Pierre Poilievre government would be a threat.

Don’t expect those strategies to work much better here.

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