How Democrats Lost the Working Class

When you trade kitchen table economics for boutique activism, you lose the people who built the party

For most of the last century, Democrats didn’t have to wonder where the working class stood. Union households were the backbone of the party, the link between the shop floor and the ballot box. That bond wasn’t built on speeches about identity or abstract ideals. It was built on tangible wins: higher wages, better benefits, safer workplaces, and the ability to retire with dignity.

Somewhere along the way, that connection weakened. In 2024, nearly half of union households voted for Donald Trump. If that number doesn’t alarm Democrats, nothing will.

Sean O’Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, has been sounding the alarm. In a recent interview, he didn’t mince words about what went wrong. “This whole election for the Democrats was based on social justice issues,” O’Brien said. “Our members identify with more money in their pockets, more job protection, better pensions. Core issues.”

That’s not an argument against fairness or equity in the workplace. In fact, unions have been delivering those wins for decades through collective bargaining. The problem is that Democrats stopped leading with the basics. For someone working sixty hours a week, worried about rent and retirement, symbolic gestures don’t replace a solid paycheck and a secure pension.

O’Brien pointed out that many of these social justice fights are already being addressed in union contracts. Members don’t need lectures on diversity or equality from politicians who haven’t set foot in their worksites in years. They need elected leaders who will fight for their wages, protect their jobs from outsourcing, and ensure their pensions are there when they retire.

That kind of politics isn’t flashy. It doesn’t generate viral clips. But it’s how you earn the trust of working people. And trust is exactly what Democrats have been losing.

The Teamsters’ internal polling is a wake-up call. Sixty-five percent of their members said they were voting Republican. O’Brien refused to simply write them off as misled or voting against their interests. Instead, he turned the question back on the party: “Isn’t there some responsibility from the elected officials that lost the support of working people?”

That’s the piece too many Democrats miss. When voters leave, the instinct is to blame them for not “getting it” rather than asking why they stopped listening. O’Brien’s answer is blunt: too many Democrats have fallen in love with big money and big tech and forgotten the communities they once represented. They don’t spend time in union halls or on shop floors. They don’t ask the people doing the work what matters to them. Then they’re surprised when those voters feel ignored and look elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Republicans have been willing to fill the void. Trump’s promises to bring back manufacturing and his opposition to bad trade deals resonated with union members who remember the damage done by NAFTA and other agreements. Whether his record matched his rhetoric mattered less than the fact that he spoke directly to their economic concerns.

Democrats used to own that territory. From the New Deal through the Great Society, the party’s brand was economic security for the working class. But in recent years, the message has drifted. The loudest voices in the party have pushed culture-war battles to the front, while kitchen table economics get second billing.

O’Brien didn’t spare the far left in his criticism. He took aim at what he called “social justice warriors” in Congress who are quick to issue press releases but slow to walk a picket line. He reminded listeners that President Biden joined a UAW strike, but in three years of his leadership, the only elected official who consistently showed up for Teamsters’ strikes was Republican Senator Josh Hawley. “We’ve had 250 strikes in three years,” O’Brien said. “The only politician that’s walked one of my pick lines has been Josh Hawley.”

That reality cuts against the image many Democrats like to project as champions of labor. For union members, showing up matters more than talking points.

The bigger point here is not that Democrats should abandon social justice causes. It’s that they need to stop leading with them at the expense of the bread-and-butter issues that built their coalition in the first place. O’Brien called it “simple block and tackling” — wages, job security, pensions, healthcare. The issues that make it possible for working people to build a life.

Right now, those priorities are not front and center in the party’s national message. And the cost is clear: a slow bleed of working-class voters to the Republican column, not just in rural areas but in cities and suburbs where Democrats once dominated.

Reversing that trend will take more than policy proposals buried on campaign websites. It will take visible, sustained engagement in the places where working people live and work. It will take showing up without cameras, listening without condescension, and delivering results that make a difference in people’s paychecks.

The path back to being the party of the working class is not a mystery. It’s the same one that built the Democratic coalition in the first place. The only question is whether today’s Democratic leaders have the discipline to take it.

As O’Brien put it, “Our members identify with more money in their pockets, more job protection, better pensions. Core issues.” If Democrats can’t center those, they shouldn’t be surprised when working people decide someone else will.