Democratic leaders admit they are struggling to figure out how to win back the trust and votes of working-class Americans. After the party’s setbacks in 2024 — starting with the loss of the presidency, but certainly not ending there — the candidates who form A growing number of contenders for Democratic National Committee chairman and other top party positions know the party must figure out a better way to win over working-class voters. One of the applicants Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wickler goes so far as to to say “The democratic brand is broken and hindering people in many parts of the country.”
Fair enough. So how do Democrats rebrand to connect with working-class voters? How do they assemble the multiracial, multicultural working-class coalition that has historically provided overwhelming majorities for Democratic presidential and congressional candidates from Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman to Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama? There is a simple answer to these questions: get many more Americans into unions. The labor movement has overwhelmingly supported Kamala Harris and the 2024 Democratic senatorial and congressional contenders, and these efforts to nominate union members with endorsed candidates have been more successful than Democratic efforts. “Union members voted for Democratic-backed candidates, from the top of the ticket down, at far greater rates than the general public,” explains AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. Not only that, the union members voted for Kamalu, the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate Haris pa solid margin 57–39, according to exit polls. That was comparable to the union vote for Joe Biden in 2020, a notable fact in an election year when support for Democrats has declined among so many demographics. “Actually,” noted Politico, “Union voters were one of the few groups that did not swing toward Trump and the Republicans during what should be one of the party’s strongest election cycles in recent memory.”
So why do we hear so much about Democrats losing the working class vote? Because most working Americans are not union members. As a result, they are missing out on the education campaigns that unions have designed to inform their members and turn those members off as voters for labor candidates. “In this election, Vice President Harris won a higher percentage of union voters than President Biden in 2020. But she still lost!” – explains the president of the International Union of Artists and Related Trade Unions Jimmy Williams Jr why? “Because the Democratic Party continues to fail to prioritize the working class on the issues that really matter to working people,” Williams explains. “The party has made no positive case why workers should vote for them, only that they are not Donald Trump. It’s not enough!” How could the party begin to get it right? The AFL-CIO has a plan.
Describing the race for the DNC chair as “a unique opportunity to bring working people back to their core,” explains Schuler, “As a diverse movement with an organization at its core, we know how to mobilize with a resonant message to win.”
In 2024, union members hit back with a message “built around economic issues with broad appeal,” Schuler says. “At a time of heightened cynicism and mistrust of politics, these messages were even more salient because they were delivered by trusted union friends at the door, in the workplace, over the phone and through digital advertising. If there were more unionized workers and, as a result, more voters, the outcome of the 2024 election would be different.”
To create a politics where different and better outcomes are possible for Democrats, Shuler says party leaders should view the election of a new slate of DNC officers as “an opportunity to change the course of the Democratic Party and focus its goals and messages around the economic and social needs of workers. It’s time to stop doing business as usual. In order to win future elections, the party needs to refocus and be innovative in its approach to engaging with working people with a message that meets them where they are.’
This is not just a call for change. This is a new standard that can and should be applied to applicants for top positions at the DNC.
Unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO will, Schuller says, “measure our support for the following list of DNC leaders using the following guidelines:
The leadership of the DNC must have a strong connection with working people and unions. This means that you have done a lot of work with or even for the workforce in the past. In addition to understanding working class values, DNC leaders must know how to organize and how to talk to working people. It is absolutely unacceptable to have leaders who favor large corporate donors.
The party needs to reconnect with working people by focusing on the core economic issues that concern them most. This means working closely with the labor movement to develop an economic basis for policies and values-based messages that appeal to ALL working people, regardless of age, race, gender or ideology. To be the party of workers, Democrats must talk openly and often with all working people about the economic issues that families think about every day.
Party leaders must undertake a robust 365-day outreach program that engages workers in our communities. The only way Democrats can break through the political noise with a working-class agenda is to have a year-round infrastructure to reach voters where they are.
The party must address its inability to communicate successfully with working peopleand invest in innovative and creative messaginginstead of just enriching the counseling class.Democrats must better use a variety of public platforms to reach working people, wherever they are, on the issues that matter most, not just before an election, but all the time.
Shuler says that as the race for the DNC chair and other key positions unfolds, “working people need to be at the table.” And they need answers. “Every Democrat running for leadership should be able to articulate the answer to this fundamental question: If you were elected chairman, what would you do to increase the labor and working class vote and influence in the Democratic Party?” Schuler and the AFL-CIO unions want specifics. And not only they should demand them. Every Democrat who wants to reconnect his party with the great mass of working-class voters in this country must demand an answer from the men and women who are committed to leading the Democratic Party out of the wilderness.
