It's not hard to understand how the Democrats lost the working class. I'll start with the most obvious misstep: student loans. Roughly one in three Americans has a college degree, which means two-thirds do not. Despite that, for the majority of degree holders who have student debt, Democrats have decided that the local plumber should be on the hook for the gal next door who studied feminism and now works as a barista.
In fact, in the last 14 years, Democrats' favorability with white non-college voters has tanked, down 34 points from 2012 — which was still negative.
CNN: The Democrats favorability with white non-college educated has collapsed
— OSZ (@OpenSourceZone) September 2, 2026
Dem net favorability white non-college:
2012: 🔴 Unfavorable -2
2026: 🔴 Unfavorable -36 pic.twitter.com/t9FKvmW2R2
It's not just maddening; it's fundamentally unfair. We all make choices in our lives, but the motivating factors behind Democrat Party policies seem to be: you are not responsible for your choices. Your bad decisions are someone else's fault, and if you're poor/gay/black/marginalized, that's someone else's fault, too.
I know I was told, from elementary school onward, that you can't get ahead in the world without a college degree. That's just not true, and I've encouraged my boys to pursue the trades. My eldest opted to get an associate's degree in accounting and to let his future employer foot the bill for a bachelor's degree.
There's no better embodiment of the working class than the non-college demographics. Add the racial component to it — and Democrats don't just hate white men, they hate all white people — and it's not really a surprise. The working class not only is expected to bear the brunt of the student loan bailout, but every time Democrats raise taxes to "fund healthcare" or "invest" in schools or give "free" food to layabouts who refuse to work even 20 hours a week, guess who pays that, too?
The working class.
Same for the cost of minimum wage increases, which also have the extra insult of leading to a lot of non-college folks finding themselves with fewer hours, if they're lucky. For many, Democrats giving them a "living wage," means they end up on the unemployment line. Non-college voters are also more likely to have families, to be religious, and to oppose the nonsense policies Democrats support. Every single thing the Democrats profess stands in direct opposition to what these voters hold dear. Earlier today, I told you how Will Lawrence, who is running for the U.S. House in Michigan's 7th Congressional District, deleted old social media posts in which he attacked the nuclear family as an "isolating, individualistic, violent way of organizing society." Lawrence issued a statement walking back some of his positions, but not that one.
And working-class voters are just going to nod as Democrats dissolve their family units? I don't think so. It's not just our families and our wealth. The Democrats have embraced the socialists who want us to own nothing. For people who have spent their lives working and saving to get a house, a car, some vacation time, that sends a clear message: we hate you, and we will destroy all you've worked for.
The working class didn't leave the Democrat Party, the Democrat Party left the working class. They did this by treating college debt as a public good and everyone else’s paycheck as their piggy bank, then by treating family, work, faith, and personal responsibility as problems and "white supremacist ideologies" to be managed rather than common goods to be defended. A party that tells the plumber he must subsidize the barista’s degree, pay for other people’s "free" healthcare and “free” food, and labels the nuclear family as "isolating and violent" should not be shocked when the working class stops listening. This isn't a messaging problem; it's a policy problem. Democrats have no intention of addressing that, let alone rectifying it.
