The recent electoral struggles of the Democrats stem not from messaging failures or insufficient outreach, but from a deliberate strategic realignment that has systematically alienated working-class voters. This alienation is the result of conscious choices made by Democrats to prioritize neoliberal economic policies over material security for ordinary Americans, combined with an ideological rigidity that would have alarmed even the party’s greatest champion of economic intervention, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
An architecture of dealignment
The transformation began in earnest during the Clinton era and accelerated over the past two decades. Neal Meyer wrote that “class dealignment was therefore no accident—it was the foreseeable (and foreseen) consequence of changes made by Democrats in their economic and electoral strategy.” The party systematically brought its electoral approach into alignment with a neoliberal economic program that offered little to workers facing stagnant wages, precarious employment, and declining living standards. This wasn’t an oversight or miscalculation; Democratic strategists understood the trade-offs they were making when they chose to court educated suburban professionals while allowing their working-class coalition to erode.
The Latino verdict
The 2024 election revealed the consequences of this strategy with particular clarity among Latino voters. René Rojas and Maribel Tineo observe that working-class Latinos contributed decisively to Donald Trump’s victory, but not for the reasons many progressives assumed. The shift occurred not because these voters embraced xenophobia or sexism, but because “they lack alternatives for effectively defending their interests.” Facing material insecurity and labor market vulnerability, Latino workers found themselves in a position similar to blue-collar white voters in 2016: abandoned by a Democratic Party that no longer prioritized their economic concerns, they explored alignment with a political movement that at least acknowledged their economic anxiety, however cynically Trump and the Republican Party exploited it.
Lesson unlearned from FDR
This strategic failure stands in stark contrast to the approach that built the New Deal coalition. Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented policies that dramatically expanded the role of the federal government in the economy, including Social Security, massive job programs, high tax rates on the wealthy, and more. And yet, with all of these activities, he “vehemently rejected the socialist label and viewed rigid ideology as dangerous to democracy.” In his 1936 “Rendezvous with Destiny” speech, FDR framed these interventions as pragmatic responses to economic crisis, arguing he was defending American capitalism and constitutional principles rather than pursuing an ideological agenda.
Peter Canellos points out the crucial difference: Roosevelt believed that ideology (whether it was socialist, fascist, or rigidly capitalist) “blinds leaders to real problems and prevents the flexible, pragmatic governance that democracy requires.” Contemporary Democrats have taken precisely the opposite approach. Some embrace ideological labels like democratic socialism as “truth in packaging,” while the party establishment clings to neoliberal orthodoxy even when it demonstrably fails to address voters’ material needs. Both stances represent forms of ideological rigidity that prevent the kind of flexible, pragmatic problem-solving that built and sustained Democratic dominance for generations.
What do we do now?
The Democratic Party’s alienation of working-class voters was not inevitable, it was engineered by donors, economists, advisors, and politicians who did not put their constituents’ needs front and center. By prioritizing neoliberal economics over material security, by offering ideological balms instead of practical solutions, by getting cozy with big donors and listening to consultants instead of their constituents, and by assuming that demographic change alone would sustain their coalition, the Democratic Party created the conditions that led to their own electoral decline. The party that once built a broad-based working-class coalition through meaningful and effective economic interventions has forgotten those lessons.
To reverse this trend Democrats must rediscover FDR’s insight that voters respond to results rather than labels, and recommit to defending workers’ material interests regardless of race or ethnicity, as has been demonstrated by the success of Zohran Mamdani’s bid for the Democratic nomination for the New York mayor’s race. If the Democratic Party does not wake up and reconnect authentically with working-class voters, if it doesn’t nurture a new generation of candidates who are not beholden to the establishment, it will continue to lose support among the very constituencies it claims to care for.
Sources
- Meyer, Neal. 2025. “The Democrats Embrace Dealignment.” Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy 8(4), link to article.
- Rojas, René and Maribel Tineo. 2025. “The Latino Rebuke.” Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy 8(4), link to article.
- Canellos, Peter. 2019. “What FDR Understood About Socialism That Today’s Democrats Don’t.” POLITICO Magazine, link to article.
Image: Franklin Delano Roosevelt after radio broadcast for Community Chest, from the Library of Congress Public Domain Archive, Harris and Ewing collection.
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