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If the Democrats have a problem, it is with the working class. Their support from non-graduate voters (especially, but not exclusively, white voters) has declined in recent years.
The Republican Party, meanwhile, is finding its own grassroots leaning more than ever towards the white working class. Those voters remain loyal to former President Donald Trump but don’t have much nostalgia for the pro-corporate version of the GOP that existed before him and which many Republican leaders now wish they could return to.
Many Democrats are now anxious to take the opportunity to demonstrate to voters that they have not just become the party of the elites and city dwellers.
When lawmakers on the party’s left pushed for a $ 15 minimum wage to be a top priority this year, Democratic leaders stepped in thinking this might signal the party’s commitment to the working people. Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, gave him his firm support, and President Biden included the proposal in his $ 1.9 trillion aid proposal for Covid-19 – along with today’s economic tests and the prolongation of unemployment .
“There should be a national minimum wage of $ 15 an hour,” Biden said last month as he prepared to enter the Oval Office. “Nobody who works 40 hours a week should live below the poverty line.”
Polls show that increasing it to $ 15 an hour is popular: 61 percent of Americans said they support it in a Quinnipiac University poll released earlier this month, including 63 percent of independents and the majority of voters in all major income groups.
But the Democratic Party is still not fully united – and in an evenly divided Senate, Democrats need complete unity. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin has indicated that he is unwilling to support a hike to $ 15 an hour, which is considered too steep. And Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema said she was against raising the minimum wage through budget reconciliation, which means Democrats would need Republican support if they didn’t get rid of the filibuster (which Sinema also opposes).
“Ultimately, we are still struggling with our 50th vote representing a state that beat Trump by about 40 points,” said Sean McElwee, founder of Data for Progress, a strategy firm that advises top Democrats in Congress from Manchin.
When the Senate MP decided yesterday that a $ 15 increase was not part of a bill passed as part of budget reconciliation – a decision that means it would take at least 60 votes to pass, and therefore by would be dead upon arrival in the Senate – the White House should breathe a sigh of relief. The Covid-19 Aid Act should now move forward without a flat-rate increase in the minimum wage. (Democrats are exploring other partial solutions, including tax incentives for businesses, to get them to raise their own wage floors to $ 15.)
But without a blanket wage increase, say observers in and around the Democratic Party, this problem is unlikely to go away. It remains a top priority for both progressives and democratic leaders like Schumer and Biden, who both objected – at least publicly – to the MP’s announcement.
“The minimum wage is very popular,” said McElwee. “I think if I were Joe Biden I would love to run for re-election because the average worker makes a lot more from being president than before.”
McElwee pointed out that referendums on minimum wages are generally popular in various swing states – far more so than Democratic candidates in the same ballot. In Sinema’s home state of Arizona, voters in 2016 increased the state minimum wage by a majority of 58 percent to $ 12 an hour, despite the state’s support for Trump over Hillary Clinton. In 2020, Florida voted even more firmly to raise its state minimum wage to $ 15, with 61 percent backing it.
“What we saw in Florida is that a minimum wage of $ 15 is over 10 points more popular than democratic elected officials,” McElwee said. “It’s an open and closed case.”
Strategist Simon Rosenberg, whose moderate New Democrat Network often contradicts Data for Progress’ vision for the Democratic Party, said he saw increasing the minimum wage as a profitable problem with voters, including those towards the center. Rosenberg described the apparently unanimous opposition of the Republican legislators as a political “mistake”. But he also noted that Republican-led messaging campaigns have resisted the idea of raising the minimum wage for decades.
“Investing right-wing business interests in demonizing the minimum wage has been one of the most consistent right-wing projects in the last generation,” said Rosenberg, referring to large donors such as Charles Koch. “It’s a touchstone problem.”
This month’s Quinnipiac poll found that a minimum wage of $ 15 remained deeply unpopular, despite its huge popularity with Republicans who opposed it with a 2-to-1 ratio. White people without a college degree, Trump’s base, were more evenly divided: 47 percent for, 51 percent against.
Politically, Manchin’s state is leaning away from him; It had never elected a Republican president as far ahead as it did in 2016 and 2020, so he cannot afford to ignore the impact of the anti-wage messaging campaign on core Republican voters.
Rosenberg said if Democrats were able to polish their brand by passing other key laws for workers and families, it could bode well for a minimum wage increase – even in West Virginia. “I think Joe Manchin wants to be with the Democrats as much as possible and in order to do that he has to go against them on certain things,” he said. “If in six months the Covid package is popular and the economy returns, Manchin will have a lot more leeway.”
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