How Democrats can win back the working class

Democrats are losing working-class voters at an alarming rate, despite the popularity of President Biden’s policies.

A roundtable of working-class voters share what Democrats can do to win them back.

Today, On Point: How Democrats can win back the working class.

Timothy Noah, staff writer, The New Republic. Author of the article “Yes, Joe Biden Can Win the Working-Class Vote." Author of “The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It."

Monique Norris, works retail at Ikea and as a freelance artist. Undecided on Biden.

Jim Horch, retired union ironworker. Political coordinator of Ironworkers 846 in South Carolina.

Malachi Norris, produce delivery driver.

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: On Thursday, Donald Trump became the first former president in United States history to be convicted of felony crimes. A New York jury found him guilty on all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election, through a hush money scheme. And yet the felony convictions are unlikely to change Trump's 2024 presidential race polling numbers at all, at least in the immediate term.

That is in part because voters in Trump's base have repeatedly shown they will stand by him regardless of what he does or says. But it's also because of something else. It's because of what Democrats won't say. Not about Trump, but about the core interests of working-class voters. Journalist Timothy Noah says, quote, 'Don't blame President Joe Biden, who has lavished more attention on working class issues than any president since Harry Truman,' end quote.

Instead, Noah writes, quote, 'Blame Biden's fellow Democrats,' end quote. And Timothy Noah joins us now. He's a staff writer at The New Republic. Tim, great to have you.

TIMOTHY NOAH: Thanks for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay let's first and foremost start off with, I just want to get your quick reaction to the assertion that I made here, that no matter what Trump does, the convictions of yesterday, that's really going to change sort of the trajectory that we're seeing the polling on now, regarding working class voters and their attitudes about Democrats.

NOAH: Yeah, I actually disagree. I think it is going to hurt Trump. And at the moment, it seems like the best bet for Democrats is not that Biden's going to win, but that Trump is going to lose this election. And I think by getting himself convicted yesterday, he helped that cause quite a bit. You mentioned that his base is unmoved by this, and I'm sure that's true.

But there are a lot of independents out there who I think will be taken aback. And I think we're going to see that in the polls. Now, I've been wrong about such matters before. I always think that a red line has been crossed when it hasn't been, but there is a red line out there somewhere, and I think we may have just crossed it.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. When you say independents, though we're still talking via party affiliation, right? Who might be swayed by those felony convictions that Donald Trump now has. But the focus here is not so much on party affiliation, but on this broad, important swath of Americans that we're calling, quote-unquote, working class.

Okay. So first of all, how should we define what working class means in the context of Democrats losing them, as you've written quite persuasively over time?

NOAH: There are lots of ways to describe the working class and all of them are faulty in one way or another, but the standard way to describe them, which I think is as good as any other way, is people who have high school degrees, but no college degrees.

That's the way this group has been defined in the past, and using that definition allows us to compare how this group, how the Democrats have fared with this group in the past, versus how they fared with this group today. And the Democrats used to do quite a lot better with the working class. In the course of researching this article, I devised a statistic, which I hadn't heard anybody recite before, which was that over the past 100 years, no Democrat has ever won the White House without a working-class majority.

Defined, again, as these statisticians call them non-college voters. There is one exception, and it was Joe Biden in 2020 under really exceptional circumstances. The pandemic, an economy that had tanked as a result of the pandemic. A president, Donald Trump, who had badly mishandled the pandemic.

I think those unusual circumstances allowed Biden to be the exception, but I don't think he can count on being an exception in 2024.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so the why behind that is what we're going to explore in our conversation today. And we definitely will be hearing from voices of various Americans who identify themselves as working class.

But before we do that, one more quick question about this thesis, Timothy Noah. When you say that don't blame Biden, blame his fellow Democrats, your article is all about how you see those fellow Democrats as not talking about issues that are important to working class Americans. Just give me your quick justification for that thesis.

NOAH: Yes, it's bizarre, but there were two studies that were done after the 2020 midterms, and both of them found, looking at statements made by, in one case every member of Congress during that cycle, and in the other, every congressional candidate during that cycle, Democrats in both instances, they found that the words workers, wages, jobs, working families, went unmentioned. When you took all those words together and you added the words economy and economic, you found this assortment of words and only 11% of the documents. That was according to a study by Cap Action, a liberal partisan group. And then a separate group, The Center for Working Class Politics, came up with very similar findings.

Fewer than 20% of the candidates in 2022 mentioned the need for paid family and medical leave. Fewer than 10% mentioned the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which is a very important bill to strengthen labor rights, that the Democratic House had actually passed in March 2021. About 5% mentioned the $15 minimum wage, which is possibly the most popular economic policy out there.

You're seeing across the board; you are seeing Democrats shy away from classic working-class issues. So we shouldn't be surprised that they're losing working class support.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. This is so fascinating. And a little bit later, Tim, I'm going to ask you some follow ups on that, which is what's occupying the other 90% of what's in these documents representing what Democrats are talking about. And how does that compare to what Republicans are writing about.

But as I promised, really the point of this hour is to compare what you've written, Tim, with the experiences of working-class Americans. So listen along with me to Malachi Norris. He's a 39-year-old produce delivery driver in Charlotte, North Carolina. And he first started paying attention to politics in 2008 with the election of President Barack Obama, which is a major moment for him as a young Black man.

MALACHI NORRIS: I believe that African Americans as a whole were taken more seriously, and at least it seemed to be that they were respected a bit more than they previously were, because we had made it. That was it. We were finally, broke that spell of, we can do it, too. So that was a good time socially. But actually, it was still hard to find work, of course, and the wages were always still low.

So even since then, even though we've had social advancement, it doesn't feel like we've had any actual advancement.

CHAKRABARTI: Malachi wanted to advance himself, so he enrolled at a local community college. He had a passion for art and wanted to be a graphic designer. But he left school after one semester to help his single mother make ends meet.

NORRIS: I could see the pressure on her. And even without her asking, you know what I'm saying? She didn't have to ask those things. It was just unsaid. I know as a parent, she would have wanted me, of course, to continue on with my schooling, but she also understood that just also wasn't a part of some people's walks of life.

I wish there was a way that I could still, without that, live a life as full as I would have liked, but as now, more of an adult, I see a college education seems like that would have been the way to go, or at least I would have been at least more focused upon by the American system if I was a college graduate.

CHAKRABARTI: Now, he worked first in retail and then became an appliance delivery driver. That was his job during the COVID lockdowns, which made him an essential worker and made him pay closer attention to politics.

NORRIS: What I once thought was just menial labor, general labor. Apparently, the world cannot go without, and in that actuality, it still seemed like they were only willing to give me platitudes.

Nothing that proved that they understood that, oh, wow, these things are essential. Therefore, we should restructure and rethink how we treat pretty much everyone. If the grocery clerk is now the most important person of the day, why shouldn't that guy be able to have a living wage being the grocery clerk? If you need him.

CHAKRABARTI: Now, Malachi says he's not yet left the Democratic Party. He is solidly, for now, a working-class voter who will vote for Biden again in 2024. But it's not with total enthusiasm. Because for him, the Democrats have not done enough to improve one of the most important factors of his life.

NORRIS: I currently make enough as a produce delivery driver, which is fine.

This is the most I've ever made in my life doing this, going from retail to this kind of delivery. But I feel as though it shouldn't have been such a struggle, if the minimum wage had simply kept up to where inflation was, that's all. And it's just watching them dodge that question or come up with excuse after excuse when it seems like everyone can agree that wages need to be higher.

So it's just so confusing and upsetting to watch those kinds of things fall by the waysides. As my wife would say, it's not nice.

CHAKRABARTI: That was Malachi Norris. He's a 39-year-old produce delivery driver in Charlotte, North Carolina. In a few minutes, we'll be hearing from his wife, as well. But Tim Noah, we've got about a minute before this first break here.

I feel like Malachi's emblematic of what you're talking about. The central fact of life, wages. It seems entirely odd that this wouldn't appear in the majority of Democratic communications, in public communications, as well.

NOAH: It was an embarrassment for the Democrats when they included an increase in the minimum wage, in the, I can't remember whether it was the stimulus bill or, in any case, it was included in a must pass bill, and Kyrsten Sinema provided the decisive vote to strip it out.

So the Democrats were done in by Democrats. And that to me is just deeply mystifying. Biden is very strongly in favor of an increased minimum wage. So are most Democrats, but they couldn't get unanimity in the party. They have a very slender majority in the Senate. And they were not able to get it past Sinema and also Joe Manchin, the senator from West Virginia.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: I'm joined today by Timothy Noah, he's a staff writer at the New Republic. In April, he wrote a cover story on this issue called "Yes, Joe Biden Can Win the Working Class Vote."

But there's a long analysis that Tim Noah did that goes with that. Part of it, as you heard Tim say just a minute ago, is the way that public communications from House and Senate Democrats seem to conspicuously leave out a lot of issues important to working Americans. Americans, for example, just to repeat for clarity, one group looked at 570,000 individual communications, meaning press releases, Tweets, Facebook posts from House and Senate Dems, and the words workers, wages, jobs, working families, and costs were only in 11% of those documents. So the question is why?

And what does that mean for the voters whose votes they seek? So Tim, hang on here for a second, because as promised, I want to turn now to Monique Norris. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. She's 33 years old. And just a few minutes ago, we heard her husband and his thoughts, Malachi.

So Monique, welcome to On Point.

MONIQUE NORRIS: Oh, hello, Meghna. Thank you for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: It's a real thrill and honor to have you. And I want to note that, in speaking with working Americans, many folks, including you, had to make changes to your schedule in order to join us here, live on the program. I'm very grateful for that, Monique.

NORRIS: Oh, of course. Yes.

CHAKRABARTI: And to be, and just, again, as a reality check for those of us who have more flexibility in our lives. The reason why Malachi wasn't able to join us live is because he couldn't get his work schedule changed. Gotta keep our feet on the ground regarding what people are able to do with their lives.

So Monique, hang on for just a second. I want to ask you first and foremost, go right to it. Are you going to vote for Joe Biden in 2024?

NORRIS: Yes, my family will vote for Biden.

CHAKRABARTI: When you said my family, does that include you?

NORRIS: Yes.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Okay, good. Just want to be sure. That came with a bit of a sigh, though.

Why?

NORRIS: Just because I feel like he hasn't lived up to what he said he was going to do for us, but it's always a best of the bad situation. You know? So of course, I can't choose Trump. That's disastrous. He's a felon. So I will be voting for Biden.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. A lot of folks are saying they don't really Biden all that much either, so they might just sit this one out, but you're not going to do that.

So talk to me a little bit about your job, your life. I understand that you have an associate's degree in art, but you still, you also consider yourself working class though. So tell me about that.

NORRIS: Yes, because although I still have my degree in fine art, I have a retail job. I make less than $18 an hour.

And if I don't hit so many hours, bills will be a little bit tight at the end of the month. And so even though I've gotten ahead and got a degree, I thought that was supposed to be the social contract, of me doing my part. So I would get a better job, but it hasn't panned out that way.

CHAKRABARTI: Tell me more, like, how is it making ends meet?

NORRIS: It's not too bad. After Malachi started doing his produce delivery, things actually have improved quite a bit, but it's taken him and I many years to get to a point where we just bought a new car, something that we could not have done even two years ago.

So we're making gains, but they're just slow going.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Now, when you say the social contract hasn't lived up to what you expected it to be, can you tell me more specifically what you mean by that?

NORRIS: I thought that simply going to college would ensure that I got an office job making a decent wage, but it has not turned out that way, not for lack of trying on my part.

I certainly have been trying to improve myself and look for those higher paying jobs, but they simply don't exist.

CHAKRABARTI: It's interesting. Some people might say there's a pretty tight labor market right now, Monique. And so maybe those jobs are out there now, given that, what do you think are the barriers for you to get those higher wage jobs?

NORRIS: Now I feel the barrier is companies' lack of wanting to train people. So yes, I'm smart and I can go into any job and get started, but they don't want to train their new hires to do the specific tasks they require. And so you already need to come equipped with their specific needs or else you're not in the running for any of the better jobs.

CHAKRABARTI: I see. Okay. So then that kind of produces a cycle. So you said that Biden and, if I might say, and correct me if I'm wrong, by extension, the Democrats, writ large, that they haven't quite lived up to promises that that you feel that they've made to you, or what?

Help me understand that.

NORRIS: I, my main point that I brought up before is the minimum wage that has stagnated at $7.25 an hour, and they've not shown the fervor to try up that number. $7.25 an hour is less than any fast-food meal at any restaurant. So I think that they should have some kind of intention about raising that up to a livable wage.

Because there's people who are still working, make, at jobs that only pay $7.25 an hour. Now I know that's not the plurality, but if the floor is $7.25, that means people will be down there.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. So that federal minimum wage not budging, completely take your point. I'm going to turn back to Tim Noah here in a second, but Monique, this is really interesting. Because I completely hear you and many people that we talked to said exactly the same thing, that like, why can't the Democrats get it together, get unified and do something about that minimum wage? But I think you heard Tim Noah say a bit earlier that it's because of one or two stalwart Democrats just completely undermining the party's efforts to get the minimum wage raised.

Now, I'm not going to ask you to explain Kyrsten Sinema's thinking at all. But as a voter, what does that leave you thinking, that it might not be the party as a whole, but one or two Democrats who were consistently perhaps making it harder to get some of these policies that are important to you passed.

NORRIS: And yes, they have been roadblocks, Manchin, Sinema, but that can't be an excuse not to find another way in order to achieve the goals they're after. If it's a situation of, they needed to negotiate more with Manchin and Sinema in order to get to $15 an hour minimum wage, then maybe they should have entertained those negotiations to see what they could have budged on.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so Tim, let me turn back to you, because I think Monique really hit it right there. She's certainly not alone in her questioning of why there isn't another way around individual roadblocks in the form of, I guess, at least one of them is now an outgoing senator. What are your thoughts on that, Tim Noah?

NOAH: I think that Biden really is trying, and he has a problem with, again, with the congressional Democrats that he's dealing with. He's had difficulty raising the minimum wage. He's had difficulty on other fronts, too. He's had difficulty raising taxes on rich people.

Something else that his fellow Democrats support, only weekly. So I think it's a whole mindset in the party that needs to change. And interestingly, supporting these, what are considered more left economic positions, supporting these things will help you a lot with working class voters. But interestingly, they do not hurt you with this new constituency the Democrats are going after, which is college graduates.

College graduates are migrating away from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, and they are pretty left on economic issues, as well. So the only obstacle for people like Sinema and Manchin supporting a higher minimum wage, for example, is donors. Donors have way too much power over both parties.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So tell me a little bit more about that. And let's keep our focus on congressional Democrats. Because while the presidential election, of course, there is an enormous amount at stake. Basically, what we're saying is here's the party as a whole and its actions are going to redound on Biden's success with working class voters.

If there is this now, it's seemingly this alarm bell ringing amongst Democrats that see continuous sliding support amongst working class voters. The very donors themselves that wield so much power, if they want their candidates to win, maybe, why aren't they getting the message?

NOAH: That's a very good question. One of the more disheartening things that happened this week was we saw a number of, sort of, Wall Street people who looked like they were going to maybe support Joe Biden this year, drifted into Trump's corner, even as he was on the verge of being found guilty in the New York hush money case.

You had people like Steve Schwarzman and Nelson Peltz, people who had sworn that they were not going to support Trump, drifting his way. And it's in large part because of the 2017 tax cut, which will expire in 2026. And you're seeing many members of the donor class harden their views about the election. They don't want to support Joe Biden, because they know Biden is going to let their taxes go up, when the Trump tax cuts expire. And so they're voting their pocketbook and it's really appalling, especially now that Trump has become a convicted felon.

These are people who expect us to take their civic mindedness seriously, and I find that I can't.

CHAKRABARTI: So they're voting their pocketbook, this tiny fraction of Americans, then in a way that --

NOAH: Who loom very large.

CHAKRABARTI: In the pocketbooks of vast majorities of Americans. Monique, may I turn back to you and just ask you, listen, if I were in your shoes right now, my blood would be boiling. Because here, suddenly, we're supposed to, we're trying to keep the focus on working class Americans, but the influence of money from the wealthiest Americans has, like, stampeded its way into the center of why Democrats aren't trying to do more to address the very issues that you're talking about. I'm just wondering how, what that makes you think.

NORRIS: It's always money, because elections are so hard, expensive to run, you need to have the money on your side to a certain degree.

And so I can understand that they have a weird balancing act that they have to work within. Of course, I want to say let's end Citizens United, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. But they're going to need to figure out a way to balance having the money and actually delivering for the 60% e population that decides elections.

Okay, so Monique and Tim, hang on here, because I want to bring in another voice to help us understand what really matters to working class voters and whether the Democrats are going to ever be able to speak and act to that effectively. So Jim Horch joins us from Aiken, South Carolina.

He's a retired union ironworker and political coordinator of Ironworkers Local 846 in South Carolina. He's also the executive committeeman for the Aiken Democratic Party. Jim Horch. Welcome to On Point.

JIM HORCH: Hello, Meghna, and thank you for the opportunity.

CHAKRABARTI: It's great to have you. Before we talk about what it's like to be in a room with your fellow union members and trying to convince them that the Democratic Party is for them, I'd love to hear a little bit about your background because you're not a lifetime South Carolinian.

You're actually from New York.

HORCH: Yes. I've lived all over the country. I retired from New York, and I moved to South Carolina in 2017, but I've been a union iron worker since 1979.

CHAKRABARTI: Oh, wow. So that's taken you all over, working on projects, big and small, I understand, but one of the biggest was you had, you worked at Ground Zero.

HORCH: Yes, I worked at Rescue and Recovery for seven months. And the job that I retired from was the Freedom Tower.

CHAKRABARTI: Wow. Can you tell me a little bit more about the work that you did at Ground Zero?

HORCH: Yeah, it's pretty emotional. What my job was to make pieces of the building manageable for the cranes to pick it up and take it off site.

So I cut steel all day and it was difficult, but it had to be done. And I was in a place where I could do it.

CHAKRABARTI: What does that mean, you were in a place where you could do it?

HORCH: My mindset. I didn't know anybody that was in the pile. It wasn't like I was looking for somebody.

The firefighters that were there, they were looking for their brothers. I didn't have that relationship with the pile.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. But obviously clearly still has had a major impact on you even all these years later. Did it have an impact on your health?

HORCH: Yeah, I ended up with a rare bone marrow cancer and that's in remission now.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, I didn't mean to dredge up some hard memories there, Jim, so please forgive me. But we always try to strive to understand people as fully as we can when they're willing to share their stories with us. So I'm grateful for that. Now, ultimately moved to South Carolina in retirement, is that right?

HORCH: Yes, I did. I moved here and I got involved in local politics at the county level.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay.

HORCH: And that's what brought me back to the Ironworkers, was looking for funds for candidates.

CHAKRABARTI: Funds for Democratic candidates.

HORCH: Yes.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So we've just got 30 seconds before our first break here. Let me just ask, or second break, excuse me, I should say, let me just ask you, Mr. Horch. South Carolina isn't necessarily known on the state level as a Democratic hotbed, right? Especially when we're talking about presidential elections. So when you're talking to fellow iron workers, are you usually in rooms full of Democratic voters or not?

HORCH: Generally, I would say yes, because the membership that is not Democratic is generally not so involved, that I found anyways, at least with this local.

Part III 

CHAKRABARTI: So it looks like the Carolinas have strong representation here today, Mr. Horch. Can you tell me what your fellow iron workers tell you about what they need and whether they think the Democratic Party is really providing them with what they need?

HORCH: Whether I get them in a room or one-on-one conversations, and I explain to them the work that I've done to help the PRO Act get passed and the Inflation Reduction Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. The Inflation Reduction Act has been really great for wind energy across the Southeast, and they get it, but a lot of these people live in social media silos and it's hard to get to them.

CHAKRABARTI: Tell me more about that. The social media silos. So what are they hearing in those social media silos that make them have a different view as to what's been working for them and what hasn't.

HORCH: Whether it's guns or taxes, they just, they, I heard something this morning that there's still a lot of people that think that the sun goes around the earth, and that's what we're up against. There are some people you'll never be able to explain to them the benefits. They don't want to hear it because the sun comes up over here and goes down over there.

It's going around the earth.

CHAKRABARTI: Tim Noah, can I just turn back to you for a second on this? Because you wrote a really interesting section of your New Republic article, that if not talking about social media specifically, talked about the kinds of language that does get amplified through both social media and cable news, and these are the more provocative statements from both the right,

NOAH: and the left.

Can you describe how that hurts Democrats with working class voters in particular? Yes. Actually, what I emphasized was that people lack information from any source. The Fox news is really the least of it. Only about 12% of the population tunes in Fox News.

So it's a problem for 12% of the population, but you've got 80% to 85% of the population that doesn't follow the news at all. And to this group, the role of labor unions is important and has always been very important. Union households vote much more reliably democratic than non-union households.

And unions are an essential part of the Democratic Party structure in America, and we have allowed labor unions to deteriorate over the years to the point now where only about 6% of private sector workers belong to labor unions. This has been a catastrophe, a largely unacknowledged catastrophe, for the Democratic Party.

The work that Jim is doing is vitally necessary in educating voters about what Biden has done. Most people really don't know about the Inflation Reduction Act, about the infrastructure bill, about the rulings of the National Labor Relations Board that have strengthened labor unions.

This is information that people just don't have access to, either because of a lack of interest or because of a lack of reliable sources. We've seen a huge decline in newspaper circulation. Social media has filled that gap with, as you point out, very polarized and unreliable commentary.

We need institutions that can reconnect people who are not following the news with what the Democrats represent and what the Republicans represent. When you do that, groups have found it's pretty easy for the Democrats to win votes.

CHAKRABARTI: So I want to come back quickly to something that Monique, that you said a second ago, and I'll turn it back to Tim here because, look, I'm no fan of the social media algorithm. We know it works to amplify the most extreme things. It's just a supercharged version of what cable TV does. Because it needs, they need eyeballs to watch the ads. But on the other hand, we can't entirely blame the collapse of local newspapers, social media and cable TV for the fact that the message on what the Democratic Party under Joe Biden has ostensibly done for working Americans.

Because going back to what we started this hour with, they're not even talking about it either, Tim, right? So if they're not consistently driving home this message that, thanks to the Democratic Party, over the recalcitrance of a unified Republican Party in Congress, the Inflation Reduction Act did get passed.

And here's directly what it means for you, in whichever state you're in. They only have themselves to blame, don't you think, Tim?

NOAH: They do have only themselves to blame, but I wanna put a good word in for various groups that are trying to fill that gap that is left by members of Congress and is left by the decline of unions.

And that is, there are a number of groups that are doing something called deep canvassing, which involves going out. Talking to workers, reconnecting them with local, with government at the local level and familiarizing them with the tools of government, and that does tend to create Democrats, although that's not their principal goal.

Stacey Abrams, the who has started a number of these groups, and was largely responsible for the two remarkable Democratic victories in Georgia in 2021. I spoke with her, and she said I create, fund and support organizations that put forward year-round engagement. When we reduce people just to voters, we lose them.

So there's this very painstaking work being done. And I want to mention the names of some of these groups, which desperately need funding. Take action Minnesota, ISAIAH, also in Minnesota. We the People Michigan, Living United for Change in Arizona, Down Home North Carolina Federation, also in North Carolina, Florida Rising, the New Georgia Project, and the Southern Economic Advancement Project.

Those are all groups that are trying to take up the slack, doing important work. It may not pay off as soon as 2024, but it is vitally necessary work to rebuild the Democratic connection to the working class. And certainly, they are going to help in 2024, whether they'll help enough remains to be seen.

CHAKRABARTI: I am still hearing here, though, a persistent disconnect. You're right in rebuilding the Democratic connection to the working class, meaning that connection is broken. But as we talked about earlier, it doesn't seem as if the donor class for the Democrats is actually authentically interested in rebuilding that connection. Because they have the money to provide the funds for the groups you just talked about, Timothy.

But Monique, can I turn back to you here? Because you call yourself; you consider yourself a working class American. You're in North Carolina, a really important electoral state, and you're a Black woman. If we're just going to go by checking boxes here for a second, you would seem to be the exact kind of voter that the Democrats would want to do direct outreach to and knock on your door and say, Hey I'm the local rep for the Democratic party.

What can we do to help you? What can we do? What can we do to deserve your vote? Has anyone called you or come to your home to talk to you about those kind of things?

NORRIS: Not this year. But last election cycle, I did actually have quite a few people who knocked on my door from all the candidates.

CHAKRABARTI: And so tell me more about that. Do you think they just knocked on your door just to be sure that, as a Black woman, that you were going to vote for Democrats? Because we've heard that before from folks, that they feel very taken for granted by the party.

NORRIS: I do feel very taken for granted by the party in that way, because they know they can go to the churches.

Because I live near church, and it was a lot of volunteers from the church that was doing the outreach. And so of course they can lean on the church to get that outreach, so they can talk to neighbors more effectively, but during the three years you're in office, I don't feel your connection to my community.

I don't feel like I've been made a priority in many ways during the administration. Yeah, I'll see you plenty when you're on the campaign trail, but then it's crickets after you've been elected into office. I'm just getting platitudes and things are getting kicked down the road. For example, outside of the $15 minimum wage, they wanted to make community colleges free nationwide.

But yet again, some roadblock came up and it escapes me right now what it was, but it didn't pass. They took it out of that bill and the bill passed separately, but they left that behind. So it's just a lot of empty promises that are not totally fulfilled.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. Jim, can I ask you another question about the kinds of things that do get heard because of the media environment, the way it is, because Tim writes about this in his piece, that many people, including some people get paid a lot to do analysis for the Democratic Party. Are saying that there's a survey here, for example, that the Center for Working Class Politics in 2021 surveyed 2,000 working class voters in five swing states and concluded that quote unquote, woke activist inspired rhetoric is a liability for the Democrats.

Do you hear that on the ground in South Carolina?

HORCH: Unfortunately, yes. But it's pretty red here. I don't know that Democrats repeat that, but I do hear that, that woke is a problem. But like I said, that mostly comes from Republicans' mouths not from Democrats.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. But does that filter in or does that seep into the conversations that you're having with for example, your fellow union members, when you're trying to talk to them about policies that you think Democrats are helping them with?

HORCH: No, that has not seeped into the conversations that I've had with membership or with leadership. It hasn't.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So then, I guess my last question for both you and Monique is what do you want the party and I'm talking about party leadership here, right? Because I think we've pretty well established that there's a difference between what's happening on the ground at the state level versus the overall Democratic Party.

Jim, what would you want them to know about what they need to do in order to win more votes from working class Americans?

HORCH: I think what the Democratic Party needs, more than anything, is a slogan that fits on a postage stamp. It might sound a little crazy, but Democrats stand for a lot of good things, but you can't keep putting commas in sentences and think you're going to get people to listen to you.

We need something short and sweet.

CHAKRABARTI: What would you like? Do you have an idea of what you might want that to be?

HORCH: I don't.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay.

HORCH: I end up with a lot of commas. Okay. Point taken. And Monique, same question to you. What would you want party leadership to know? About what they need to do to win more votes, passionately from people like you and perhaps from folks who maybe are less willing to vote for Democrats now.

NORRIS: They need to take up more populist ideals, like what Bernie was talking about, health care, mandatory time off for mothers and fathers and wages. Those are the things that people are caring about.

CHAKRABARTI: Monique Norris in Charlotte, North Carolina, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.

NORRIS: Oh, thank you. I appreciate you.

CHAKRABARTI: And Jim Horch in Aiken, South Carolina, thank you so much for joining us. Much appreciated as well, Jim.

HORCH: It's been a pleasure.

CHAKRABARTI: Timothy Noah, this has been a really interesting conversation, because I hear there's still this persistent disconnect. And even the things that Monique said she wants the Democrats to talk about more, to do something about, they can make the argument that they've tried, but have just been unsuccessful.

But so how to close this disconnect. The title of your piece, Tim, is that Biden can win back the working-class votes. And I'm not quite sure I'm hearing in the course of this hour, how?

NOAH: I think that he needs Democratic members of Congress, Democrats at all levels of government, to be talking up what has been a fairly strong record, as Jim mentioned, Biden does have a strongly, has a pretty strong record on working class issues.

He has supported in particular, quite a lot of spending to build up the manufacturing base. And particularly when it comes to green technologies. Biden is talking about it and Biden is not getting through. He needs a lot of help from others. And Democratic members of Congress, Democratic candidates for Congress, they may think that they can get along without the Biden agenda, but they can't.

They are going to lose, too, in November if they don't start talking up these issues. They just need to get a lot smarter about this.