In today’s WSJ, Kimberley Strassel has a warning for Republicans. Don’t think Democrats are letting the working class go without a fight, she warns. Some GOP leaders might try to match the left’s economic pandering, but as KS warns, that’s a recipe for loss, along with an insult to voting for Americans who are looking for good policy, not for handouts or for tattoos.
Who are these young Democratic operatives who no more look like young progressives vying for a U.S. Senate seat than JD Vance does? What is out there is the political equivalent of an IN–N–OUT BURGER spread: a new secret sauce to win over voters.
The (Democrat) Party is rolling out the recipe nationwide, and the midterms will provide initial sales figures.
KS would have us begin in Texas, where Mr. Talarico, in 11 days, faces a progressive steamroller in the Senate primary: U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
If he’s got a shot, it’s because a growing number of Democratic money men and influencers see in the 36-year-old Presbyterian seminarian one answer to their cultural alienation from voters. As one booster recently put it, Mr. Talarico’s faith is a potential draw to Texan voters who feel the Democratic Party “doesn’t respect their religion.”
Or much about their lives.
The furor broke during the 2024 election when Democrats’ crippling disconnect with so many average and working-class people was made evident, explains Ms. Strassel.
Joe Biden got tossed primarily for bad economic management, but voters of all stripes also registered frustration with a progressive agenda that scorns their jobs (to be eliminated for climate change), their rights (guns, religion, speech) and common sense (boys in girls’ sports). The 2024 loss was the kick Democrats needed to address a voter loss that put Donald Trump in the White House twice. And so, a new recruitment campaign.
More Talarico-like candidates are sprinting forth. Most are versions of Bernie Sanders’s ideal “economic populist,” notes KS, though with specific “cultural” bona fides.
They are of the working class. They dress and talk—and drink—like average folk. Quite a few are veterans. They are described as “rugged” or “tough;” they sport beards and tattoos.
Next, we have Graham “the enemy is the oligarchy” Platner, who is running for the Democratic nomination against Maine Sen. Susan Collins.
(Platner’s) debut ad felt like an Aquaman trailer, the veteran and oyster farmer’s basso profondo voice overlaying scenes of him in wet suits, splitting wood, piloting a boat, flying the flag, swinging a kettlebell. He’s mad at “billionaires” and “corrupt politicians” who wage “endless wars” and are “driving our families into poverty.”
Every party needs an independent on its side. And Democrats have him in Dan Osborn, “the billionaires who control Washington have built a ‘billionaire economy’” where Osborn is “taking a second run at a Nebraska Senate seat, after giving Sen. Deb Fischer a 2024 scare.”
The veteran and industrial mechanic, who has video proof he can install a carburetor, is sick of workers being represented by a “country club full of Ivy League graduates, former business execs, and trust-fund babies.”
West Virginia’s Zach Shrewsbury—“being poor is not a crime, keeping us that way is”—is a “Marine Corps veteran, the grandson of a coal miner, a working-class Democrat,” and wants to take out Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, whose family has “ruled West Virginia like feudal lords.”
Next, Ms. Strassel wants us to meet Richard Ojeda, who retired after 24 years in the U.S. Army. He was described as “JFK with tattoos and a bench press” and is now running for North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District.
(Ojeda) likes to note that he voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 but is now all about taking down Big Pharma, Big Energy, Big Everything. And Mr. Talarico, of course, who is holding his own against Ms. Crockett by using appeals to faith and calls for “working people” to “take power back” from “billionaire mega donors.”
