One reason liberals don't do better

Sam Smith – As noted here before, the rise in education has helped to produce a liberal class that is increasingly separated from the lower, less educated classes, which helps to explain why liberals are not doing as well as they used to. Another factor has been the drastic decline in union membership as unions not only organize workers they teach them about politics.

Some figures from the Pew Trust help to illustrate this. For example, among non college graduates, Democrats gained only one percent of men and two percent of women between 1994 and 2019. Among college grads they gained ten percent of men and 17% of women.

During this period the share of voters who were white non-college graduates and  Democrats went from 57% down to 30%.

And 54% of those with a post grad degree have liberal values compared with 27% of those with only a high school education or less. 

Indicative of this change is the emphasis liberals are putting on symbolic rather than more dramatic progress, as exemplified by the name changing of institutions and the destruction of confederate statues. This is intellectually satisfying but doesn't change the life of the working class.

Without strong unions and with a liberal class increasingly based on a college educated constituency, it was much easier for Trump to lie his way into the lower economic constituencies. Unless liberals face this reality and do something about it, their troubles may outlast Trump.