SInce around 2020, a number of researchers have determined The fact that the most protruding fracture in politics today is the division of the diploma-that is to say the division between those who have a four-year university degree and those who do not. Those who have a diploma are more liberal, those who are no less. The former tend to vote for the Democrats, the second for the Republicans.
There is a certain elegance for simplicity and cleaning of the image. And, under this cleanliness, some insist that “educational polarization“Is a better way to understand political changes today than dependence on older, softer and more disorderly ideas like class. Conceptual cleanliness is certainly attractive. It is much easier to determine who is “educated by the college” and who is not that it is not a question of establishing boundaries defined in a similar way between the working classes and the middle classes. However, if we understand changing political alignments according to the class, as a large social and relational concept, or education, a category of close skills, implies a lot of political strategy.
On the one hand, it is not a good sign that those who wish to develop a political strategy for progressives are looking for even more means to make the class of the conversation disappear. Traditional class concepts, by their simple mention, reveal something significant in the nature of our society. Talking about “working class” in politics reminds us that there is a relationship between the type of work that people have, their position on the labor market, their economic interests and their ideology. To say that a political party wins the “vote of the working class” is to suggest that they have persuaded these voters that they represent the interests of the humble against the interests of the elite. However, if we focus only on education, we risk suggesting something different. If we say that a given party wins the “non -educated non -university vote”, without reference to the social class, we risk suggesting that political behavior is mainly linked to intelligence or success.
Today, many liberals are proud that their party won the majority of voters who have studied college. They see this as a sign that they are the “smart party” and that the Republicans are stupid. Without a doubt, there is good evidence This higher education itself leads to more progressive opinions. In this angle, progressives could conclude that the only real political problem to be solved is that there are not enough educated voters to give the majority the Democrats. Intuitively, this suggests that supporters should focus on the fact that more people go to university so that we can have a society where 51% of people are liberals educated in college, how an absolute majority the “smart party” would have.
It is not so far from what the Democrats have actually tried to make the past three decades – they have relied on the consolidation of their gains among the voters trained by the colleges and encouraged everyone to go to university. Not only has it failed as a political strategy, but it actually worsened the class. Saturating the labor market with more educated workers at university has weakened the salary bonus for these workers and has taken them with a huge debt that they are increasingly incapable of paying. This fueled a political gap when Joe Bid’s plans to forgive part of this debt were considered by many blue passes as an unfair attempt to reward the already easy.
And by increasing the proportion of people educated at the college of 20% in 1990 at more than 38% in 2021We have done absolutely nothing for workers who do not have a diploma, except in a particularly cruel irony, it has made more difficult for them to obtain certain jobs which now require university references. During this period, those who have no university degree saw their salary stagnating or decreasing, and the difference in income and wealth between them and their counterparts educated in the college grew up. The very rich, meanwhile, took off in the exosphere, seated on a celestial plane so high above us that they fly between the parts according to who they think they win.
Worse still, by making education an important part of the Democratic Party plan to reach social uprising and economic growth, democrats have involuntarily surrounded themselves with voters and staff members who do not understand the world beyond their laptops. More than the advantage of wages, university education offers workers a manual work shield, routine layoffs and the possibility of helping to shape our common culture. Consequently, voters trained by the university are less worried about the effects of immigration as downward pressure on their salary, they do not worry about free trade agreements and they largely host cultural changes. It is not that the Democratic Party is the “intelligent party”, but it is the party “go to college” and “learn to code” the party, the party of more loose immigration restrictions and cosmopolitan standards. If he is not opposed to the economic interests of those who do not have a university diploma, he has become ambivalent about them.
In fact, for a long time, the Democratic Party concentrated its calls on the edges of the working class (the very poor and the class not so professional). Consequently, he neglected the views and interests of the large big piece at the center of wage distribution. In doing so, the Democrats have neglected any substantial criticism of the increasingly high hyper-globale economy who left behind the voters of the working class. Democrats are now considered to be defenders of the status quo, representatives of the narrative, well-being-or educated and fully equipped to challenge Trump’s national-populist narrative.
The disaffection of the working class with the Democrats began with white voters in blue collar. Many liberals assumed that it was the political price they had to pay for civil rights. Likewise, they also supposed that the colored voters of the working class would remain faithful to the Democratic Party. They did not do it. The disaffection of the Democratic Party has spread from the whites of the working class to Latin and black voters of the working class.
What will exactly keep voters with low university income in the democratic coalition? What does the party offer them as their economic position erodes? Meanwhile, as a salary bonus for workers educated by the colleges continue to shrinkThere are reasons to believe that the carrying out of college studies will have calendra and that the educated base for Democrats will only make smaller.
The emphasis on education simply cannot fill the working size hole in the electoral coalition of the Democrats. If they should never go to power, progressives must develop a program that addresses class grievances as class grievances.