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Kill This Meme [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-12
There's a meme going around that Democrats no longer support the working class, and that the Republicans do.
This is based on the data that shows that people making less than 50k/year went for Trump and people making more than 50k/year voted for Harris.
First, if you are making 50k, 80k, 125k, you aren't rich . You are working class. At this point in time, anything below 300k is working class, and is not rich. And that number may be low.
What is rich is, of course, is relative, as the generic "I" person makes less than some people and more than others, and to generic "I" person, if someone makes substantially more than they do, that person might perceive the other to be rich. And that’s fine. But they are objectively not.
If you make a paycheck that is meaningful to you, and if you would worry if you found yourself without a job, with no indication of whether and when you would find gainful employment again, you are working class, and you are, by definition, not rich.
Ok. So, what gives, then?
The Republican Party has, for 45 years now, been attacking education. This has created a large population who are poorly educated. The more poorly educated you are, the more likely you are to vote Republican. There's tons of data on that. That is why Trump famously declared that he loves the uneducated.
If you are uneducated, you are generally predisposed to trust authority figures who tell you which way to think and vote, whether from the pulpit, or from the ever-rightward-shifting media. If you find yourself in a part of the country where the only radio stations broadcast rightwing propaganda, and the majority of public spaces with televisions are tuned to Fox news, well, propaganda works.
And, that's that.
If you are living in redland, and are not one of the Republican-hated-minorities that would place you in danger when the right wing rears its ugly head, then, odds are, you're voting Republican.
The more educated you are, the more you vote Democratic. Also, the more likely you are to have a white collar job, and, therefore, the more likely you are to make over 50k/yr. These are separate vectors that happen to share an entry point.
So, the issue isn't that the poor are benefiting from the Republicans or suffering under the Democrats. It is that the people who are swayed by Republican propaganda are more likely to be less educated, and the less education they have, the less likely they are to make over 50k/yr.
But this crap that the Republicans represent the working man is getting more and more oxygen, and, eventually, people are going to just “know” that the Republicans are going to help the little guy more than the Democrats will.
Which. Is. Ridiculous.
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