Democratic Elites Gather at Luxury Hotels to Learn How to Win Back Working-Class Voters

And they may burn $20 Million on the"Speaking with American Men" project...

The New York Times reported on Sunday:

Democratic donors and strategists have been gathering at luxury hotels to discuss how to win back working-class voters, commissioning new projects that can read like anthropological studies of people from faraway places.

The prospectus for one new $20 million effort, obtained by The Times, aims to reverse the erosion of Democratic support among young men, especially online. It is code-named SAM — short for “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan” — and promises investment to “study the syntax, language, and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces.” It recommends buying advertisements in video games, among other things.

“Above all, we must shift from a moralizing tone,” it urges.

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Words fail me. From where I sit, these donors and strategists look like fools. Fox News called the plan “bizarre,” and they are right, for once. It’s stupid, too.

$20 million? For just one silly project?

In my head, I can see the rich donors and big money consultants sitting around in fancy dining rooms, at the bar, and in the conference rooms, feeling important and patting themselves on the back, tut-tutting and poo-pooing from their priviledged perch about how to best spend the rivers of money they have to save our country from authoritarian rule while working-class people serve them.

Let me repeat that last part—while working-class people SERVE them. Working-class people are SERVING them while they ponder how to win their votes, and they are paying millions of dollars to other elites when they could just ask the working-class people who surround them for advice. Instead, they are oblivious to them.

Slip, say, $100, no, let’s make it $1,000 to the waitress, bartender, hotel maid, custodian, or taxi driver—any working-class people around them—and ask them what their concerns are, how the government can set the stage so they can live their best lives and quit paying so much money to consultants.

That they are paying money to someone to tell them they “must shift from a moralizing tone” is total dumbassery. This is something working-class people have been telling them for years, and our advice is free.

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These elite Dems are prepared to pay millions of dollars for consultants to “study the syntax, language, and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces.”

Who wrote this silly proposal, and what do they think they will be getting with this? Some kind of working-class Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, or Babbel software where out-of-touch and never-have-been-in-touch candidates can learn to cosplay at being working-class? I think it’s a consultant money-grab.

You can’t cosplay at being working class. You have to have lived it, and if you have lived it, you know how to talk to other working-class people.

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People from all walks of life should be represented in Congress, but the working class is woefully underrepresented. A 2021 report found that members of Congress who spent part of their adulthood in the working class is only two percent. A 2024 report found that the same two percent holds for state legislatures.

We won’t need consultants to teach people to speak to working-class people if we have more working-class candidates.

As if they could anyway. What a farce.

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And here is another dumb-ass example of national Democrats burning money that could be invested in uplifting candidates and building grass-roots organizations. There are innumerable more.

For years, Democratic congressional candidates have told me that they spend hours every day on the phone fundraising and that it’s soul-crushing. They would rather be out talking with potential constituents, and if the big money donors invested directly in candidates and not consultants, we would all be better off.

Maybe Democrats would even win—which we must as our way of life teeters on the brink.

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Now here is my ask. Rather than donate to the National Democratic Party, donate directly to Democratic candidates, your state Democratic Party, and progressive groups who are working locally. The candidates and the progressive groups I know will spend your money wisely, and they won’t spend it on fancy rooms and fine dining at luxury hotels.

Or on silly money-grubbing plans devised by beltway consultants.

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