The Democrats could win every presidential election and control the other levers of government if they would reconsider their views on this one thing: religion.
In the past, Democrats could comfortably speak the language of the religious, especially the religious working class they have now lost to Republicans — at least, enough of them from every ethnic and racial demographic to cause Democrats to lose the presidency and control over the rest of government.
The religious working class are indeed aggrieved. They have been neglected economically, educationally and religiously. The Democrats failed in their responsibility to fight for them — their base — in an era where all three of their critical interests are at risk in the ever-shifting information economy.
Choosing to fight on the opposite side of the culture conflicts from the Republicans did not in and of itself cause the alienation of the religious working class. No, it was because of those who the Democrats chose as their champions to fight for them in the culture conflicts. Democrats put their trust in the sophisticated intellectual class of the academy to lead their party through the decadeslong culture war.
For 60 years, the secular sophisticates have put up a very successful fight in the culture conflicts. It is clear their victories, which are numerous, have been at the expense of alienating the religious working class that for generations had been the base of the Democratic Party.
In other words, the secular sophisticates sacrificed the religious working class when they maneuvered to displace a religious worldview in a successful attempt to rally the nation around a secular worldview. They knowingly dispatched a significant part of the class Democrats claim gives them their identity and purpose as a political party — the class Democrats must have to dominate presidential elections and control the levers of government.
To win the culture conflicts, the Democrats turned the religious working class into cannon fodder. It should surprise no one when the religious working class turned their support to President-elect Donald J. Trump, who awkwardly but shrewdly uses the language of the religious working class to appeal to them, while focusing his real heartfelt efforts to enrich the upper class.
Trump’s religious-working-class strategy paid off big time. He is now empowered by the presidency, both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court — all three branches of government. And all he had to do was theatrically project a religious worldview, however inauthentic it may have been, to win over the politically indispensable voting religious working class.
Trump successfully stole the religious working class right out from under the noses of the neglectful Democrats. And now, he holds outsized influence over all levers of government, which are ready to empower him beyond any historical norms of governance.
If anyone doubts that, consider the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Trump v. United States, wherein the Court granted him historical expansive powers of immunity (not written in the Constitution) from his crimes committed while in office.
In the aftermath of the Democrats’ neglect, the Republicans control all of government with a powerful presidency that they certainly will wield as effective weapons to retake the ground previously lost in the culture war. This will leave the nation in a perpetually polarized condition of conflict and contention, division and disruption until it breaks from within.
The least the Democrats could have and should have done is support the working class in their religious worldview that provides them comfort and hope from the challenges they face in a very unsettling world. But they didn’t do that. Instead, the Democrats took them for granted, leaving an opening for the Republican robber barons to swoop in to steal them away by pervasively promising to protect their religion and its necessary freedom from the Democrats themselves.
It is astonishing that Democrats pound the podium over the internal threat to democracy, when they birthed that threat the moment they allowed the secular sophisticates they deployed to win the culture war to break from the religious worldview of the working class.
Are the Democrats really that surprised that a break from religion would inevitably motivate the religious working-aggrieved to break from democracy? What didn’t they get when the religious working-aggrieved charged the nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with their religious icons in hand?
If they care at all for the republic and its cherished democracy, Democrats must more forthrightly care for those aggrieved in the ever-changing educationally, economically and ethically challenged world overwhelming them. They must sincerely care for the religious worldview of the working class if they care to earn their indispensable vote once again.