Subject: Re: WHERE did Dem voters go?
Though it is true that the Dems seem to have become the party of the college-educated, I suspect rank and file voters aren't aware of that. They may dislike some of the progressive social views (like gay marriage, trans rights, etc). But they consistently support Dem programs when polled (e.g. they didn't like "Obamacare", but they did like almost all of the provisions within Obamacare when not labeled "Obamacare").

I think rank and file are very much aware of that, because I think the above misses the point.

While Democrats think of class identification as a matter of wealth, it is increasingly more a matter of education and job. A wrong but good enough model is that you have Knowledge Workers and the Physical Stuff workers. There are people who work on keyboards and people who don't.

For the last two decades, the world's major establishment parties (including both the Democrats and Republicans) have been largely siding with the people who work on keyboards in western developed economies. Less restricted global trade favor the keyboard workers. Less restricted immigration flows favor the keyboard workers. Climate change and Green policies help the keyboard workers. And now during COVID, the restrictions that most countries adopted favored the keyboard workers (especially in the US, where keeping kids out of school for longer was far less damaging for people who could work from home).

That's even before we get into the fact that college-educated keyboard workers generally tend to have more cosmopolitan views than the rest of the electorate, so that when they get control of government and/or institutions those bodies tend to start promoting views that are different than those of the non-college workers. Or that college-educated keyboard workers generally support giving more policy-making power to technocrats rather than elected officials, which tends to privilege their views on policy choices (since most technocrats are themselves college-educated keyboard workers).

When push came to shove during the Biden Administration, the Democrats sided with the Keyboard Class time and again. The Covid regulations were better for the Keyboard Class. Emphasizing Green spending over fighting inflation - or indeed any other social program spending - in the crafting of the BBB favored the Keyboard Class. Liberal immigration policy favors the interests of the Keyboard Class. College loan forgiveness is the ur- example of a policy that favors the Keyboard Class. To say nothing of minor but very politically salient decisions, like Keystone. In almost every instance where there was a conflict between the groups, the Keyboard Class won out.

This isn't surprising. The party workers, news media, policy wonks, think tank employees, government staff, and many of the other folks who shape Democratic policy are more than ever from the Keyboard Class. Bernie made that worse, a little bit - his big demand when he bowed out was to make sure members of his constituency, particularly the greens of the Sunrise Movement, got to shape the party agenda.

The same was true of the GOP. But Trump made it clear that all those pencil-necks that never respected him could go pound sand, and he was going to do whatever his hobbits and deplorables wanted - technocrats and think tanks be damned.

I'm not sure how the Democrats address this. This isn't about policy papers or platforms - it's about who sets the party's agenda, and who wins when there is conflict between groups within the party. The Democrats have been giving an increasingly large voice to college-educated progressive professionals, and they have used it to advance their priorities. Although there's some overlap between the groups (the Keyboard Class supports unionization, for example), it's pretty clear which group has the whip hand.