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For months, Democrats — and much of the media — seemed confident that President Donald Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic would guarantee a landslide victory for Joe Biden and a majority in both houses of Congress. So we’re now faced with an uncomfortable but necessary conversation: Why did so many working-class people reject Democrats? Has the Democratic establishment become so badly disconnected from the economic reality of most Americans that they failed to realize the consequences of the pandemic? As my colleagues and I discussed in a live video conversation this afternoon, Biden failed to offer a compelling reason for many of those who have been hardest hit by the pandemic to come out and vote for him. Democratic leaders believed Trump’s rhetoric around race to be so toxic that voters of color could never move his way. But it seems that’s exactly what happened — with Democratic gains coming predominantly from suburban and college-educated white voters whose livelihoods have been least impacted by the pandemic. The exception was in Arizona, where Biden’s wider-than-expected margin of victory was due less to his campaign’s own outreach efforts than to years of grassroots, door-to-door organizing — born in the successful fight to defeat Sheriff Joe Arpaio — through which Latino activists have transformed politics in the state. If Biden struggles to govern with a divided Congress and a Republican-stacked Supreme Court, we can expect the struggle between insurgents and incumbents in the Democratic Party to take center stage.
If you’ve been following The Intercept, you know that that story has long been at the heart of our political coverage – which, as always, is powered by the generous support of readers who are passionate about nonprofit, adversarial journalism. Ryan Grim
D.C. Bureau Chief
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