The New York Times thinks the Democratic President (A union/labor supporter, from back in the day) is working to steal blue -collar voters who shied away from Democrats, to move to them, as he works to do something Republicans under Trump thought they had going….
Jobs….
American Jobs……
Biden HAS worked to get laws and money pumped back into jobs to help the American economy thru a economic downturn from a pandemic….
He’s praying that recent economic reports can change the way people feel about the economy as the money he’s gotten thru the last Congress begins to become available….(And some Republicans say it was ‘them’ that made the opportunities available, while they came out of last November pushing for budget cuts?)
The President has a lot of selling to do countrywide and especially in Red States…..
His approval and disapproval poll numbers still do NOT look good…..
With his call for a “blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America,” President Biden on Tuesday night acknowledged rhetorically what Democrats have been preparing for two years: a fierce campaign to win back white working-class voters through the creation of hundreds of thousands of well-paid jobs that do not require a college degree.
Mr. Biden’s economically focused State of the Union address may have avoided the cultural appeals to the white working class that former President Donald J. Trump harnessed so effectively, the grievances encapsulated by fears of immigration, racial and gender diversity, and the sloganeering of the intellectual left. But at the speech’s heart was an appeal to Congress to “finish the job” and a simple challenge. “Let’s offer every American the path to a good career whether they go to college or not,” he said.
In truth, much of that path was already laid by the last Congress with the signing of a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, a $280 billion measure to rekindle a domestic semiconductor industry and the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $370 billion for low-emission energy to combat climate change.
Whether or not Mr. Biden can persuade a divided Congress to act on his remaining plans, the money from those laws has just begun to flow, and a surge of hiring is coming. Many of those jobs will be in the industrial battlegrounds that Democrats either took back from Mr. Trump in 2020 or will need in 2024, when endangered senators like Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin face re-election….
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Republicans openly mocked Mr. Biden’s “Finish the Job” slogan, and among working-class voters, they have public opinion on their side. In a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, just 36 percent of Americans without a college degree approved of Mr. Biden’s job performance, compared with 53 percent of college graduates. His approval on economic issues was even worse, with just 31 percent of voters without a degree approving of his handling of the economy…..
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In a New York Times/Siena College poll in September, 59 percent of white working-class voters said Republicans were the party of the working class, compared with 28 percent who chose Democrats. Sixty-eight percent of these voters said they agreed more with Republicans than Democrats on the economy, while just 25 percent picked Democrats. Beyond economics, white working-class voters sided overwhelmingly with Republicans on building a border wall, opposing gun control, stopping illegal immigration and seeing gender as immutable and determined at birth.
Democrats, caught between those sentiments on social policy and the party’s core constituencies of people of color, women and the college-educated, are hoping that tangible improvements in well-being can persuade white voters without a college education to focus on their economic interests.
“Jobs are coming back, pride is coming back, because of the choices we made in the last two years,” Mr. Biden said on Tuesday. “This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America and make a real difference in your lives.”
Democratic problems with the working class are not limited to white voters. Some blue-collar Black, Latino and Asian American voters have drifted toward Republicans, and Mr. Biden rolled out a range of economic appeals aimed broadly at people who are more sensitive to high prices.
image….“Jobs are coming back, pride is coming back, because of the choices we made in the last two years,” Mr. Biden said on Tuesday night.Credit…Pete Marovich for The New York Times