Bernie Sanders Losing White Working Class

In Grant County, Oklahoma, which is 88% white and 77% working class, Bernie Sanders crushed Clinton, getting 57% of the vote. Four years later, Sanders took home a mere 16% of the vote against Joe Biden. What happened?

It’s pretty simple. Grant County wasn’t voting for Sanders’ so-called socialism in 2016, they were voting against Clinton. It was just sexism (NYT). That’s not good, but it’s an old story.

The big story is that Sanders’ Revolution was supposed to be powered by his socialist ability to speak to the working class. And in 2016, it looked like there was something to that. But in 2020, with far more TV exposure, he’s losing ground with the white working class almost everywhere. It was all an illusion.

This is not a knock against Bernie’s supporters, and even Bernie himself surely believed his own myth. But it’s time to stop fighting over his “revolution” that never was. 

Joe Biden is doing what Bernie claimed only he could do — speak to the white working class.

“I come from the white working class, and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from.” —Sanders tweet, Nov 14, 2016

Of course Bernie was not “deeply humiliated,” since he has never identified with the Democratic Party. He was actually expressing pride in how he (imagined) he could “talk to the people where [he] came from.” But now Bernie should be “deeply humiliated,” as a socialist champion of the working class who can’t connect with them as well as what he calls an “establishment Democrat.” Yes, he came from the working class, but left them behind and never held a working-class job in his entire life.

Here’s more evidence (Wash Po).

White men in Michigan:
   2016: Sanders 62%
   2020: Sanders 49%

White men in Missouri:
   2016: Sanders 61%
   2020: Sanders 45%

Without Clinton to run against, Sanders loses 13% to 16% of the white male vote, even with far more media exposure this time, and even though he went all out to win Michigan. And those stats include all the young white college men that are Bernie’s real base.