Both Parties Have a Chance to Appeal to American Workers — But Will They Take It?

An election typically features political parties putting forward candidates and platforms that they expect will win support, each striving to earn a popular mandate for its governing vision. But the scrambling of political coalitions in western democracies is confounding this process. In Britain, the Tories have spent the past several years driving their own voters away. In France, while the centre and left forfeited contests to each other, they lack shared goals beyond beating the right. 

The US, with its two-party system, is particularly perplexing. One party’s failing should be the other’s opportunity. Yet both have seemed determined for nearly a decade to remain unpopular, and the 2024 election is proving the strangest contest of all. With President Joe Biden, a Democrat, earning record low approval ratings, Republicans chose to nominate Donald Trump, who couldn’t reach 47 per cent of the vote in either of the prior two elections. 

Momentum swung in Trump’s direction early in the summer, not because of any strategic choices or effective campaigning, but because of Biden’s incompetence and an assassin’s narrow miss. When Biden dropped out and vice-president Kamala Harris was anointed in his place, the pendulum swung back, not because of any strategic choices or effective campaigning, but because she was not Trump or Biden. Republicans consider Harris an unqualified diversity hire, but their own candidate cannot get to 48 per cent against her. Democrats consider Trump a dangerous conman, but their own candidate cannot get to 48 per cent against him. 

Beyond the candidates’ shortcomings, both parties face the fundamental problem that their political elites are pulling them away from the voters they need to add to their coalitions.