Vox

The past four years were a very bad time to be in power. The pandemic did real damage to the global economy, which governments papered over through deficit spending in 2020. But the bill for Covid-19 was always going to come due in 2021 and 2022. And virtually every party that happened to be in power at that time has suffered at the ballot box.

The first is the rightward drift of working-class voters. Americans without college degrees have been shifting rightward for decades, but Trump’s conquest of the GOP in 2016 greatly accelerated that trend. Biden fended off further erosion in his party’s working-class support four years later. But according to AP VoteCast, Trump – who won non-college-educated voters by 4 points in 2020 — won them by 12 points four years later.

Democrats do not control their fate. A second Trump presidency threatens to pervert the democratic process in ways that entrench Republican power. But the party can try to make itself appealing to a broader share of Americans. And it must.