How to Reach the Working Class in Red-State America

When the polls close next November, about half the country will flash red within seconds. That’s because there are more than 130 congressional districts where Democrats lose by 25 points or more.

So, what’s the strategy for changing that?

That question—and why so many of us seem unable or unwilling to answer it—is at the heart of my new book, The Billionaires Have Two Parties, We Need a Party of Our Own.

There are only two options. The first is to dramatically reform the Democratic Party so that it once again speaks to and for working people. The second is to build a new independent party of working people, distinct from the two major parties.

Neither path is easy. But which one actually has a chance?

The road to reforming the Democratic Party is long—and incredibly steep

Take West Virginia. From 1948 to 1964, the state sat safely in the Democratic column. From 1968 through 1992, it swung back and forth. Bill Clinton still won 52 percent there in 1996. But after that, the Democratic vote collapsed—to 30 percent for Biden and 28 percent for Harris.

Can working-class candidates actually gain traction in red states? There’s evidence that they can—if they run as independents on a bold, progressive-populist economic platform.

The decline in state politics has been even worse. In 2024, Republicans held all but 11 of the 134 seats in the state legislature. In 49 races, Democrats didn’t even field a candidate.

What happened?

The Democrats came to be seen as the enemy of coal—and therefore the enemy of jobs. Worse still, they offered no serious replacement. Clinton declared that “the era of big government is over,” which meant the government would no longer create jobs directly. The era of New Deal-style public job creation was over too.

Into that vacuum stepped the private sector, helping turn West Virginia into the opioid capital of America, with the highest overdose death rate in the nation.

So how exactly is anyone supposed to reform the Democratic Party in West Virginia—or in any other deeply red state? It’s not happening. In these places there is no Mamdani movement, no Working Families Party, no Democratic Socialists of America rebuilding the party from the ground up. The reality is that red America is being written off. The progressive strategy now is to win primaries in blue and purple districts.

Build a New Working-Class Independent Movement?

Dan Osborn in Nebraska offers another path.

A former local union president who led a strike against Kellogg, Osborn is now running for Senate for the second time against what he calls the “two-party doom loop.” He lost by six points in 2024 but ran 15 points ahead of Harris. The Democrats did not run a candidate. Now, according to recent polls, he’s in a neck-and-neck race.

It will be an enormous battle. Because he’s running for Senate rather than the House, huge sums of money will pour in to defeat him. But he is still likely to perform far better than Nebraska Democrats—and that tells us something important about how to challenge power in ruby-red America.

Can working-class candidates actually gain traction in red states?

There’s evidence that they can—if they run as independents on a bold, progressive-populist economic platform.

In a YouGov survey we conducted of 3,000 voters in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, we asked whether they would support a new “Independent Workers Political Association” (a name we invented) that would back independent candidates outside the two major parties.

We paired the question with a short but strongly progressive platform:

• The right to a job at a living wage, provided by the government if the private sector can’t
• No layoffs at corporations receiving government money
• Raising the minimum wage to a living wage
• Stopping price gouging by pharmaceutical and food companies

Overall, an astonishing 57 percent supported the fictional organization—including 40 percent of Trump voters and 70 percent of voters under 30.

When we isolated the most rural voters, we found:

Support for the Independent Workers Political Association

• Rural Republicans — 50%
• Rural Independents — 50%
• Rural Democrats — 77%

None of this guarantees success. Building a new political organization takes time, money, discipline, and enormous commitment. Right now, all we have are a handful of independents running here and there.

What we really need is for major labor unions to test this path seriously.

Over the next decade, it’s possible that a dozen working-class independents could make it to Congress and form a genuine working-class caucus. That alone would be a major breakthrough.

These are exactly the questions I take up in The Billionaires Have Two Parties, We Need a Party of Our Own: why the Democrats collapsed across much of working-class America, why independent working-class politics keeps reemerging, and what it would actually take to build durable political power outside the two-party system. If we are serious about progressives competing in red America, we need more than protest votes and nostalgia. We need a strategy.

Over the next decade, it’s possible that a dozen working-class independents could make it to Congress and form a genuine working-class caucus. That alone would be a major breakthrough.

But what if we fail?

Let the late Tony Mazzocchi, founder of the Labor Party in the 1990s, faced up to that question:

“I just look at building the Labor Party as something that has got to be done. I think the chances of defeat are greater than the chances of success—appreciably greater… And not to have tried would have been more tragic than to have tried and been defeated.”

The question is no longer whether working people are angry. The question is how best they can build a political home of their own.