Working-class voters want leaders who have clear values and stick to them and parties who will stand up and deliver material gains for them, says Antoinette Miles, the New Jersey Working Families Party state director. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)
By Antoinette Miles
The New Jersey Democratic establishment saw major warning signs statewide in the November election.
Kamala Harris only won the state by six points — the smallest margin for a Democrat in a presidential election since 1992.
She lost Passaic County, a Democratic bastion, as the rest of the state moved to the right and Democratic turnout dropped. In pockets of deep-blue Hudson County, Trump also performed better than expected.
The question of what happened on Election Day and how the Democratic Party moves forward holds more relevance in New Jersey than practically anywhere else in the nation.
We have critical statewide elections next year for governor and General Assembly. The results in New Jersey will attract national attention and shape the strategy to defeat MAGA going forward.
On Election Day, voters rejected the status quo. They voted against a political establishment that isn’t delivering for them. And that’s especially true here in New Jersey, where we have one of the most corrupt, elite-centric establishments.
Who can blame these voters?
In New Jersey, our elected officials too often seem more focused on getting lucrative engineering and legal contracts for their friends and donors – not the actual issues that affect people’s everyday lives.
Attorney General Matt Platkin is right when he points out how state leaders have created and enabled a corrupt system.
While Trump’s policy prescriptions will only make the lives of working people worse, his rhetoric succeeded in channeling the legitimate frustrations of working people across our state and nation into a movement that rejects the status quo.
Disaffected young, Black, and Latino voters are not necessarily choosing Trump and his agenda. Instead, they’re opting out of an electoral system they see as unresponsive to them. Simply put, they’re staying home.
If Democrats continue to run the same old playbook and fail to consider working-class voters’ real grievances with the party and politics, they’re going to lose these voters for good.
Working-class voters of all races and ages want elected officials who have clear values and stick to them. They want parties who will stand up for them and deliver material gains for them.
New Jersey Working Families Party is building a working-class agenda and the political power necessary to deliver real wins for working people, govern effectively, and bring voters that the Democrats have lost back into the fold.
If we want to fight back against the demagoguery, racism, and hateful rhetoric of the right wing, we need to single out the people who are responsible for worsening working-class conditions: the elites and billionaires. We need to take on corporate interests while enacting policies that will benefit the working class.
And we won’t do it by scolding or scapegoating any demographic.
The New Jersey Working Families Party is not new to this. In fact, we’ve been taking on corruption in the Democratic and Republican establishments for years, and we have a strong mandate to get to work on building an electoral coalition in next year’s state elections.
We’ve led the movement to eliminate the corrupt “county line” system to force reforms to our state’s ballot design.
We’ve repeatedly called out corruption and backroom dealing in our state, including the corporate capture of government by South Jersey political boss George Norcross and his Democratic Party loyalists in Camden.
We’ve fought billion-dollar tax giveaways to the rich and powerful at the expense of working people.
And just this year, we took on the wealthiest corporations to win funding for NJ Transit in our state budget.
How can the most corporate-aligned Democrats in Trenton convince voters in Passaic County or Hudson County that they are working for the people and not out for themselves?
They should pay attention and learn from the strategies of the groups that are already doing the work and winning.
In Hoboken, in a 3-1 victory, tenants defeated a ballot measure backed by corporate landlords to undermine local rent control.
In Passaic City, a union of tenants, supported by Make the Road New Jersey, is fighting for better housing conditions.
In Camden, New Jersey Working Families Party and Camden Parent and Student Union spent six weeks knocking on doors to survey residents about housing, food access, jobs, and transformative ideas like basic income.
These victories and wins-in-the-making for and by the working class are because we treat working people as a bloc to be listened to and a vote to be earned.
We can revitalize a broad-based Democratic coalition by standing up to corruption in both parties and fighting for the people we seek to represent.
New Jersey Working Families Party is working to support the next generation of leaders who can rally New Jerseyans across divides, demonstrate that they are un-bought, and will fight for working people.
Antoinette Miles serves as New Jersey Working Families Party state director.