Drew Pomerance is a lawyer in Los Angeles who’s worth millions. He estimates that the tax package signed by President Donald Trump earlier this month will save him tens of thousands of dollars every year. And yet he’s not happy about it. He doesn’t mind the tax break but told The Washington Post that the new law, with its cuts to Medicaid and other programs, is “terrible for America.”
Pomerance is not the only rich liberal who’ll profit personally from the One Big Beautiful Bill but disdains it on ideological grounds. Conversely, there are plenty of Trump voters who are likely to be hurt by the bill — losing far more in services than they gain back in tax cuts — who support it. Among the 300 counties that have seen the most growth in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program since 2008, two-thirds of them voted for Trump last year.
All this points to a disconnect in American politics that is truly bipartisan. Tax cuts for the affluent remain gospel for Republicans, as they were in the Reagan-Bush era — even though the wealthy are much less likely to vote Republican than they did in the 1980s. Meanwhile, the working-class voters who have shifted over to the GOP in the Trump era are not demanding the level of government benefits that their Democratic forebears counted on. To pick just one issue, the GOP’s newfound working-class supporters don’t seem to object at all to private school choice programs that are being pushed by Trump and state-level Republicans and, so far at least, overwhelmingly benefit higher-income families.
Last year, Kamala Harris carried voters who earned more than $100,000 annually by a 51-47 margin, according to exit polls, while Trump benefited from an identical split in his favor among those who earned less. Trump's performance improved everywhere, compared with 2020, but his gains were biggest in the poorest counties and smallest among richer counties. “The relationship is … clear,” concluded the Economic Innovation Group, a research firm in Washington, D.C. “The more a county has been suffering economic distress, the bigger its voting shift to Trump.”
Trump carried rural counties, which tend to be less well off, by a 40 percentage point margin, while Harris carried just under two-thirds of the urban vote. Harris won easily among voters with college degrees, who tend to earn more, and carried voters with post-graduate degrees by a whopping 32 percentage points.
If wealthier voters have embraced the Democrats and Republicans are gaining strength among the working class, why aren’t the parties’ policy stances changing much? Well, they are, but to a limited extent. It’s worth remembering that Trump has shifted the GOP’s positions on many issues, notably trade and immigration. Tax cuts may be a remnant of the old coalition but Trump still refuses to touch Social Security and Medicare, which once were prime targets of GOP fiscal hawks. And Republicans did play a bit of hide the ball when it comes to Medicaid cuts, which won’t really be felt until after the midterms next year.
At the same time, Democrats are playing to an old coalition. It was Barack Obama who first united the party’s “wine track” and “beer track” voters, coalescing affluent whites and less-affluent minority voters. Democrats benefit from the support among wealthy urban voters for immigrant and transgender rights. But they are not otherwise tangibly rewarding those wealthier voters, even as they continue to lose ground among a working-class constituency that is more conservative on social issues but doesn’t feel Democratic policies have benefited them. This, despite President Joe Biden’s efforts to craft industrial policy and support for unions that were in theory at least meant to benefit non-college educated workers.
Several things might explain this disconnect. A decade after his emergence as a leading force, Republicans are still adjusting to the shock that Trump has created for the party and its platform. Playing what’s been a losing hand, Democrats remain unified by hatred for Trump but otherwise are still trying to decide whether to keep fighting along familiar fronts or find new places to carve out progressive ground. Economic self-interest may be the greatest motivating factor for voters but it’s far from the only one. And the fact that politics have become so polarized — with only two real options that are separate like oil and water — means many people will continue to stick with habits and vote for their accustomed team.
All these shifts are ongoing. We don’t know what the party coalitions will look like in the post-Trump era. It’s quite possible that as the political game of musical chairs continues, voters will demand bigger shifts within their own parties once the music has stopped.
