Have Democrats focused too much on gaining with college educated voters?

[ProgressiveModerate]

In recent election cycles, a huge narrative both on this forum and in media is the growing education divide - as a consequence, Democrats have gained with educated voters around the Country.

I think in many cases, we've seen Democrats adjust their messaging and even who they run to try and squeeze further gains out of this group. I think compared to a decade ago, their messaging has shifted away from using any sort of populists rhetoric in favor of talking about larger complex issues many academics care about like Democracy. In many cases, we've seen Democrats lean on academics as part of their rhetoric (i.e. party of science during COVID).

However, there's also a negative side to educational polarization for Democrats, which is losing ground with non-college voters. Even though more people attend college than ever, people who have a degree are still a minority in America, and also are not distributed well in some regions of the Country, with college-educated voters tending to cluster in high concentrations.

I would argue that messaging that works for academics is often outright toxic for non-college folks, for several reasons. Firstly, people don't like to feel as if they are being lectured and talked down to - people want to feel empowered to make their own decisions. Good example was with COVID, where I think many people felt Democrats and scientists promoting mask wearing was a way for them to try and exert power over others. Another reason is because messaging for/by academics often relies on more extensive reasoning and connecting abstract concepts in a way a person who didn't attend college may just not be able to do, at least without a lot of additional context. Finally sometimes academics are just really bad communicators because they try too hard to be nuanced and get lost in the weeds - good recent example would be the 3 university Presidents who testified in front of congress. All 3 are smart women who I believe had no mal intention, but the way their responses came across felt inadequate because they were trying too hard to be nuanced with their answer despite the fast nature of congressional hearings.

On the Democratic side, there really seem to be a lack of prominent media figures that are able to connect with non-college folks on a mass scale. I don't think Democrats should start trying to promote their own versions of Tucker Carlson and Steven Crowder, but also having too many purity tests about how to deliver a message is bad. I think this is also possibly part of the reason why polls are suggesting young voters, particularly younger non-college voters are drifting pretty hard to the right - there just isn't the same magnitude of prominent left wing commentators on these platforms. I think if Dems could find commentators that could message their rhetoric and policy positions in a way that invokes emotion and sometimes anger in people, the way the right often does, it could be very powerful.

I also question how much of Dem gains with college educated folks were actually because of Dem messaging, or if they were always going to make gains by nature of re-alignment and also increasing self-selection to who attends college. Even in safe states that don't typically see much investment from either side, it seems like Dems have generally gained ground with college educated voters in similar magnitudes. I would also argue messaging matters a bit less for college educated voters because they are more likely to have a better baseline understanding of issues and also do independent research to figure out where they stand and who they want to vote for.

This is a bit detached from my original post, but generally as a society I think we have to do a better job at educating people in K-12 and making them critical independent thinkers. The number of adults we have falling for fringe conspiracy theories and compelte nonsense, both left and right, is really concerning, and realistically mass media and the internet isn't going away. The best we can do is highten our standards for education to evolve with the world.

TDLR: Democrats have tried too hard to message to college educated voters. If Dems want to stay viable in the long run, they have to figure out ways to message to non-college voters, and they shouldn't be scared doing so will cause them to lose their gains with college-educated voters.