Democrats like to fancy themselves as the "party of the poor" rather than the "by elitists, for elitists" party they actually are. It should come as no surprise, then, that the party regularly fails to help people escape poverty.
Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, has made this one of his new favorite attacks to launch against Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who joined former President Donald Trump on the Republican ticket. During his speech at the Democratic National Convention, Walz hit Vance for going to Yale University, saying , “I had 24 kids in my high school class, and none of them went to Yale. But I’ll tell you what, growing up in a small town like that, you learn to take care of each other.”
Walz has gone to this well multiple times, sarcastically telling a rally that “like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, J.D. studied at Yale” and telling MSNBC, “None of my hillbilly cousins went to Yale.” According to Walz, Vance cannot possibly truly have been a poor hillbilly from middle America, because real poor people don’t go to Yale, a school for liberal elitists. The Democratic view of poverty and politics dictates that Vance must either be a Democrat or a fraud, so Walz labels him the latter.
Vance’s existence in politics proves that people can rise from poverty, and not support the Democratic Party, which flies in the face of how Democrats treat the poor. As the self-proclaimed "party of the poor," Democrats have no real incentive to ensure that poor people get out of poverty. That doesn’t necessarily mean they keep people intentionally poor, but they also don’t care to make sure their policies actually address poverty so long as it appears they are trying.
And what makes it look more like you are trying than spending money?
This has been the model for Democrats in California in particular. California has the worst poverty rate in the country when adjusted for cost of living and a homelessness crisis that has grown worse over the past decade despite $24 billion in state spending over the last five years. The problem comes with how that money is spent, though, and how little the state Democratic Party cares to offer oversight over that spending.
As an example, a state audit found that the state couldn’t determine if $13.7 billion of that money meant to combat homelessness was used effectively. In fact, the California Interagency Council on Homelessness hadn’t even begun tracking whether California spent taxpayer money on homelessness effectively since 2021. The state burned through hundreds of millions of dollars in affordable housing projects alone, projects that the state is now claiming were equivalent to Ponzi schemes.
San Francisco has particularly struggled with drug addiction and homelessness as the city has outsourced governance to left-wing nonprofit groups. The city spends roughly $1.4 billion each year on social services courtesy of these groups, only recently deciding it needed “measurable performance goals” in city contracts. In particular, San Francisco’s approach has made drug addiction and drug overdoses a more prevalent problem, leaving communities flooded with homeless drug addicts who find it easier to find and use drugs thanks to the city’s “harm reduction” policies. Throwing money at nonprofit organizations that give drug addicts crack pipes or needles allows those addicts to fall further into addiction and communities to fall further into decay.
Ask, though, and Democrats will tell you that this is all proof that they are doing everything they can to fight poverty, drug addiction, and homelessness. After all, look how much of other people’s money they are spending on this fight. But look at the national party’s priorities, and you can see who it is for which the Democratic Party stands.
Student loan debt “forgiveness” has been a popular proposal among Democrats, to the point that President Joe Biden has boasted about going around the Supreme Court to try to unilaterally enact it. That policy also favors highly educated upper-class college graduates and postgraduates, the true Democratic voting base.
You can see this in other areas, particularly climate policy. The Democratic Party talking point is that private jets are acceptable and indeed even the “only choice” for rich elite Democrats and climate zealots such as former Secretary of State John Kerry. Everyone else’s carbon emissions must be driven down through crackdowns on cars, water heaters, and eating meat, but Kerry and his rich elitist friends get to fly around on private jets because they can purchase “carbon offsets.” If you are rich enough, Democrats support you pumping as much carbon into the air as you want. The rest of you need to stop flying or eating hamburgers.
It doesn’t even have to be about private jets. If you’re a wealthy donor who works as a chef, you can get gas stove carveouts from climate laws that apply to all the peasants in your city.
All of this loops back to Democratic policies on poverty, crime, and drugs as well. After all, the reason Democrats in cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York can ignore those issues and make no progress is because they don’t affect the wealthy people who actually vote for the party. Crime and homeless drug addicts don’t bleed into wealthy liberal communities, and so those issues never really bleed into the Democratic agenda.
This is even more fitting with Walz, who allowed communities in Minneapolis to burn during the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots, and with Harris, who helped bail out violent criminals during those riots. The millions in riot damages or the risks from bailed-out violent criminals can be crushing for poorer residents of Minneapolis who can’t afford their own security, but the city’s wealthier residents can avoid those consequences.
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While the Democratic Party fights tooth and nail for its climate policies and student debt erasures that benefit the wealthy, it can blow through billions of dollars on poverty and related issues by pawning them off to nonprofit organizations and activists so that Democratic politicians don’t even need to take time out of their days to focus on the them.
That is, in part, why Walz deems it important to delegitimize Vance’s life story. Vance can’t be allowed to have a background that resonates with people in the communities that Walz’s party has neglected. If Vance is not a fraud who is posing as someone from a poor, working-class background, he shatters the Democratic Party’s pitch that it is the “party of the poor” and that Republicans are the party of corporations and “the 1%.” Walz and the Democratic Party want those voters to think Vance is the elitist who doesn’t care about them, even as Walz and his party promise millions more in failing programs that don’t achieve anything but making it look like Democrats are trying.
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