Strategist Blasts Obama for Alienating Working-Class Americans While Chasing Silicon Valley Dollars [WATCH]

A progressive strategist took aim at former President Barack Obama on Thursday, accusing him of steering the Democratic Party toward elites while neglecting the working class.

In an article from The Hill addressing progressive lawmakers’ “existential crisis” after President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in 2024, the strategist argued that the party needs to reclaim the populist platform it has seemingly abandoned, as reported by Fox News.

“I don’t know exactly when Democrats lost their comfort with populism, but I don’t think it was because Trump picked it up,” the anonymous strategist told The Hill.

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“I think Trump picked it up because Democrats gave it up during the Obama years, when they started chasing Silicon Valley money and Obama wanted to appeal to college-educated people who think populism is icky and uneducated.”

The strategist didn’t hold back, adding, “We replaced it with a really prominent condescension.”

Following Trump’s decisive victory, many progressives have blasted their own party for prioritizing elite interests over working-class concerns.

Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., shared a blunt assessment, stating, “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

Sanders highlighted the party’s waning support across racial and socioeconomic groups, adding, “First, it was the White working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well.”

David Axelrod, a former Obama advisor, echoed these sentiments during a CNN interview, pointing to a “significant decline” in working-class support for Democrats during the 2024 election. “The only group they won among – Democrats won among – were people who make more than $100,000 a year,” Axelrod told Anderson Cooper on November 8.

“You can’t win national elections that way.”

Axelrod added that the party’s approach has alienated voters. “You can’t approach people like missionaries, and say, ‘We’re here to help you become more like us.’ There’s an unwritten, kind of unspoken – unintended disdain in that… But the party itself has increasingly become a smarty-pants, suburban, college-educated party, and it lends itself to the kind of backlash we’ve seen.”

James Carville, a longtime Democratic strategist, also didn’t mince words. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Carville acknowledged the party’s failure to connect with voters on economic issues, conceding that Trump’s economic messaging resonated with middle- and low-income voters.

“We lost for one very simple reason: It was, it is and it always will be the economy, stupid,” Carville wrote.

“Mr. Trump, for the first time in his political career, decisively won by seizing a swath of middle-class and low-income voters focused on the economy. Democrats have flat-out lost the economic narrative.”

These critiques paint a stark picture of a party struggling to reconnect with the very voters it once championed. If Democrats fail to reclaim a genuine populist message, the backlash may continue to widen the gap between the party and working-class Americans.