Biden visited East Palestine a year after Trump. This doesn’t bode well

Joe Biden visited East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a massive train derailment and ecological disaster, for the first time last week. The problem, of course, is that the accident happened over a year ago. Donald Trump visited while out of office, only two weeks after the initial disaster.

The mismatch encapsulates a major problem for the Democrats’ messaging. They have allowed Trump and the Republican party to position themselves more and more as representing workers and victims of corporate negligence and malfeasance. Biden and the Democrats must change their positioning and economic messaging to reassert that they will fight for workers.

Changing strategy is crucial. Biden’s poll numbers are weak, particularly with working-class voters, allowing Trump to put himself in the pole position in the election. Contrary to what Trump and his allies would have voters believe, a Trump victory would be a disaster for workers, safety regulations on corporations, and environmental protections.

Much has been made of Trump and the Republicans’ strengthening position among working-class voters. If anything, the trend has been overstated: Biden won low-income voters in 2020 by double digits. When accounting for other factors like age, gender, and education level, higher income is still, statistically, a particularly clear driver of more conservative politics. Trump’s actual economic policies in office were a massive upward transfer of wealth, not appreciably different from any establishment Republican.

But the perception is becoming more and more the reality. Biden’s sagging approval numbers are driven almost entirely by middle- and lower-income voters. Unlike in 2016, the losses among working-class voters can’t be attributed to white