Despite vastly outspending her opponent and drafting a galaxy of celebrities to her cause - Jennifer Lopez, Oprah Winfrey, Ricky Martin, Taylor Swift - Democratic candidate Kamala Harris lost the Electoral College, the popular vote and all the swing states.

This has bewildered and dismayed liberals - and much of the mainstream media. In the aftermath, progressive Senator Bernie Sanders excoriated the Democratic Party machine.

"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," he said.

He continued: "Unbelievably, real, inflation-accounted-for weekly wages for the average American worker are actually lower now than they were 50 years ago.

Harris ran a campaign straight out of the centrist political playbook. Sanders observed that the 60% of Americans who live pay cheque to pay cheque weren't convinced by it.

She sought to dampen social divisions rather than accentuate them. She spoke of harmony, kindness and future prosperity, of middle-class aspiration rather than poverty and suffering. Her speeches often repeated rhetoric like her promise to be "laser-focused on creating opportunities for the middle class".

This was unlikely to endear her to those for whom social mobility appears impossible.

Words of blood and thunder resonated

Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee chair, refuted Sanders' claims, saying:

"[Joe] Biden was the most pro-worker president of my lifetime - saved union pensions, created millions of good paying jobs and even marched in a picket line."

But did those workers feel like the Democrats were speaking to them? And did they like what they heard?

Class politics needs to not only promise to redistribute wealth, but do so in a language that chimes with people's lived experience - more effectively than Trump's right-wing populism.

Harris's genial, smiling optimism failed to strike a chord with voters hurting from years of inflation and declining real wages.

And her use of celebrity advocates echoes writer Jeff Sparrow's criticism of the left as "too often infatuated with the symbolic power of celebrity gestures" after Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential election loss.

By contrast, Trump's words of blood and thunder hit the spot - not only in his rural and outer suburban strongholds, but among those voters in rust-belt inner cities, who had voted decisively for Biden four years earlier.

The greatest threat to America, he said, was from "the enemy from within". He defined them as: "All the scum that we have to deal with that hate our country; that's a bigger enemy than China and Russia."

Harris's attempt to build her campaign around social movements of gender and race failed abjectly.

In particular, the appeal to women on reproductive rights, and to minority voters by preaching racial harmony resonated less than Trump's emphasis on law and order and border control.

Women voted more strongly for Harris than for Trump, but not in sufficient numbers to get her into the Oval Office. Latinos flocked to Trump despite his promises to deport undocumented immigrants.

This shows it takes more than political rhetoric to bake people into voting blocs.

Those of us who fixate on politics and the news media tend to overread the ability of public debate to set political agendas, especially during election campaigns.

In fact, few voters pay much attention to politics. They rarely watch, listen to or read mainstream media and have little political content in their social media news feeds. Exit polls indicate Trump led with these kinds of voters.

Is populism the new class?

In much of the Western world, class has receded from the political vocabulary. As manufacturing industries declined, so did the old trade unions whose base was among blue-collar workers.

In 1983, 20.1 percent of Americans were union members. In 2023, membership had halved to 10%. Few of those in service jobs join unions, largely because many are precariously employed.

These days, politicians in the old social democratic parties, like the Democrats in the US and Labor here in Australia, are much more likely to have come up through law and business than the union movement.

In the US, ex-teacher Tim Walz was the first candidate on a Democratic Party presidential ticket without law school experience since Jimmy Carter.

The language of populism - the people versus the elites - is a smokescreen that obscures real structures of power and inequality. But it comes much more easily to the lips of Americans than that of class.

Trump's political cunning rests in his ability to identify as one of the people, even to paint the left as the enemy of disenfranchised so-called patriots.

"We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country," he told a Veteran's Day rally last year.

He conjures up (an illusory) golden age of prosperity in a once-great monocultural America, where jobs were protected by tariffs and crime was low, helped by the reality of rising cost of living and falling real wages.

There is plenty of room on this nostalgic landscape for Mister Moneybags, an old-fashioned tycoon, even one with the "morals of an alley cat", as Joe Biden said in the debate that finished his 2024 candidacy.

The elite, by contrast, are faceless: politicians, bureaucrats, the "laptop class", as Elon Musk calls knowledge workers, and the grey cardinals of the "deep state" (a conspiratorial term for the American federal bureaucracy).

According to Trump's narrative, they conspire in the shadows to rob decent, hardworking folk of their livelihoods. This accords with a real geographical divide: people in cities with high incomes and valuable real estate, and those in the rust-belt with neither.

Australian populism

In Australia, the language of populism has deeper roots than that of class. Students of Australian history learn that national identity was based on distinguishing ourselves from the crusty traditions of the motherland: the belief that, as historian Russel Ward wrote, all Australians should be treated equally, that "Jack is as not only as good as his master … but probably a good deal better".

The Australian Labor Party was there when this egalitarian myth was born. But as the gap between rich and poor grows here, as elsewhere, it has become less plausible than once it was.

It remains to be seen whether Anthony Albanese - whose life journey has taken him from social housing to waterfront mansion - is prepared to bring the sharp elbows of class politics, in both policy and language, to next year's election campaign.

The experience of Kamala Harris suggests he would be well advised to do so.

• First published in The Conversation
• George H Morgan is Associate Professor Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

Brennan, a staunch advocate for giving Indigenous Australians a voice in parliament, accuses the Albanese government of three major errors he believes have set back the cause.

According to Brennan, the following have all been detrimental -

• the government's failure to establish a bipartisan approach after last year's Garma festival
• its reluctance to unveil draft legislation for the Voice
• the Prime Minister's unilateral selection of 21 Indigenous leaders for the referendum working group.

"These three fundamental errors by government have put us so far behind the eight-ball, not only in terms of constitutional recognition but in terms of bringing the country together" Brennan told Sydney's 2GB radio.

Brennan also expressed strong disapproval of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's comment that the Voice referendum would have been valuable even if it failed as it would bring attention to Indigenous disadvantage.

"I don't know a single Aboriginal person who says they'd want to go through this again and that it was worth doing" Brennan said.

Brennan added that, because of this mishandling, race relations in Australia are in a "hell of a mess".

Brennan says that the deadlock between major parties and Indigenous leaders on constitutional recognition has persisted for too long.

"We've been trying to find that sweet spot that can bring the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the Aboriginal leadership together" he said.

"What I do urge on people when they're thinking on how to vote is let's at least respectfully listen to the Aboriginal voices.

"I would hope that people, if they vote No, will do it because they've heard Aboriginal people convincing them that they should vote No - or, if they vote Yes, they've heard Aboriginal people convincing them they should vote Yes," said Brennan.

In the event of a 'No' vote for the Voice referendum, Brennan urged the Prime Minister and Liberal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to reconsider their stances on constitutional recognition. He also emphasised the importance of listening to Aboriginal voices when making a voting decision.

The Jesuit lawyer highlighted the stark contrast between the voice referendum and the same-sex marriage plebiscite, noting that the latter was about treating everyone the same way.

"You didn't have leading gays and lesbians out there saying vote No. What we've got here is clear public division between key Aboriginal leaders," he said.

"That's why we needed a process which was far more aimed at getting people locked into a process, and that sadly wasn't done," Brennan concluded.

Prime Minister Albanese meanwhile remains optimistic about the referendum's chances.

Sources

• The Australian
• Radio 2gB - Sydney

Anthony Albanese, centre-left leader of the Labor Party, claimed election victory on 21 May defeating the conservative Liberal-National coalition that has governed for nine years.

Mr Albanese always described himself as the only candidate with a "non-Anglo Celtic name" to run for prime minister since federation 121 years ago.

He is a 26-year veteran of the federal parliament, yet a gruelling six-week election campaign was the first chance for many Australians to witness his leadership style.

In the final days of campaigning, he took media crews to visit the humble inner Sydney housing estate where he was raised by his single mother, and with an Italian name - Albanese - he appeared in front of ethnic audiences to pledge his support for multicultural Australia.

In recent times, 59-year-old Albanese has described himself as "half-Italian and half-Irish" and a "non-practising Catholic". His late Italian father returned to Italy before he was born, while his late mother was of Irish descent.

Mr Albanese did signal his Catholic credentials by visiting his Catholic primary school and being photographed alongside Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher, after the two men met privately.

Delivering his victory acceptance speech he said: "It says a lot about our great country that a son of a single mum who was a disability pensioner, who grew up in public housing … can stand before you tonight as Australia's prime minister.

"I want Australia to continue to be a country that no matter where you live, who you worship, who you love or what your last name is, that places no restrictions on your journey in life."

As a Catholic schoolboy at St Mary's Cathedral College in Sydney, Mr Albanese attended local Labor Party meetings with his mother and grandparents.

He joined the party as a teen, was active in college and then went to work for the party.

He was elected to federal parliament on his 33rd birthday.

While he is no longer a churchgoer, his past association and schooling appear to have been crucial in shaping his values in support of social justice and equal opportunity.

Quoting Pope Francis during a speech delivered in February, Mr Albanese said there was a "powerful overlap between those values and Labor values as we work on how to get through this pandemic".

Catholic organisations have welcomed Labor's election victory, calling on the new government to tackle poverty and fix the aged care crisis. Continue reading