I was reading in the NYT that 60% of Americans do not have a four-year degree. And it's those people that are the swing votes. And it's those people that are starting to lean RED. They go on to discuss what has to happen to swing the election one way or the other. Candidates who were teachers, etc...blah blah blah.

But I think there is a more fundamental problem here. Most of the time, if you don't have a degree in 2023, you're screwed. Blue-collar jobs go where labor is cheap, and that isn't here. Textiles are virtually gone. So is steel. We make very few ships that aren't military. Etc. There is still construction, of course (can't really off-shore that). The US economy appears to be a more technical economy. What assembly/factory jobs there are increasingly are being performed by robots. Software is making office jobs more efficient, so you can hire less people to do the same work. So the non-college middle class is shrinking.

In that landscape, it is difficult to promise "more jobs, better jobs" without just lying. IMHO, that's why Team Red has pivoted to -for example- "them feriners are taking your jobs". Side-step the problem, and blame "the other". Team Blue can't really do that. So they are losing the working class, even though Team Red isn't actually going to make anything better for them (Team Blue is more likely to approve job training, financial support, SNAP, etc). They just distract them with "floods of illegals", etc. (Not that illegal immigration isn't a problem, but it isn't the problem with respect to the shrinking middle class and lack of jobs.)

The answer seems clear to me: make college more affordable, and get more STEM grads out there. A few on Team Blue seem to support that. Almost no one on Team Red does. As we've seen, neither seems to be making that a priority. Which seems foolish to me given the realities of our evolving economy.

There is an alternative, and that is protectionism. But that seldom (if ever) works out well. And what's sorta sad is that we likely can never get some industries back because the people that knew how to do them have retired and are dying out. The people with the know-how are in China, or Bangladesh, or Thailand, or wherever. They aren't here anymore.