Voters say the American Dream is dead. Why?

Michigan, it's one of the swingiest states in the country, and how its Senate race goes may dictate how both Democrats and Republicans plan for 2028. It's time to hear from some swing voters there. So let's see what's on their minds. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm Sam Greenglass. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And Mara, every month you sit in on a focus group. Tell us about this focus group and what you are looking to learn from these voters. We do a swing voter focus group every month in a different battleground state. This month was Michigan. And swing voters are defined by us as people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Donald Trump in 2024. We do this focus group with Engageus and Nelson Recruiting. And just. Just a disclaimer, focus groups are not polls. They don't tell us what voters are feeling because they're too small a sample size. We know what voters are feeling from polls, but focus groups let us delve deep into the why they are feeling that. OK, so I want to start with economics. These voters were asked about how they're feeling about the current state of the economy. What do they tell you? They're feeling bad. They're feeling sour. They're feeling that everything they have to buy costs more than it used to. And they're struggling to hold on to a middle class. They also live in Michigan and they draw a direct line between Trump's tariffs and the higher prices they're paying. And here are three of our focus group voters, Barbara, Jean and Jess. We only use their first names because that's the terms under which they agreed to be in this focus group. I just go into the stores and I looked at my shampoo and I said, OK, this is going to go up 50 percent. You know, I mean, because my shampoo is made in Canada. Michigan has the auto industry. I think that the tariffs for that. That is very hurtful for the state. Well, if I buy a car that's made in Canada, then it will affect me because the tariffs are now 50 percent. So there you have it. These are voters, Michigan voters. Canada is a huge market for them and they understand that tariffs are a tax on imports. And it is this interesting thing, whether voters are going to draw a direct line between a policy the president announces and their actual lives. But Sam, it sounds like voters are drawing that line. Yeah, I mean, tariffs can be this thing that feel really intangible for a lot of people. But in Michigan, because of these super close ties with Canada, people are directly making that connection. I found some interesting polling from the Detroit News, which found that 64 percent of Michigan voters opposed the Canada tariff. Sixty one percent said they are bad for Michigan's economy and 72 percent said that they would increase the cost that people pay for goods. So that is people making a really. A really direct connection between this policy in Washington and what's happening in their wallets. And part of the reason this is so prescient in Michigan is because all these industries like the auto industry, for example, often parts are going back and forth across the border. And so these companies are seeing this hit really immediately. Yeah. And of course, Michigan also has a Senate race that we are watching very closely. Do you have any sense of how this might affect the Senate? So interestingly, we've seen the Republican nominee for Senate, former Congressman Mike Rogers, supporting Trump's tariffs. He said President Trump is right to put America first and tariffs are necessary, but are not a one size fits all solution. So kind of trying to walk a line there. And then we've seen the Democratic candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, slamming Rogers for that take, saying that he's putting Trump's tariffs over Michiganders pocketbooks. Well, Amara, this is one of the challenges we're talking about, Mike Rogers. But we could be talking. We could be talking about any number of candidates, Susan Collins in Maine or many of the House candidates where, you know, they are Republicans. They are running to maintain power in the House and the Senate. The president is Republican. He is doing things that are hard to campaign on. They are hard to defend. And yet they also need Republican voters to support them. So they can't really put that much space between themselves and the president. And the president doesn't want them to. He is the only president in my lifetime who's polling under 40 percent that still thinks he should be de facto, if not de jure, on the top of the ballot. In other words, he specifically tells people, pretend I'm on the ballot, when actually most Republicans I talk to think he's a drag on Republicans on the ballot. So that's the problem. You have people like Mike Rogers and Susan Collins, as you mentioned. They don't want to break with the president because he could come after them on social media. But on the other hand, they're running. They're running in states that are swing states, sometimes blue, and they need to appeal to moderates and independents who are being hurt by Trump's policies, the war in Iran, the tariffs. The majority of voters now disagrees with the president on almost every policy position he's taken, including flock cameras and A.I. and data centers. I think it's interesting, though, that in Michigan you're seeing Mike Rogers basically backing Trump on the tariffs. But Susan Collins in Maine, another border state, she has used this. This particular issue to try and find some space with the president. And so it'll be interesting to see which one of those strategies works in a very competitive state this fall. I want to talk a little bit more about this idea of the economy and how people are feeling. This is an issue that President Joe Biden had back when he was running for reelection and also in 2022, where the broader economic indicators were kind of fine. You know. The numbers showed a decently strong economy. And yet individual people were like, hello, everything is more expensive. And and like right now, you have gas prices on average at four dollars and 30 cents a gallon, which is up significantly from just like a week or two ago. And people don't really want to be told this is a new golden age. Everything's fine. What are you talking about? Don't worry about it. Prices are coming down because people can see that. Their prices aren't coming down. I have another swing voter who I talk to. And John in Philadelphia put it this way. We use the dollar store as the example around here. We love dollar stores. What became the dollar twenty five store under Biden now because of the tariffs and because everything, a lot of stuff is a dollar fifty, a dollar seventy five. And even in Dollar Tree now, they're doing like Dollar General and some of the other ones are doing where they'll have shelves of stuff that are three, four, five dollars. And because everything, a lot of stuff is a dollar fifty, a dollar seventy five. They're doing like Dollar General and some of the other ones are doing where they'll have shelves of stuff that are three, four, five dollars. If I wanted to pay that, I'd go to Acme Shop, right? Yeah, Aldi, you know, like I'm coming in here specifically because I expect stuff to be a dollar. It doesn't matter how the overall economy is doing. If you're very rich, it matters because you have a big stock portfolio. But if you're a working class person or a middle class person, the only thing that matters is prices at the store and at the pump. And that's the problem. If you try to convince, as almost every president I've covered has tried to do in bad economic times. If you try to convince voters that things are better than they think they are, they get angry at you. Yeah. So clearly both parties know that affordability is a top issue for voters. Voters keep telling him that again and again and again. Cost of living, the economy, affordability. But, you know, it's like coming out in different ways. And it is kind of amazing to watch President Trump continue to say data centers are good. The war in Iran is good. Billionaires are good. You know, like the average voter thinks that things are more expensive and they're afraid that AI is going to take their job or raise the cost of their electricity. Well, no. Well, I mean, the thing that you want to say here, well, that I would say here is that Donald Trump is so convinced in his own hold over his voters that he thinks that he can come out for a whole list of policies that you just mentioned that are majority. Majority unpopular. And each one of them is something that a down-ballot Republican doesn't want to run on. But Trump is confident. He's confident that it'll boost turnout among the faithful, among the MAGA base. But he doesn't seem to understand that most Republicans would like him to just stay home. To use the Michigan example again, though, we've seen Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate nominee there, tilting in this populist direction, though, recently, seemingly acknowledging that what Trump is doing is not good. What Trump is saying is not enough. I just want to play a little clip from an ad that he released this week. I'll take on big pharma. I'll take on insurers. I'll take on hospital monopolies. I have a plan to make your health care more affordable. So you hear a Republican candidate there acknowledging that people not only have problems with cost of living, things like prescription drugs, but taking this kind of anti-corporate tone that typically we hear from Democrats. And I should point out, though, that Rogers' Democratic opponent has said that Rogers has taken. He's taken money from the pharmaceutical industry and, you know, has put some cold water on how much he's willing to actually do this. I mean, Rogers is sort of like a traditional old school Chamber of Commerce Republican. So it's kind of it's kind of interesting to see him put on this populist vest, if you will, because that's just different from the approach that he would have taken five years ago or 10 years ago when he was in Congress. Yes, I think it speaks to needing to acknowledge some of this pain that voters are feeling, even if you're not. not necessarily getting it from the White House. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll have more in a moment. moment. And we're back. And Mara, there was also some interesting conversation in this focus group about the American dream. Talk to us about that. That's right. Zero voters in our focus group thought the American dream was alive and well. The American dream is pretty simple. Work hard, play by the rules, get an education. You can do better than your parents and your kids can do better than you. It's a kind of intergenerational promise. And it's about progress that you work hard and things get better. And it's a foundational tenet in American politics. But that American dream seems to be over for large numbers of voters. Here's Tanya from our focus group talking about the American dream. There's no more middle class. It's the rich and the poor. And Tony, who was a very pro-Trump voter in our focus groups, approves of what Trump is doing, was very skeptical about billionaires. I have nothing against billionaires or people who are making money. But I think that a lot of our problems, economic problems, are stemming from those who can't get enough, who want it all and want more and more and more. We don't want to even pay taxes, you know. So this is another example of the convergence of economic populism on the left and the right. There's not a whole lot of difference between what Tony said and what a supporter of Bernie Sanders would say. Sam, I want you to talk about the American dream, especially as it relates to Michigan, because Michigan played this role in the American dream. It played a role in the U.S. history of, you know, auto manufacturing and building cars and everybody's going to be able to afford a car and people are going to have good paying jobs. And yeah, I mean, it seems like the Michigan story is the story of the American dream. I mean, this is what struck me when Mara was talking about the ways in which the American dream came up in this focus group. The fact that it was in Michigan made so much sense to me. I mean, for such a long time in Michigan, you could graduate high school, you could get a job at one of these auto manufacturers and make a living out of it. You could make not only enough to support a family and own a home, but maybe get a little place up north, too. And that is why, in part, in this moment in the last 10 years, you had a lot of frustration that fueled the rise of President Trump. And Michigan, a state that had gone for Democrats in many recent cycles, surprised a lot of people when voters sent Trump to the White House in 2016. And it's interesting now to see that for a lot of voters, they are still feeling these anxieties, still feeling like the American dream is not working for them. And I think that's fueling a lot of these feelings that you all are talking about, about neither party, you know, really doing anything to help people feel the kind of economic stability they're looking for. Yeah, Mara, I'm thinking now about just cynicism in politics in this political age, that people are just really, I don't know, that people are cynical about the political process being able to solve these big problems that they're feeling in their lives. Yeah, pessimism is bad for democracy, especially American democracy, because opportunity and progress and the future is going to be better. That's a really important part of American politics, and that is being undermined. You know, NPR got an exclusive view at a big poll that was taken recently. It was conducted by Celinda Lake, who's a Democratic pollster. It was commissioned by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation of Germany. That foundation, is Germany's oldest political foundation. It was started in 1925. It's affiliated with the Social Democratic Party, kind of like a Brookings or a Center for American Progress. And what it found in America, it was a poll of 500 blue-collar voters make $150,000 or less and did not go to college. That's the definition here of working class. So these Germans were like, help me understand America. Yeah. Well, no, it was we have the same problems as you do, center-left parties, and we want to find out what we can learn. from American blue-collar voters. And they found that three in five, no surprise, say the next generation will not be better off than them. Over half say they cannot afford basic necessities. They can't afford to buy the things that make up a middle-class lifestyle. Two-thirds of them said they don't make enough money to get ahead. And what's really interesting is that seven in 10 in this poll said that wealth is unfairly distributed and the government has an obligation to address this, which is pretty surprising for America, which usually is a kind of anti-government majority politics. Eight in 10 young people, 18 to 29, said that the government has an obligation to address extreme wealth inequality, whether that means improving social security benefits or making sure billionaires pay the same tax rate as middle-class people. But this is yet another example of the convergence of economic populism on the left and the right. And 63% of the people in this poll said they didn't feel represented by either party. And what it shows is that Democrats, the party of government, helping working-class people, have an opportunity but also a lot of work to do. Well, and I'm not sure that Democrats can even really truly claim that as their brand anymore. I think they can. That is the Democratic Party. Democrats should help working-class people, not billionaires. Yes, that is what they. And they're the party of, you know, the New Deal and Obamacare. I think they can still claim that. I think the problem is they haven't figured out a way to do that and a way to appeal to voters who are otherwise disenchanted with them for all sorts of cultural. Right. And as their electorate got more educated, more affluent at times, as part of their base became different than the working-class base. Yes, but we also have. We'll do a whole nother pot on this, but we also have the phenomenon of college-educated working class. We have all sorts of college-educated people who can't afford a middle-class lifestyle. And that's where the Democrats have a big opportunity, if they can figure out how to take it. Okay. So we. We have 49 days until voting ends in these midterms. What are you two watching for? I think my answer to this is always, what's the surprise issue that we don't know about today that's going to pop up in the next 50 or so days? I feel like there's always some last-minute chaos inserted into the final weeks of an election. You know, just over the weekend, we had this debate over AI pop back into the ether. What else is going to come up in the next 50 days? Well, I think to me, it's going to be a lot of work. I think it's going to be a lot of work. I think to me, the big question that I'm watching for is we have two competing forces in this midterm. One of them are all the organic factors that should favor Democrats. Enthusiasm, turnout. The incumbent president is very unpopular. Majorities of voters disagree with him on almost everything. Iran, AI, tariffs, data centers, flock cameras. So that should be creating a blue wave. In the past, that's what we would say. But on the other hand, there's all these other forces. They're structural, and they favor the Republicans. Money. Republicans are finally beginning to spend the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that they have, much more than Democrats. They are benefiting from partisan gerrymandering. They created a lot more safe Republican seats. There's also all this confusion about mail-in voting that could decrease some votes and help Republicans. Which of these forces are going to be more powerful? That's what I'm watching for. Mara, before we go, we do have a follow-up from yesterday's podcast. The Supreme Court has, has blocked the Trump administration from carrying out its plans to severely curtail voting by mail in this election. The president is not happy about that. He posted on Truth Social a lot of words, which included sort of a swipe at the Supreme Court saying, these are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, and then went after them on some other decisions as well. What does this mean? I think it means that one of the, one of the things that Trump was counting on to help his party win, even though, as I said, he took all these positions on policies that are not popular, was that he was going to be able to have more control over the actual mechanics of voting. And, and this, this hurts him. He also mentioned today that he wasn't happy with the Supreme Court because they stopped him from ending birthright citizenship, from saying any person who's born in the United States gets to be a citizen. He, they also criticized his tariffs and made him find a whole different route to put tariffs on. So he's not happy. But the bottom line here is that voting by mail still exists. The court has said, no, the Trump administration cannot curtail it. Let's leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm Sam Greenglass. I cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.