Has anyone noticed that CNN stands nearly alone in the mainstream media as resistant to the Kamala Harris Joy™ Revival? Perhaps they perhaps get a dose of reality from the presidential debate they moderated in June. Or maybe their Close Encounter of the Harris-Walz Kind in late August showed CNN that Gertrude Stein's observation about Oakland --  there's no there there -- applies even more to Harris.

Or maybe they just pay attention to their own data. Yesterday, Harry Enten dumped all sorts of cold water on Democrat prospects this November with Harris at the top of the ticket. Or perhaps in this context, the problem comes from the man who no longer gets listed on it. Joe Biden's ignominious booting from a nomination union workers supported has created a potentially large shift in the electorate, one that could doom Democrats in the states they need most:

Trump has more working class support than any GOP presidential candidate in a generation. He's on track for the best performance among union voters in 40 years. He's up 31 points among trade school grads.

He's doing 17 pts better among nonwhite non-college voters than in 2020. pic.twitter.com/0ObrWWNzYf

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) September 30, 2024

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: One of many elements that we'll be looking at this morning. You know, sometimes there are data points that just jump off the screen, should set off sirens. All right, this is union households. This is democratic margin and presidential election. It ain't what it used to be. You know, you go back to 1992. Bill Clinton won that union vote by 30 points. Hillary Clinton only won it by 12 points back in 2016. That was the lowest mark for a Democrat since 1984, Mondale versus Reagan. But look at where Kamala Harris is today. She is only leading by nine points. That would be the worst Democratic performance in a generation. Ten points off the mark of Joe Biden, who, of course, won four years ago. He was sort of that union guy, union Joe, right? Won it up by 19 point. She's ten points off his mark. And the worst in a generation if this, in fact, holds, Sara.

SIDNER: It is interesting to note that the difference between this and this - and Biden still won.

ENTEN: Still won.

SIDNER: But those numbers are significantly down. All right, talk to me about manual labor. Those folks who went to trade schools.

ENTEN: Yes, those folks who use their hands. I think a lot of people oftentimes conflate the union vote with those who use their hands. Mike Rowe, of course, has been arguing more people should go to trade schools, more people should get a vocational degree. Look at this margin.

SIDNER: Wow.

ENTEN: This, to me, oh boy does this tell you about the state of our politics now versus back in the early 1990s. Margin among vocational and trade school grads in pre-election polling. Bill Clinton was leading that vote over George H.W. Bush by seven points. Look at where Donald Trump is today over Kamala Harris, a 31-point advantage. When I think people think of the working class, they think of people who use their hands. And we know that Donald Trump has been going after that vote, and he is in a very, very strong position, more so perhaps than any other bloc. The folks who go to trade school, vocational school, that has moved from being a core Democratic group to now being a core group of Donald Trump's massive amount of support among the working class.

And it's not just the white working class, no matter how much the Protection Racket Media tries to spin this as some sort of white-supremacy impulse. Enten shows that Trump has made real inroads among non-white voters, especially among those in the working and middle classes:

ENTEN: Yes, you know, we have been noting on this program, right, that Donald Trump seems to have been having some real impact among voters of color, getting into that traditional democratic support. And I was very interested to see this, because we're talking about the working class, right? So, this is the margin among non-college graduates, all right, the voters of color. You go back four years ago. Look at that, Joe Biden won that group by 45 points. Look at where Kamala Harris' support is today. She's still leading amongst that group, but that lead is down 17 points to just 28 points.

And I will note that the margin among voters of color who actually graduate college has only been changed by five points. Five points compared to four years ago. The reason Donald Trump is doing so well amongst voters of color is because he has really gone in and grabbed a lot of voters that he didn't previously have among those who didn't graduate college. And this is part of a larger trend that we're seeing throughout our politics, Sara, in which Republicans, specifically Donald Trump, is doing very, very well among working class voters whether they were in unions, whether they went to trade school, or whether they're voters of color. The fact is, Donald Trump seems to have gone into a hotbed of traditional Democratic support and made a lot of movement in ways I don't think a lot of people would have thought when he went down that escalator just back in 2015.

If those numbers hold up in this election cycle, the results would be catastrophic for Democrats all the way down the ticket. They barely won in 2020 and barely lost in 2016 while remaining strong in these demos in both cycles. If those demos are shifting significantly to the GOP, it spells doom in what had been an evenly split electorate otherwise.

Of course, the word if in these statements does a lot of work, admittedly. But it can't come as a surprise that a party that keeps moving further toward uber-progressive Academia will eventually lose touch with working- and middle-class voters, either. 

Democrats managed to avoid a divorce with working-class voters in 2008 by having Academia-drenched Barack Obama choose "Scranton Joe" as his running mate, helping to bridge that gap. Hillary Clinton tried running on her husband's political ties to those voters, but lost juuuuust enough of them to hand Donald Trump wins in blue-collar blue states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. "Scranton Joe" managed to pull them back by whiskers in 2020, even with Academia-drenched Kamala Harris as his running mate.

Biden probably would have appealed to these voters for another cycle, too. Or, had Democrats not attempted a massive cover-up of Biden's cognitive decline and had a real primary, they may well have produced a presidential nominee that their working-class voters could feel comfortable supporting. Instead, the Democrat party elites -- mainly drenched in Academia-esque progressivism themselves -- conducted a soft coup against the one figure with whom those voters felt some cultural affiliation, and replaced him with a bumbling darling of the elites. Not only did that look like a rejection of the values of those working-class voters, the party elites celebrated that rejection by installing Harris without any opportunity for those voters to participate in that process, even through delegate representatives. 

And this is the party that claims to be preserving democracy.

We will see how this plays out soon enough, and whether Donald Trump can take full advantage of this opening. Enten's data strongly suggests that Trump is at least benefiting from the Democrat machinations, as well as their complete disconnect from these voter sets. That may not have much impact in the Northeast and on the West Coast, but that's not where this election will be won or lost, either.