New results from The POLITICO Poll show a 37 percent plurality of Americans say Democrats best represent the interests of the working class, while 30 percent say Republicans.
Page F3From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 31 August 2026
Both parties court working-class voters as new oil and water deals raise their gas and water bills.
As it ran on the front
Let's run the filing against the table one more time today, because two separate agencies handed us two separate numbers and they belong in the same column. First: both parties are, this week, actively courting the working-class vote, a category of voter defined mostly by paying a larger share of income on gas and water than anyone writing about them does. Second: the new U.S.-Venezuela oil arrangement, according to the people who track this for a living, will not lower the price at the pump. Third: the federal plan meant to keep the Colorado River from running dry will keep Arizona's taps running, at a higher monthly bill.
None of these three items contradicts the others. That is the point. You can court a voting bloc and raise its bills in the same fiscal quarter; the two activities are not in tension, they simply happen on different desks. The political desk handles the courting. The infrastructure and energy desks handle the invoice. Nobody at either desk is lying to you, exactly. They are just each telling you their half of the ledger, and the two halves were never designed to be read together.…
…(cont) We'll do the reading. A working-class household in Phoenix is being told, this month, that its water future is secure — the taps will not run dry — and also that the security costs more per month, starting soon, under a federal plan. A working-class driver anywhere in the country is being told that a new oil deal with Venezuela is a diplomatic and energy achievement, and also, separately, by the reporters who actually checked, that it will not move the number on the pump sign. Both of those second facts arrived in the same week's news cycle as the courting.
We are not going to tell you which party means it more. The receipts don't sort by party; the water bill from the Central Arizona Project doesn't ask who you voted for, and neither does the pump. What we can tell you is the size of the gap: a bill going up, a price holding flat, and an election-year courtship arriving in the same week as both. Check your own statement next month against what you were told this month, hon, and see whether the two numbers reconcile.
“They tell you they're fighting for the working guy the same week his water bill and his gas prospects both get worse — that's not a coincidence, that's the whole racket, promise the vote, bill the voter.”
“These are two unrelated policy rollouts on entirely different timelines — the oil deal is diplomacy, the water rate is infrastructure investment, comparing them to an election pitch is — well, they are both landing the same month, I'll give you that, but that's just how calendars work.”
The receipts
New federal rules mean Arizona will be getting a lot less water from the Colorado river. City leaders say they've been planning for years and no one will run out, but keeping taps flowing is expensive.
The Trump administration announced a deal Friday to develop a vast amount of Venezuela's oil reserves, with the U.S. taking a majority stake. Energy experts say there are many reasons to be skeptical.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.