How the Left lost the working class

Are you in a class bubble? We all are. To find out where you fit, take the New Class Bubble Quiz.

A majority of registered voters think the Democrats are out of touch with Americans' everyday concerns according to recent polling.

Social inequality scholar Joan Williams discusses her book "Outclassed."

Joan C. Williams, distinguished professor of law (Emerita) and founding director of the Equality Action Center at UC Law San Francisco. Author of "Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class – And How to Win Them Back."

Excerpt from "Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class – And How to Win Them Back" by Joan C. Williams. Not to be reprinted without permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: We shouldn't put too much weight on any one political poll in this country. Each one is just a snapshot of the mood of American voters at one specific moment in time. And for this reason, I tend to prefer tracking polls.

That said, one very recent poll is sending very strong, even if confusing signals about where American voters are right now. The Wall Street Journal conducted this poll between July 16th to July 20th, so just a couple of weeks ago. And Aaron Zitner, Wall Street Journal political reporter and editor describes the top line findings in a journal video.

So first of all, what do voters think about the Republicans giant budget bill they just passed?

AARON ZITNER: That big Republican tax bill, more people disapprove of it than support it. They think overall that it's going to help the wealthy, help large corporations and raise the deficit while hurting the poor.

CHAKRABARTI: So the Wall Street Journal poll found that 52% of voters oppose the bill while only 42% favorite it.

That's a 10 point gap. Okay, here's another one.

ZITNER: Look at immigration. People like the idea of deporting people who are here illegally. That gets strong support, but they don't like how Trump is going about it. They think that Trump's crossed a line by being too aggressive in deporting people without giving them legal protections, and by sending them to countries like Sudan or El Salvador where they have no personal ties.

CHAKRABARTI: So disapproval on Republican policies, it's like this on almost every issue. The Wall Street Journal polled on the cost of living. 88% of voters, 88% said the cost of living is either creating financial strain on their families now, or they expect things to get too expensive for them in the near future. 46% say they expect the economy to get worse. While only 38% say it's getting better.

And when it comes to voters' views of President Trump, specifically, 51% of those polled said Trump is bringing chaos and dysfunction that will hurt the country. 48% said he's helping the country.

In fact, more people disapprove than approve of Trump's handling of the economy. Inflation. Health care. Vaccines. Foreign policy, sometimes by double digits. On tariffs, one of Trump's signature policies, 57% of voters disapprove of Trump's tariffs while only 40% approve. That is a huge gap, and usually this kind of across-the-board negativity would be caused for alarm in political party strategy sessions.

But for the Republican party, it's not because as The Journal's Aaron Zitner also found:

ZITNER: Donald Trump is underwater by 17 points on how he's been handling tariffs. And yet voters trust the Republican party on tariffs more than the Democratic party.

CHAKRABARTI: It's like this almost on every issue. Voters disapprove of the Republican president, but they trust the Republican Congress more than they trust the Democrats on tariffs.

They trust Republicans more by 7%, seven points, even though they disapprove of Donald Trump's tariffs by 17 points on the economy. They trust Republicans more than Democrats by 12 points. On inflation, 10 points. On foreign policy, eight points. Democrats win on one issue only and that is health care. So this is the important background to the headlines that Wall Street Journal poll made.

You may have already heard some of those headlines. Here's Zitner.

ZITNER: 63%. That may be the most important number in our new Wall Street Journal poll. And it's a number that should scare the Democratic Party. That's the share of voters who hold a negative view of the Democratic Party, and it's 30 points higher than the share who have a positive view.

This is the worst image rating that Wall Street Journal polling has found in all of our surveys dating to 1990. This is a party that's brand is very tarnished.

CHAKRABARTI: So why is that? Why do majorities of voters even as they do not approve of the policies that the Republican party champions still trust the Republican party more?

Way more than the Democratic Party. Last year, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders provided one answer.

BERNIE SANDERS: If you're an average working person out there, do you really think that the Democratic Party is going to the mats taking on powerful, special interest and fighting for you? I think the overwhelming answer is no, and that is what has got to change.

CHAKRABARTI: Joan C. Williams agrees that the Democratic Party has lost the working class, and she's one of the nation's leading scholars on social inequality. She has written extensively about gender, race, and class, and her new book examines the very conundrum highlighted by that recent Wall Street Journal poll, and the book is called Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back. Joan C. Williams, welcome to On Point.

JOAN C. WILLIAMS: Delighted to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

I'm sure you at least saw the headlines about that Wall Street Journal poll that I went through in detail. Did any of it surprise you?

WILLIAMS: Indeed, I have.

CHAKRABARTI: Did any of it surprise you?

WILLIAMS: Unfortunately, not.

The Democrats face a really key moment of opportunity here. Trump's policies, as you point out, are very unpopular, but Democrats' brand is even more unpopular. And you're right, we don't trust one poll, but if you look at the last three elections, fewer than 2% of American counties have trended towards Democrats, almost exclusively wealthy.

Trump's policies ... are very unpopular, but Democrats' brand is even more unpopular.

But one half of American counties have triple trended towards Republicans, almost exclusively working class. What's happened is that we call them the working class, but really this is the middle 50% of voters, people who are neither rich nor poor. That's the group that's trending towards the far right, not only in the U.S. by the way, but also in Europe.

These are the core supporters of the far right.

CHAKRABARTI: So when we, before we get to your diagnosis as to why this is happening, I would actually love to start with your own experience in your family about how class has played out between you, your husband's family. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

WILLIAMS: I start the book talking about, actually, I went to Harvard Law School a time when my parents-in-law visited us. And they weirded me out in so many ways. First of all, they stayed with us, which my family never, my parents never would've done. And then we ate in, which my parents never would've done, and then they helped us with the dishes, which my parents never would've done.

And when I was washing the dishes, my mother-in-law came up to me and said, where do you keep the butter? And I was like, what does she think I'm a Martian? I said, immediately, I just shot out under the bed. And she walked into the bedroom and put the butter under the bed. And then I realized, this was in Somerville.

I realized, I think she's really weird, but she thinks I'm really weird too. And that was really my introduction to what I call the class culture gap. Cultural givens, even something as simple as where you think you keep the butter is so different among, I grew up as a silver spoon girl, and is so different between elites and middle-class people, and this has really concrete effects politically.

And I'll just give one example. I've been married to my, we just celebrated actually my 47th wedding anniversary. So I've been married to my husband for a very long time, but at a certain point I was like, that's so frustrating. It's like, why doesn't he ever wanna change anything anywhere in any way?

So I asked him, I was like, what is it with you and change? And he said, I associate change with loss. And that really made an impression on me. It made me think of the fact that his father in Waterbury, Connecticut was so poor that the family just would move into one apartment, pay one month rent, and then wait to be evicted.

And then they moved into the next apartment and repeated that cycle. And since then, I've read lots of ethnographies of middle status people. And they tend to be more conservative than elites and non-elites, and they tend to be really obsessed with stability. Because it's fragile for them. My family took stability for granted.

But it's fragile for them culturally, and even more so, much more so now, because the wages of non-college voters, they haven't, they have not risen at all since 1989. During that period, the wages for college grads rose 83%. And so what in the United States is that whereas virtually every American used to earn more than their parents, for folks born in 1980, only 50% will. You see the fading of the American dream.

And so they associate change with loss because for them, change has been loss. It's been loss of that cherished stability.

CHAKRABARTI: It's interesting because this difference in education and income and class was brought home to you. I don't know when you went to law school Joan, but it wasn't just in the past 10 years I presume.

WILLIAMS: Graduated 1980. I'm a woman of ripe years, Meghna.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So now I wanted to ask that because this is interesting because there's been a lot of focus in recent years about how is it and why did the Democrats lose the trust of the working class?

But in your book, you explore that this is actually a much older phenomenon.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: I wanted to follow up with one question about the anecdote about your mother-in-law and in your husband's family. More specifically, you talked about their precarious economic situation based on their class, but then you also talked about cultural differences. So are you saying here that class does drive a culture or a cultural approach to life?

WILLIAMS: Yes.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, go ahead.

WILLIAMS: Very much class is, of course, expressed through economics. That's not big news. But class is also expressed through cultural differences. In this missing middle, these middle status voters, the central ethic is self-discipline. Because that's what they need to survive in the best jobs available to them traditionally, which were blue collar jobs.

Class is, of course, expressed through economics. That's not big news. But class is also expressed through cultural differences.

The kind of self-discipline that gets you up on time, without an attitude, every day to a job as an order taker, as a blue-collar guy or a pink-collar woman, or someone in the middle, in a routine white-collar job. And so they really highly value the traditional institutions that anchor self-discipline, religion, the military.

Traditional gender and family roles, and their traditionalism is really overdetermined Meghna, because you think about religion, the military, gender roles, traditional family roles, those are sources of social status. That don't depend on your class. Folks in the middle, they can't achieve class ideals, but they can achieve gender ideals.

They can, if you're the guy who sells toilets, you want to hang out in your hometown around other people who know that you're also the deacon in the church. You're not just the guy who sells toilets. Our social honor as elites is portable, theirs is not. So they're quite traditional and they're very rooted and all of that is super different than the way I was brought up.

And I was brought up partly in Venezuela. I and my crowd we're very proud of being members of a global elite. And you notice how we stress our highest status category. We're classy people, members of a global elite, but they stress also, people in the middle, they tend to stress one of their highest social categories too.

They're very, they're more patriotic than elites. They're more proud of being Americans. That's one of the only high status categories they belong to. And going back --

CHAKRABARTI: Joan ... I just want to interrupt you for just a second.

WILLIAMS: Sure, sure.

CHAKRABARTI: You keep saying 'we and they.' Keep saying 'we and they.' I'm not quite sure how you're categorizing me.

Because I grew up, my family did not have very much money growing up. We ended up, they championed education for sure. My parents are immigrants. And it was through the path of education that I guess now I must, I have to qualify myself as a member of the quote-unquote educated elite.

I accept that. But it's interesting that you're doing 'we and they,' like, isn't that part of the problem right now? That the Democrats have that even just in conversation, there's this categorization of us and them, which isn't, that's not a welcoming approach to American politics.

WILLIAMS: Yeah. Thank you for calling me out on that.

When I say we, I mean me and my crowd here. I'm a typical San Francisco progressive, as you pointed out, couldn't be more traditional. I've worked on race for 10 years and gender for probably 40. I'm a race, class, gender typical San Francisco progressive. And so one of the things to keep in mind though, is that progressive activists like me are only 8% of the population, and we are much richer, much more educated, and much whiter than the average American.

Two thirds of Americans don't have college degrees, and if Democrats can't attract more of them. We're in deep trouble as Democrats. I speak as a San Francisco progressive and a Democrat. That's my we, but thanks for calling me out. You're very, it's very true that the 'we, they' problem is a big problem.

CHAKRABARTI: Because this is one, one thing that, that you get at in your analysis, in that even just conceptualizing of groups. The Left has actually created significant walls, significant barriers, but to get, we'll talk about language in just a second, but to get back to what you were saying, it's very important and I think very interesting to understand that it's not necessarily big C conservative politics.

That this middle 50% of income earners, as you're talking about, map to, right? It's not Republican politics that their values mapped to necessarily, but the status and stability that's conferred through these very American institutions, as you were saying.

And do you think that therefore, a misstep from Democrats is perhaps not placing equal value and appreciation on those same institutions. You talked about just the value of being proud of being an American, of the path forward that the military offers people, things like that.

WILLIAMS: I think that we really need to drill down into what the middle status, the missing middle looks like politically. They tend to be economically progressive, but socially conservative, sometimes they're called the scaffolds. And the Democratic Party used to be just that way. In the New Deal Coalition, the center of the party was the stability of middle-class families and blue-collar jobs.

We really need to drill down into what ... the missing middle looks like politically.

And New Deal Democrats were socially conservative because basically most everybody was socially conservative back then. They were racially quite conservative with respect to gender; environmental issues weren't on the agenda. And then my generation of hippies came around after 1970, we really changed the focus of the Democratic Party to the issues I've worked, done my entire life, Meghna, environmentalism.

I used to teach environmental law. Racial equality. I've done like eight studies on racial inequality, gender. I've worked for a long time on gender, so I care about all of these issues. But one of the things to keep in mind is that if your family can't achieve a stable middle class life.

For you, that's number one. And it's particularly number one in this generation because of the effects of globalization. There's something called the elephant curve where globalization was awesome in many ways. It lifted millions of people out of poverty, but those were chiefly in Asia, the people who have paid the price economically are middle status people in advanced industrialized democracies.

Exactly the people who are veering to the far right. Because what studies show is this particular package, economically progressive, socially more conservative. That really wasn't on offer in any mainstream parties either in Europe and America until the rise of the far right. And that is the representation gap that the far right has filled.

The people who have paid the price economically are middle status people in advanced, industrialized democracies.

They are much more conservative, of course, than Democrats are and lots of cultural issues. You have the turning of the preference for traditional institutions, that's what the far right has sculpted into culture wars and keeps on using that same one trick pony again and again. And also Trump famously, now he hasn't done this. For sure. He promised to defend social security.

He promised to defend Medicare; he talks incessantly about blue collar jobs. Now the issue of whether he has delivered, mind you, is totally different. United States lost blue collar jobs during his first administration, stands probably to do the same in the second administration because of the impact of tariffs.

But these folks are at the center of Trump's imagination, and they know it

CHAKRABARTI: Well and this is what this Wall Street Journal poll, I think, highlights powerfully is that even as there is very significant disapproval, let's just talk about the budget bill most recently. And like by double digits, like sets of double digits.

The voters that The Journal talked to said we think that the budget bill is only going to help the wealthiest Americans. The gap was enormous in terms of people who disapproved of that, versus approved of that. Most of the people that responded, said we disapprove of the fact that it's going to help mostly the wealthiest Americans. And yet the very same Republican Congress that rammed this bill through, they trust that party more with issues of the economy and issues of their own economic wellbeing.

This is the inconsistency that Thomas Frank wrote about it many years ago, and I just wonder if you think, like how is this inconsistency so persistent, and does it remain persistent because liberals have to be playing into the Republican culture wars, playing into their hands in some way to make it so long lasting?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, I don't think it's inconsistent. The two top issues for Trump voters were inflation and the economy. The top issues for Harris voters were defensive democracy and abortion. And so they were talking, Trump voters voted, including there would have been a 14% veer towards Trump of young voters.

Young voters are getting fried by this economy too. They can only get gig work in their twenties and in their thirties, they can't afford childcare or often health insurance. And they certainly can't afford houses in Boston or San Francisco. So I don't think these voters have been, by which I mean the middle status voters, have been inconsistent, and I don't think they're voting against their own self-interest.

What they think is that neither Democrats nor Republicans have delivered for them economically for the past 40 years. And you know what? They're right. Republicans didn't. Democrats didn't.

CHAKRABARTI: That is the critical distinction. Yeah. Go ahead.

WILLIAMS: But and you go back to that, I remember that advertisement, Kamala cares about they, them. Trump cares about you. And there's been a bit of a gang up. Oh, LGBTQ issues. If we only abandon them, everything will be great. But you think about that, that definitely attracted transphobic folks for sure, but it also probably attracted a much larger group of people who were ticked off that Democrats weren't putting their economic issues at the center in a context of high inflation.

CHAKRABARTI: So can I just add to that because that ad keeps coming up over and over again and I agree with you. Because I think when progressive strategists try to take a look at that ad and understand why it's so effective. The first thing I've heard is that, oh it just triggered the transphobia of conservative Americans, and I think that's missing the point entirely.

I think one of the reasons why it was so effective is not only, as you mentioned, like it focuses voters' minds on Donald Trump and how he might have an impact on their own lives, but it also got to it wasn't necessarily about transphobia, but it was about this pocket of progressive thinking that said it's not just about trans issues.

What we want to do is we wanna live in a world where everybody tells you about what their pronouns are, right? Because we wanna smash the gender binary. And it caught and it put attention onto that, which the vast majority of Americans are like, I don't necessarily see a problem with saying there are men and women. It accomplished both those things at the same time, like a sort of a, "Hey, Democrats aren't for common sense, Republicans are. Democrats aren't for you, but Donald Trump is. What do you think about that?"

WILLIAMS: This gets us back to cultural issues and what's the move that Democrats can make on cultural issues?

Because Democrats are in a diff difficult situation. The top 20%, the professional managerial elite, they are quite different culturally from these missing middle voters. They're different culturally and so democrats are in a pickle, which, whose cultural values do they choose? The middle-class cultural values or the elite cultural values?

And I think in many ways this is of both a serious issue and a false choice. First of all, the idea of just following the working-class cultural values as people at the Liberal Patriot and who are very influential are arguing, that really isn't realistic. Because I, in my crowd of San Francisco progressives, we're not going to do that.

But I think it's a false choice, because I look back at the gay marriage success, which, in 40 years as a social justice warrior, I look around and what really was this smashing victory? That was the one, that was the only one. So what made it so successful? Going back, the gay liberation leaders, they were not interested in gay marriage.

They just thought marriage was done and dusted. They were interested in sexual liberation, wide varieties of sexuality, wide varieties of family forms. That's what they were interested in. So I went and talked to one of the leaders of the movement, who's my colleague, Matt Coles, who was headed up the ACLU's Equality Project, and he told me a story.

Of after he and other advocates had gotten domestic partnerships in California, the Alameda County clerk, court clerk invited him to a big party. The first day people were coming to get hitched, and she had set up little tables with heart balloons and a big procession down the grand staircase, and here I'm quoting him, he said, the people coming down the stairs, he said they weren't doctors and lawyers, they were ordinary, average people.

He said, "I get it now. It's the prom and the wedding ceremony and everything rolled into one. They're finally able to say, 'Mom, yeah. I got married.'" What you see there is Matt recognizing that he had to connect with the moral intuitions of ordinary people. And after we come back from the break, I'll tell you exactly how he did it.

Part III

WILLIAMS: So what advocates did is they stopped focusing explicitly on things like sexual liberation, and they focused instead on gay marriage to connect with the fact that ordinary middle-class people highly cherish traditional family roles as a source of social honor and stability. And we know what happened.

It was phenomenally successful. They not only got gay marriage, they changed the attitudes towards gay sexuality by approaching it, by consciously building a coalition that reached out to people where they were. Research shows that liberals are 2.4 times less likely to do that than conservatives do. But when we do that, we can really bring people along in a way that's respectful.

And I think that's actually the template both for justice social justice movements because it's very effective. And it's certainly the template for Democrats in politics. It's not a matter of abandoning LGBTQ people, it's a matter of finding on that issue on climate change, on abortion rights. The way to, the tactics we use should connect with ordinary people's values.

The tactics [Democrats] use should connect with ordinary people's values.

CHAKRABARTI: So can I just jump in on that? Because here's where I think, here's where I think that the progressive left, as you identify it, really did lose the plot a little bit, because I'm thinking back to what you said earlier, that one of the core values of this middle 50%, as you said, is self-discipline, right?

Out of necessity sometimes, but also out as a mark of pride. Self-discipline. That really resonates with me and it got me thinking about how, I know that DEI is under attack right now, but part of that is because, like in schools and in corporations, there was this DEI industrial complex that oftentimes embraced things like but maybe you've seen this, there's this list of supposed characteristics of white supremacy culture, right?

And it's by Tema Okun. And several of those are sense of urgency. There's a worship of the written word. Here's a big, individualism and this is a big one. The right to comfort. Okay. And so it's like these were supposed to be white supremacist characteristics, whereas most people would be like, actually being, having a sense of urgency about life, liking to read the written word, and using that phrase self-discipline, they should be just like core values of regular Americans.

WILLIAMS: A different program. I've been a DEI practitioner, Meghna, for 10 years. And I never use that kind of language.

And it's very possible to talk to people about providing a consistent experience for all employees in a way that does not alienate them. Unfortunately, that was not the universal experience with DEI. But more to the point, the Trump administration is obsessed with DEI, I personally lost a million-dollar DEI NSF grant.

This is not what these missing middle people care about. The things that the Trump administration is focusing on — and more important, the things they aren't focusing on — provides a huge opening for Democrats, if they can just understand how to use it. And it's really just three steps.

Things that the Trump administration is focusing on -- and more important, the things they aren't focusing on -- provides a huge opening for Democrats.

If I may, can we go there?

CHAKRABARTI: Yes, please. Go ahead.

WILLIAMS: The first is to put, and Mamdani just did this. Hard work should yield a stable middle class life. You shouldn't have to have three jobs with no health insurance. If you work hard, you should be able to have a stable life, buy a decent house, afford childcare. That's going to bring in the younger voters who voted for Trump, and a lot of the middle status voters who voted for Trump.

And that's really, putting that at the center is non-negotiable. Because that's the one and two issues for Trump voters, inflation and the economy. The second thing, which we really haven't talked about, is that Democrats often talk as if college educated voters are the only, are their only important audience.

We have a very specific talk style in the professional and managerial elite. We have been using it here, articulate, measured, data driven. I really, I describe myself as a data girl. But in the middle, there's a very different talk style that's valued. Authenticity, directness, no fancy talk.

I always point to Gretchen Whitmer's 'fix the damn roads.' That's how to talk to people, in the kind of people, the kind of ways that everyday people talk, tying politics to their everyday lives. And then the third is we have to stop being played using the same old culture wars moves. And you've been pointing out that part of this is the way progressive activists talk.

Latinx is only the most obvious example. But part of it also is approaching people respectfully and realizing that the cultural values of progressive activists, they are different from the culture, cultural values of these middle status, working class voters that Democrats have lost.

And if you want to build a coalition with people, you got to build a coalition. You got to figure out how to talk to them in ways that resonate with them.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so I'm going to, maybe I'm just going to continue digging myself into a hole of being the part of the educated elite. But I'm going to argue, I'm gonna argue --

WILLIAMS: Can I for one second?

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.

WILLIAMS: If you wanna know where you are culturally, I've invented a little quiz you can find out in less than five minutes. It's called the Class Bubble Quiz. I think it's gonna be linked to the show notes. It's [New Class Bubble Quiz] and that will tell you whether you're elite, culturally, or non-elite.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. ... I will take that. I'm actually fascinated. I'll take that after we finish up our conversation today, but I want to argue an opposite point actually. About talking more authentically or trying to, opening up the Democratic party to embrace these values as you talked about, but economically liberal, but socially conservative Americans at that middle 50%.

Because the other day I was thinking back to Martin Luther King, Jr's Letter from Birmingham Jail that he wrote in 1963. He'd been arrested, right? For yet again advocating for the rights of Black Americans. And in it he says this, he says:

"For years now, I've heard the word wait. It rings in the ear of every Negro," as he wrote, "with piercing familiarity."

And then he goes on and says:

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate, who constantly says, I agree with you in the goals you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action.

CHAKRABARTI: And the reason why I bring that up is one of the things that justifiably may animate the progressive left is this sense today, this same sense of, why should we wait? Waiting is just acquiescing to the continuation of marginalizing Americans and denying them their rights.

WILLIAMS: I didn't hear myself saying, wait. There is a group that says yes, we should follow working class cultural values. That's the Liberal Patriot group. And I've said, that's not realistic. I'm not going to.

The often, what I'm saying is number one, put economics at put progressive economics at the center, that ain't waiting.

And number two, talk so people can hear you. That ain't waiting. But number three, on cultural values. I think two things. Number one, we have to seek tactics with respect to cultural values that are actually going to work. Because they're going to persuade people, rather than scolding people and talking down at people, which, as you were pointing out, it just doesn't, it doesn't work.

But you are putting your finger on something really important, which I think that again, I'm talking as a progressive activist here. I realize I am one of 8% of the population. And progressive activists are much more educated, much richer, and frankly much whiter than the average American.

So insisting that the Democratic Party or any other group conform 100% to my values as a progressive activist, that, doesn't that seem to me like an exercise of racial and class privilege? Now, when it comes to racism, there's really, there's been a lot of confusion about racism.

Am I talking about welcoming open racists into my tent? No, I'm really not. There's two different groups. Racism is one of the strongest predictors of Trump voters, not the strongest. But if you're a racist, believe me, typically you're voting for Trump. But that's not why he keeps winning.

He keeps winning because he's attracting a much larger group of voters whose racial attitudes don't differ much from those of non-Trump voters. There's really two groups of Trump voters. One is called the American Preservationists. This is about 20%, in 2016 they were being white and Christian is very central to their identity.

They have very cold feelings towards people of color. Super anti-immigrant. Democrats aren't going to get that group, and they probably don't want them, but there's another group of Trump voters that's as large. Both of these groups, by the way, are economically very progressive. These anti elites, the second group.

They have the same feelings about people of color as non-Trump voters. Two thirds thought climate change was a serious problem. They had the highest endorsement of gay marriage of any group, and they were the least loyal to Republicans. I'm not saying, wait, I'm saying win.

CHAKRABARTI: And this reminds me of a very interesting New York Times op-ed that I saw just a couple of days ago that had these little vignettes from Black voters who voted for Trump this past election.

WILLIAMS: I saw that.

CHAKRABARTI: Latino voter, you saw that, and Asian voters, some of them were actually in San Francisco where you live. And one of the Asian American voters was very fascinating to me. She said, I'm a shop owner. Like I'm trying to make ends meet by selling shops on the corner of my street.

And when the San Francisco police say they can't arrest people for shoplifting if it's less than $900, this is not a system that's working for me. And I think we can talk about the white working class, but the broader coalition of the 50% of Americans includes millions of non-white Americans who are feeling also similarly unmoored.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, you got it.

Since 2012, non-college people of color have veered away from Democrats by 32 points. And the Asian American shopkeeper who you quote, small business owners, that's the aspiration of many people in the middle. It's the aspiration to stop being an order taker and to start being an order giver, and you know who's really hurting those small businesses right now?

Since 2012, non-college people of color have veered away from Democrats by 32 points.

Trump through tariffs. Their supply chains come from China and elsewhere. Who's hurting farmers, who overwhelmingly voted for Trump? Trump. They can't sell their soybeans to China now in the same way they could. Trump, that's what Democrats should be talking about. As I said, I lost an NSF grant.

We shouldn't be talking about NSF grants. People, the professional managerial lead, we care about NSF grants. People in the middle, they care about whether they can, their small business is going to go under and who's going to drive it under should be way out in the polls.

CHAKRABARTI: By the way, you mentioned the Liberal Patriot a few times.

That's a group run by Ruy Teixeira. Joan C. Williams, we've only got about two and a half minutes left here. And I'm just wondering, I wanted to just reemphasize something you said earlier. That it's not necessarily default culture wars that the Republicans have been winning. It's more importantly the view that the middle 50% of Americans do not believe that Republicans or Democrats have done anything to make their lives more secure.

And I think especially that's a fair assessment, especially given the triangulation of the Clinton years. So, again, like how then do Democrats, even if they change their language, which should be, I think, doable, if they are willing to take the heat from the progressive left, how then do they follow up by actually making meaningful change if they still can't win elections?

Given this trust gap that we talked about at the beginning of the show.

WILLIAMS: I think we could turn this around. We, being Democrats, you made me very rigorous about who we is. I think Democrats could turn this around very quickly if we got smart. The other thing I wanted to point out though, as again, going back to gay marriage, there's been so much money spent by Democrats on how we change messaging.

Oh, we just have to change messaging. The gay marriage movement didn't just change messaging. They did change messaging. They changed from equal rights, which appeals to liberals, to commitment, which appeals to these middle status people focused on stability, but the only reason they could change messaging, Meghna, is that they had changed priorities.

They had ceded the right to set the movement's priorities. The elites ceded it to the middle. Why? Because they wanted to do what was right for the movement as a whole. And so they didn't express the cultural priorities of the professional managerial elite. Which were sexual liberation, recognition of a broad range of relationships. But that didn't mean they were abandoning their issue. That meant they were changing language, but also ceding the ability to choose the tactics in order to get tactics that would win.

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