Donald Trump’s second election to the presidency sparked soul-searching among Democrats about why the party has continued to lose a range of traditional Democratic constituencies, especially voters without college degrees. In a new book released this week, Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back, Joan C Williams argues that the left fundamentally misunderstands working-class voters.
Williams is a law professor and social scientist who has spent decades studying the relationships between class, gender, labor and politics. Her previous book, 2017’s White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America, argued that working-class Americans felt abandoned by the political establishment. Her new book argues that the Democratic party and the cultural left face an uphill – but not impossible – battle to win back the many Americans who have been drawn to Trump’s rightwing populism.
