As Donald Trump prepares for his inauguration, many have begun to debate how best to build a committed political opposition. Instead of reviving the 2016 era #resistance – which was big on spectacle and short on substance – those on the left would do well to take seriously the frustrations of working-class voters and craft a strategy accordingly.
Trump’s victory can credibly be read as a class revolt. Blue-collar voters – Black, white, Latino and Asian, in rural and urban areas alike – gave a big middle finger to the progressive professional class elite. Kamala Harris represented the epitome of a Democratic party that has become increasingly dominated by affluent and educated voters (and funded by even wealthier donors). Her ascension itself represented the transformation of the “party of the people” into an aristocratic private club, liberal elites were so terrified of the hoi polloi that they ensured not one ordinary person would vote on her nomination to lead the Democratic party into battle. Are we shocked that the same voters failed to show-up on the battlefield? Hardly.
Still, many on the left are scratching their heads. OK, so Harris represented limousine liberals, that still doesn’t explain why blue-collar voters would choose an uber-wealthy playboy like Trump, not to mention his billionaire henchman Elon Musk, over her. And, according to analyses from the Center for Working Class Politics, working-class voters did prefer Trump. But we don’t need some description of “false consciousness” to understand why this might be. The fact is working-class people do not have a genuine political home in our new Gilded Age, they are forced to ally either with billionaires in the Republican party or Democratic liberal elites in hopes that someone will allay their concerns. Fixing this requires a politics that confronts both.
As obscene amounts of money have poured into politics (over $16bn dollars in 2024 alone) our parties have become ever more dominated by the interests and values of those at the top of the class pyramid. For the Republicans, it’s not only Musk and Trump, but the party has relied more and more on so-called self-funding centimillionaires like Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania, one of many superrich candidates featured this cycle. Meanwhile, Democrats who once complained about the unfair financial advantages held by the Republicans, now represent some of the wealthiest districts in the country. This is one reason why Harris was able to raise, and spend, more than Trump in the election – over a billion dollars was sunk into her losing campaign. And she’s not unique. The party is full of mega-fundraisers just like her. In fact, fundraising is the major way candidates show party leaders that they are leadership material.
Almost all of the content of American politics – the candidates, the policies, the priorities – concerns the top 20% of the income and wealth hierarchy. Remember, less than 2% of members of Congress come from working-class backgrounds. Working-class candidates face immense political obstacles because they have neither the money, nor the credentials – won in the halls of elite schools, conferences and institutions – needed to break into the fortress of American government. Many voted for Trump in the hopes that he could take a wrecking ball to the whole thing.
Unfortunately, his cabinet is stacked with big-tech billionaires and zealous small-government libertarians who are not interested in challenging the plutocratic political order. No doubt, some of Trump’s tariffs could help lure manufacturers back to the United States, and corporate giveaways might provide a quick boost to GDP growth. But the US supreme court’s conservative majority could very well gut federal labor law, leaving unions with even less power in an already lopsided economy. And an economic strategy predicated on showering big business and the super wealthy with lavish tax cuts and loose regulatory oversight, will ensure that whatever growth the Trump economy generates, the gains will accrue mainly at the top.
Though, it will not be enough for the left to protest the billionaire economy. An honest assessment of progressive liabilities is in order. Those on the left must confront the cultural elite that has pushed the party away from workers on all sorts of non-economic issues. While Trump and his billionaires won’t be able to adequately represent the economic interests of the working class, liberals must recognize that their party doesn’t represent their values. The Democrats captured by highly credentialed clerics has led them to embrace the cultural values of an aristocratic elite. From crime, to climate, to gender politics, and the border, mainstream liberal opinion is much further from the views of workers than many liberals are willing to admit. And this too is a class story.
As the Democratic party transformed itself from the party of the New Deal to the party of Nafta it embraced a new constituency: progressive professionals. Since Bill Clinton, liberals presided over the offshoring of high-wage blue-collar jobs in manufacturing. They watched as abandoned factories, and the towns that once relied on them, slowly oxidized. As the Rust belt stretched across the heartland, Democrats helped to subsidize the growth of a new elite primarily concentrated on the coasts. They pushed for policies that pulled the economy away from blue-collar industries and toward more “dynamic” sectors primarily in information technologies. They fashioned a “new economy” through public policy, and attracted a new constituency as a result. They hoped that as high-wage jobs disappeared, they would be replaced by new high-tech careers; as the party lost blue-collar voters, they invested in white-collar professionals. They got what they wished for.
Today, working-class voters – as defined by income (less than $100k a year), occupation (manual work and service work) or education (less than a college education) – are more likely to vote for Republican candidates than for Democrats. Professionals, meanwhile, have successfully gentrified the Democratic party. Unfortunately for liberals, this group isn’t nearly large enough to win elections. Worse, the folkways, mannerisms, and tastes of salaried high-income professionals have come to define the party, and now serve as a powerful repellent for working-class voters. Indeed, not only has the embrace of the knowledge class led to the economic neglect of the working class but the aggressive advocacy of professional class cultural values has played a major role in pushing working-class voters away.
As a recent paper by Nicolas Longuet-Marx suggests, professionals have dragged their party away from working-class views “twice as much on cultural issues as on economic ones”. Simply put, progressive elites have remade the party to reflect the cultural and aesthetic preferences of blue-blooded liberals, and then made these preferences the priority. Ironically, some highly educated Democrats now embody the definition of “conservative” in their defense of these “woke” priorities: they defend the status of the affluent and the educated, the stand for the preservation of a profoundly powerful elite. If Democrats have any hope of winning back working-class voters they will need to confront this liberal aristocracy as much as they protest the corporate money grab of Republican plutocrats.
What is giving me hope
There is promising evidence that workers may be more progressive on economic issues than in the recent past, and in relation to their professional-class peers. As a forthcoming analysis from the Certified Workers’ Compensation Professional program shows, workers do embrace progressive economic positions. Meaning, those on the left have an opportunity to develop an appealing populist economic program. Such a program would confront the very structure of the job market, ending mass layoffs, automation, and offshoring. It would advocate for rebuilding the industrial heartland, providing high-wage jobs for workers at all levels of education, not just for professionals in “smart” coastal hubs. And it would seek to strengthen union rights, revitalize social programs, lower costs and improve education.
The good news is there seems to be some appetite for a rethinking of progressive politics in this direction. The Connecticut senator Chris Murphy excoriated his party for how out of touch the left has become and advocated for a turn away from elite enclaves. The Pennsylvania congressman Chris Deluzio, who won the single most competitive district in the state, made the case for a populist economic message and for listening to working-class voters rather than paid consultants. Meanwhile, independents like Senator Bernie Sanders and the former Senate candidate Dan Osborn, have loudly advocated for more populist working-class candidates.
And Jimmy Williams Jr, the head of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, called the Democrats’ message “tone-deaf” and advocated for a return to putting the working class at the center of political appeals. These currents represent the best defense against Trump’s billionaire agenda; their success depends on whether they are able to forge a new politics. A politics that represents working-class economic interests and social values. One that takes on both Republican oligarchs and liberal elites.
Nothing less than a class struggle on two fronts.
Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623
