New book examines how messaging targeting middle class shifted politics
In Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back, Joan C. Williams, a professor emeritus at the University of California College of the Law in San Francisco, offers insight on the wedge between college and noncollege graduates and how those differences have shifted politics to the right.
Though the book is hitting the shelves a few months after President Donald Trump’s second inauguration—and is set for release May 20—for Williams, who is also founding director of the law school’s Equality Action Center, the topic isn’t new.
She has written about the class culture gap between elites and others for about 20 years. She talked with the ABA Journal about how the election fueled her sense of urgency in offering this research. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What started the slide to the right?
My generation of hippies decided that traditional values were signs of being lamebrained. We shifted attention away from the blue-collar economic issues that the Democrats had always stood for to cultural issues like abortion rights, environmentalism and racial justice. This cultural divide between blue-collar folks and elites really got inscribed into American politics. The right learned how to weaponize this, and the left has never understood that they’re being played by the same old playbook. It’s the diploma divide. It is incredibly effective to have the merchant right aligned with the bereft and ticked-off middle and former middle against the Brahmin left.
Joan C. Williams has written about the class culture gap between elites and others for about 20 years. (Photo by Olena Jacenko)
Did economic shifts play a part?
After World War II, we decided it was a super great idea to encourage competition between poor people in other countries and middle-class people in our country—free trade. Partly, the increase in automation made skilled blue-collar jobs vanish. The 1% began grabbing increases in productivity and drove wages down, and they eliminated full-time jobs in favor of gig work. They eliminated benefits. The economic reasons why the middle-class got screwed in the United States are there. They are angry. Maybe you come from a blue-collar background, where your grandfather could support a family on a full-time, benefited job with the wife at home. But now, you can hardly support a family with three part-time jobs. You look at democracy—this is lame. It has failed me.
Is racism a factor?
It is partly about racism—racism is the single best predictor of Trump voting. But that’s not enough votes for him to win. Latinos and African Americans are predominantly noncollege voters. They’re big believers in hard work. They’re just voting like people of their class. The Democrats are going to have to work hard to regain their proportions of people of color, and that means they need to know how to talk to noncollege voters.
You discuss “the forgotten middle,” but it is not just the middle class. It’s also those in “flyover country,” a term that many of us who live in the Midwest hate. You make the case that language matters and how elites use language offends those in the middle.
The left talks like a bunch of college professors, says the law professor. The elite, with overstuffed manifestos with 15 policy points, show a completely unintentional form of condescension. Quit the casual class insults. Fox News understands that you have to talk in ways that feel comfortable to your audience. The far right understands how to make a cultural connection with working-class voters. The focus is on self-discipline, not self-development, that their goal is stability, not edginess.
Blue-collar folks focus on stability—live where they grew up, go to their same churches, hang out with family and childhood friends—because they’re one bad choice away from being out of the game, you say.
That’s why they are so obsessed with self-discipline. It’s more important because they have fewer second chances. If my kid gets arrested because they were drinking at age 16, no harm, no foul. But if that the same thing happens to a blue-collar guy, that could be the end. You have to have the social imagination to respect people less privileged than you.
You use the word respect many, many times throughout the book, especially about views regarding patriotism, religion and traditional gender roles.
Yes. You need enough imagination to learn about the lives of people who never went to college and why they made that choice. Respect that choice, respect the dignity of their work and understand their values—self-discipline and the traditional institutions—military, religion and family values. Religion is the source of a lot of condescension. Religion’s just a heuristic for thinking. Get over it. And everybody tends to stress the high-status group they’re a member of. For many middle Americans, that is being American, and that’s why they’re far more patriotic. To shame them for that is just not going to work. And nonelites are much more romantic about traditional gender roles for a simple reason. Those are roles they can fulfill—unlike class ideals, which they can’t. Back when it was Dad’s working-class job that supported the whole family, their lives were objectively better, rather than this mad dash tag-teaming. That’s why they look back on the ’60s with nostalgia. But was it better in terms of equal rights? No, it sucked.
You point to the gay marriage movement as a model for adjusting the message.
The elite gatekeepers wanted legal protections and legal rights, but the ordinary average Joe and Jane wanted the dignity of traditional marriage. The top leadership listened. It didn’t just change messaging; it also changed priorities. They prioritized marriage.
You say that type of listening wasn’t done during the COVID response.
People without college degrees have a lot of experience with being talked down to by doctors, lawyers, other professionals, and Dr. [Anthony] Fauci didn’t understand this class dynamic at all. And elites believe they are entitled to be safe. That triggered class conflict. The professional, managerial elite could close down the economy with a few effects on them, but it had disastrous effects for the working class. That class cluelessness probably helped fuel the reelection of President Trump.
How would you advise the left to change the messaging now?
It’s very simple. Anybody who works hard in America should get a stable middle-class life. That’s it. It’s going to create the new coalition of liberals, working-class voters and young voters, who can’t get ahead. The right only has one move, but that’s all they need if we never respond effectively. The country is in shocking, shocking shape. We don’t have any more time left to not understand this. We are really hurting ourselves. We’re hurting public health. We’re hurting the economy. We’re hurting democracy. We have to understand how a lot of this stuff is being driven by class and anger. It’s just not optional anymore.
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