Joan C. Williams argues that progressives and leftists aren’t doomed to keep losing working-class voters — if they can stop dismissing the cultural principles that grant average Americans’ lives dignity.
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As pundits debate whether inflation or cultural grievance drove high numbers of working-class voters into Donald Trump’s embrace, legal scholar Joan C. Williams suggests a new approach to the problem. In her book Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back (St. Martin’s Press, 2025), Williams argues that the Democrats’ loss reflects a fundamental cluelessness about class cultures in America.
Economic precarity is a stronger predictor of support for Trump than poverty, suggesting that Trump has something valuable to say to people hanging on to middle status for dear life. A competent opposition has a responsibility to find out what it is. In Outclassed, Williams argues that the values of the rich and the poor differ from those of the workaday middle, for whom stability, self-discipline, and directness are the dominant ideals. To reverse its political fortunes, the broad left must stop neglecting these pillars of the average American worldview.
Joan C. Williams is a distinguished professor at the University of California, Hastings, law school and founding director of the Center for WorkLife Law. Her work examines how class differences shape not just economic circumstances but fundamental ideas about work, family, religion, and government, and therefore American political dynamics.
In this conversation with Jacobin’s Meagan Day, Williams offers guidance to leftists on communicating our key issues in ways that resonate with people who value authenticity, stability, and recognition of their hard work. Dismissing the cultural principles that grant average Americans’ lives dignity, she warns, is a recipe for political irrelevance.
Meagan Day
Here at Jacobin, we make a major point to uncover the class basis of politics. Yet I can’t bring myself to say outright that the 2024 general election was solely “about economics,” if the implication is that people were just voting to get rid of inflation. To me, it seems obvious that something cultural was being communicated — not least by working-class Americans. What do you make of this question?
Joan C. Williams
First, the idea that culture is completely separate from economics is a mistake. Class is expressed through cultural differences as well as through power dynamics and economic position.
As far as the cultural differences go, one crucial observation is that non-elites turn servitude into honor. In elite circles, we feel entitled to self-development because it’s available to us, and we focus on self-development and maximizing our skills because that’s what succeeds in elite jobs. But if your best hope for stability is a blue- or pink-collar job where you need to show up reliably without attitude to a job that’s often not intellectually stimulating, you don’t feel entitled to self-development. What’s valuable instead is self-discipline, without which you and your family could end up homeless.
When elites go off the rails, either their parents bail them out or they pay for expensive therapy to develop a new narrative about their lives and find a new path. For working people, there are rarely second chances, even fewer than there were forty years ago. You need to keep your nose clean and stay disciplined. So non-elite culture places a high premium on self-discipline and the institutions that anchor it.
Another way to explain it involves different strategies in what I call the “scrum for social honor.” In elite circles, social honor comes from being articulate, intelligent, and from having an esteemed job — that’s why we’re so eager to tell people our professions immediately. But for blue- and pink-collar working people, their jobs don’t offer social honor, less so with each generation. So they seek alternative avenues to social honor through religion and morality. That’s their card in the deck.
For blue- and pink-collar working people, their jobs don’t offer social honor, less so with each generation. So they seek alternative avenues to social honor through religion and morality.
Traditional gender roles also matter. Middle-status people — meaning working Americans who occupy the middle 50 percent, sandwiched between elites above them and the poor below them — know they can’t achieve class ideals by becoming like Elon Musk or Barack Obama, but they can achieve gender ideals. When those gender ideals thrived in the 1960s, at least for whites, work life was far more manageable: a father in a blue-collar job, mother working part-time or at home. Compare that to working-class life today, where people often patch together multiple part-time jobs without benefits or childcare. It’s sometimes said they’re nostalgic for white privilege, which captures one dimension, but they’re also looking back to when working-class life functioned.
Meagan Day
But working-class life didn’t function better because of traditional gender roles. That was incidental to the fact that a single income could support a whole family.
Joan C. Williams
That’s right. It was because of wages. But the correlation is powerful, even if causation isn’t there. And that distinction isn’t necessarily obvious to people. What they know is that their parents’ or grandparents’ families looked quite different from theirs, and everything seemed to work then. Now nothing seems to work.
Meagan Day
You said something interesting in Outclassed: that precarity is a stronger predictor of support for the Right than poverty. Can you explain the difference?
Joan C. Williams
Middle-status people are desperately holding on to a stable life. Life thus consists of working, coming home, caring for your family day after day, holding it together. Self-discipline means not talking back, controlling impulses, and keeping your nose to the grindstone, because there’s a lot to lose. This is where you get clichés like “making a religion of hard work.” The Left doesn’t understand the politics of hard work. This applies equally to men and women.
But the poor are, in certain respects, more like the rich. For the poor, stability seems impossible, so self-discipline doesn’t seem worth it, since it won’t improve things much anyway. In that sense, elites who aren’t focused on self-discipline are actually more like the bottom quarter than the middle half. They share an adrift quality that makes their cultures markedly different from that of middle-status people.
Meagan Day
How has Donald Trump, a Manhattan billionaire celebrity playboy, managed to tap into the values of a group of people who cherish self-discipline?
Joan C. Williams
Trump is part of a long tradition of the far right of understanding how to talk to middle-status people. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News demonstrates this. One study found that for about five years, Tucker Carlson railed against elites in 70 percent of his shows, expressing anger at how elites had ripped off middle-status people. Why does Murdoch allow this? Because he’s smart and it works.
To use Thomas Piketty’s terminology, the “merchant right” has long understood that they needed to forge a coalition with middle-status people against the “Brahmin left.” They had to give them something, so they offered cultural issues that matter less to them than perpetuating their wealth.
Trump innovates on this tradition. He’s brilliant at it. He genuinely feels condescended to and rejected by elites — the high New York elites, not the Brahmin left — and people sense his authentic anger against elites. He performs a certain strain of masculine toughness that conveys dignity among blue-collar men, saying, “I’m going to tell it like it is. I’m not mealymouthed like those white-collar professionals who suck up to each other. I’m a straight shooter.”
Compare that to Hillary Clinton’s recent op-ed titled “How Much Dumber Will This Get?,” the first line of which is “It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity.” This type of condescension appeals to elites but not to middle-status people, who often feel they’re on the receiving end of this attitude from elites.
Meagan Day
Let’s back up to the masculinity thing. In Outclassed, you emphasize that both women’s and men’s endorsement of traditional masculinity predict right-wing electoral support. So this isn’t just appealing to men and off-putting to women. Men and women of a similar social demographic agree on this.
Joan C. Williams
Yes, and the masculine style in question can be summed up as “I tell it like it is.” I think of plumbers and electricians embodying this style. They have highly valued technical skills and don’t need to be nice to anyone — and, in my experience, they aren’t. The attitude is “I’m authentic and independent, I don’t sugarcoat anything.” This expression of masculinity brings honor to men in the eyes of both men and women. Studies show that embracing this masculine style strongly predicts voting for Trump across genders.
What working-class people know is that their parents’ or grandparents’ families looked quite different from theirs, and everything seemed to work then. Now nothing seems to work.
From the blue-collar perspective, professionals and managers seem pathetic — constantly sucking up, politicking, never saying what they actually think. We call this “political savvy”; they call it “phony.” In the competition for social honor, blue-collar men claim superiority on account of being authentic and direct.
Meagan Day
We don’t have a lot of people who do this left of center. But interestingly, Bernie Sanders comes to mind. He’s not tough or aggressive, but he’s certainly direct.
Joan C. Williams
Yes, part of Bernie’s unique appeal to this same group of people is that he’s unvarnished. I’m a child of the ’70s, and we had a left-wing tradition of this — we called it “speaking truth to power.” He uses simple language about the “rigged economy” that connects directly with working-class styles and priorities.
Meagan Day
It seems to me that no matter how well someone like Gavin Newsom might embrace pro-worker economic policies, he wouldn’t resonate with this group of people. He’s the definition of “slick.”
Joan C. Williams
He fully embodies an elitist style. Correct, no amount of pro-worker policy will make up for it. The combination worked for Franklin Roosevelt, but those days are gone.
Meagan Day
We call it “masculinity,” but it seems potentially more capacious. Could women effectively tap into this style? Sarah Palin connected on this level before she became a laughingstock.
Joan C. Williams
I’m watching Gretchen Whitmer with her “fix the roads” directness, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who explained climate change by saying, “I own an auto body shop, and I can’t work when it’s 116 degrees.”
At the gubernatorial and congressional levels, women can succeed. But running a woman against Trump is certifiably insane. He enacts an extreme version of this masculinity style and attracts and energizes people with traditional gender attitudes. Adding a woman to the mix isn’t strategic.
Both Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris faced what I call “the tightrope” — women must balance being seen as competent without seeming unlikable, or likable without seeming incompetent. It’s extraordinarily difficult. Whitmer and Gluesenkamp Perez show it’s possible, but whether it’s wise for Democrats to run a woman for president at this point — that’s a tight space.
Meagan Day
Tim Walz seemed closer to average middle-status Americans than someone like Gavin Newsom.
Joan C. Williams
He started well at the Democratic National Convention when everyone called him “Coach Walz,” but he stumbled and didn’t realize his potential. He was trying to connect with masculine roles that resonate with middle-status Americans, “coach” being one.
Meagan Day
“Coach” is an archetype that taps into this style without leaning into misogyny or domination, but rather positive ideals like teamwork and leadership.
Joan C. Williams
Yes, and the fact that Democrats pivoted from this to just panicking about how strong and scary Trump is, how he’s so powerful that he’s personally going to undo centuries of American history, is evidence of a profound messaging problem.
But then, of course, the Democrats have a lot worse problems than messaging. In truth, the Democrats have actively abandoned middle-status people for fifty years.
Meagan Day
Right, blue-collar Americans were mostly the Democrats’ demographic to lose. Trump’s personal style only did the light lifting here at the end. Where did the Democrats go wrong?
Joan C. Williams
The Democrats’ coalition used to center on stable lives for blue-collar families. That’s what the New Deal was about. Universal programs fit perfectly with middle-status values: stability and “earning” benefits through hard work and paying in.
Then my generation of hippies arrived with antiwar, abortion rights, and environmental concerns, followed quickly by race and gender issues. They were all noble causes, but what’s missing? If you already have a stable middle-class life, you can worry about the end of the world. If you don’t, you’re worried about the end of the month, as the yellow vest protesters in France put it.
By the 1970s, the issues salient to influential Democrats were those important to people who already had stable careers. These issues matter — they’re all my issues as a typical San Francisco lefty — but this approach doesn’t advance them. Unless we ensure a stable middle-class future for anyone who works hard, we won’t get action on climate change, and we’ll lose abortion rights.
Democrats were seduced away from the politics of the New Deal coalition by neoliberalism: self-regulating free markets, consumers benefiting from globalization. What a vision! But the consummation wasn’t what they had hoped. After World War II, productivity and wages grew together — then, with the introduction of neoliberalism, wages stalled while productivity grew eight times faster. If wages had maintained that growth line, they’d be 43 percent higher today. Three-fourths of that decline happened in the fifteen years after 2000.
Democrats could make huge progress quickly with a simple formula: try to persuade the middle-status noncollege voters whom you’ve lost.
People are angry because they got screwed. The economy is rigged. They have legitimate reasons for anger, even if they’re not directing it at those responsible.
I actually think neoliberalism is dead, thanks to Donald Trump. He accomplished what the Left couldn’t — killing neoliberalism in just four or eight years, depending how you count.
Meagan Day
I’m not sure Democrats realize this. They seem intent on rescuing neoliberalism. Right now, in response to Trump’s tariffs, they’re basically saying, “We need a return to the perfectly functional global economic order. Trump has rocked the boat too much.” That strikes me as ignorant of how dissatisfied middle-status Americans are with existing conditions.
Joan C. Williams
That’s another terrible message. You’re trying to appeal to voters who’ve been royally screwed by the establishment for fifty years, and your argument is that we should defend the established order?
Both parties are complex and chaotic, but Democrats could make huge progress quickly with a simple formula: try to persuade the middle-status noncollege voters whom you’ve lost. There’s plenty to work with. Look at Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Fighting Oligarchy Tour — people in red states flocked to hear them rail against the rich. Republican donors learned long ago they needed to tolerate anti-elitist rhetoric. Democrats need to learn the same lesson.
Meagan Day
Democrats are at a crossroads. Will they stand for suturing the established order back together? Or will they say, “You’re right, things needed to change, but not like that — we have an alternative”?
Joan C. Williams
Exactly. How hard was that?
The Trump administration is offering up many gifts if Democrats can use them effectively. We should recognize that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is an opportunity to change the narrative that government only takes from average working Americans and gives to the poor. No, government provides the foundation for stable middle-class life, which is never more evident than when DOGE is hacking away at the foundations.
Democrats should be featuring people who waited six hours at Social Security offices. They should be highlighting what the Trump administration is doing to veterans — a cross-class ideal of people who exhibited toughness, self-discipline, and manliness. It’s important to get the messaging right. With regard to Medicaid cuts, the Democrats’ impulse is to say, “Look what’s happening to poor people.” That’s true, but it’s not the best way to reach the target audience. Say instead, “Medicaid cuts mean closing more rural hospitals.”
If we want to really help poor people, we need to break the elite feeling rules that mandate empathy for certain groups and scorn for others — empathy for poor people, immigrants, and LGBTQ people, but scorn for people who go to church, respect the military, and embody the basic culture of middle-status America. That’s a losing strategy that ironically puts a target on the backs of the aforementioned marginalized communities, as we are seeing.
We need to stop asking “what’s the matter with Kansas?” and focus more on “what’s the matter with Cambridge?”
Meagan Day
In other words, we must resist collapsing into what’s sometimes termed “wokeness” — meaning moral sanctimony, oppression Olympics, paranoia about wrongthink, that kind of thing. But you wouldn’t advise abandoning our progressive social values, right?
Joan C. Williams
It’s a matter of framing. We don’t need to become “Republicans lite.” Life’s too short. None of us would do that, because if we did, we wouldn’t be ourselves, and we wouldn’t be on the Left. But we need to understand the people we’re trying to persuade: middle-status people who value traditional institutions and obsess over economic stability. Unless we rebuild relationships with them, our progressive values won’t materialize.
Issue by issue, there are certain nonnegotiables. We won’t embrace racism, simply put. But the conversation can’t stop there. Many people of color voted for Trump, not because they’re racist but because he was communicating in a register they understood and liked. We need to figure out how to talk to them.
We won’t abandon climate initiatives, because the world is about to fry. But we can discuss climate action in ways that connect with rural and blue-collar values, and stop talking down to people as “climate deniers” who don’t understand science. The class condescension is driving them to the far right.
Meagan Day
In Outclassed, you mentioned that the gay marriage struggle isn’t celebrated enough as a model for promoting progressive issues while connecting to middle-status people.
We didn’t win that fight by emphasizing gay people’s difference from average Americans. We emphasized similarities and integration, the idea that gay people are among middle-status people. The Left sometimes writes this off as assimilationist, but it might also be effective politics and common sense.
Joan C. Williams
Yes, we won that right by not contradicting, not ignoring, but rather relying on core middle-status values. My colleague Matt Coles, who led the American Civil Liberties Union’s gay marriage initiative, held focus groups and listened to how people talked about marriage. They spoke in terms of commitment. What does commitment mean? Stability.
What people don’t really understand is that the gay liberation movement wasn’t initially interested in marriage. They saw it as a lame, patriarchal institution. They focused on legal rights, equality, and celebrating diverse intimacies. The idea of prioritizing marriage was anathema to many leaders. The gay activists trying to legitimize diverse sexual expressions initially thought, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”
But the movement as a whole, including many people who originally thought that marriage was a boring goal, made a decision to pivot, and it worked.
We need to stop asking ‘what’s the matter with Kansas?’ and focus more on ‘what’s the matter with Cambridge?’
Matt Coles tells an amazing story of looking at people lining up to get married at San Francisco City Hall and realizing, “These weren’t doctors and lawyers. These were ordinary people. For them, this was the prom, the wedding, the ability to say, ‘Mom, I got married.'” A lot of gay and lesbian people were middle-class people with corresponding values, and this was the key.
So the movement knowingly pivoted. One of the major goals was always to communicate that gay intimacy is dignified. Instead of fighting it head-on, they achieved far more by connecting with middle-status people’s respect for family, stability, and propriety.
Gay marriage is the only social justice battle we’ve definitively won in forty years. There’s a key message for the Left in here. Your values are your own — don’t compromise them — but politics is about building coalitions that win. The gay marriage movement built a winning coalition and changed what it meant to be gay in this country. We think of it as inevitable, but it wasn’t.
Meagan Day
Let’s discuss specifics on immigration. You point out it’s not just racism that drives anti-immigrant feeling — there’s also real economic concern, even though immigrants broadly benefit the economy. How do we talk about immigration without alienating people by calling them racist?
Joan C. Williams
First, we need to change elite feeling rules. As long as elites empathize deeply with immigrants while judging and dismissing middle-status people’s pain, we won’t help immigrants. To help immigrants, treat working-class citizens with respect and ensure they have stable middle-class lives.
Arguments about immigration helping GDP mean nothing given income inequality. GDP growth hasn’t been fairly distributed, so save those arguments for economic seminars.
More effective arguments include protecting American workers — you’ll never protect American workers while immigrants remain infinitely exploitable, so it’s important to make sure they have a path to being documented. Another approach: many immigrants are working-class people with working-class values themselves. Rather than focusing on the poverty and violence they’re fleeing, emphasize that they’re religious people with traditional family values — just like you.
Meagan Day
I saw this with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the sheet metal apprentice deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador. Instead of saying, “A marginalized person of color was targeted and further marginalized,” the leadership of his union said, “A Maryland father and fellow union worker was kidnapped and sent illegally to El Salvador. He was one of us.” That seemed like a different message.
Joan C. Williams
Exactly. They were emphasizing, just like the gay marriage fight did by talking about visiting sick spouses in hospitals, that this is unfair because he is just like you — communicating opposition by way of shared social roles and ideals.
One thing that confuses people is that the strongest predictor of Trump votes is racism. But that doesn’t mean every Trump voter is an old-fashioned racist — there aren’t enough of those to win elections. I call it “regression confusion,” the misunderstanding of what regression analysis shows. It shows that a particular quality strongly predicts Trump support, not that all Trump supporters have that quality.
In other words, this finding means that if you are an avowed racist, you’re definitely voting for Trump. But it doesn’t account for the rest of the Trump voters, and Trump also attracts millions of people with less racist attitudes, including people of color themselves. So rather than assuming that Trump voters are too racist to feel empathy with Salvadoran immigrants, the trick is to assume they can — and then set about trying to create scenarios that emphasize commonality.
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Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity.
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
11 May 2025, 3:23 am
