Progressives and White Working-Class Voters

Progressives and White Working-Class Voters

Joshua Holland on politics, Katha Pollitt on fetal personhood, and Ruth Marcus on Brett Kavanaugh.

Start Making Sense and Jon Wiener
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

Some analysts criticize progressives who urge Democrats to focus on turning out their core base—people of color, unmarried women, and younger voters—they say it’s a big mistake to give up on working class whites. And many progressives reply that it would be a disaster for the Democrats to try to “win back” working-class white Trump voters by not talking about discriminatory policing, reproductive health care, and LGBTQ rights. Joshua Holland examines the actual evidence—and concludes that Democrats have already won back enough white working-class voters to win in 2020.

Also: What happens to pregnant women when anti-abortion state legislatures grant legal personhood to fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses? What happens when pregnant women’s behavior is criminalized? Katha Pollitt reports.

Also: Brett Kavanaugh was not on the list of candidates for the Supreme Court that Trump released during the campaign—how did Kavanaugh end up ahead of everybody else? Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post has that story—her new book is Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover.

 

Hold the powerful to account by supporting The Nation

The chaos and cruelty of the Trump administration reaches new lows each week.

Trump’s catastrophic “Liberation Day” has wreaked havoc on the world economy and set up yet another constitutional crisis at home. Plainclothes officers continue to abduct university students off the streets. So-called “enemy aliens” are flown abroad to a mega prison against the orders of the courts. And Signalgate promises to be the first of many incompetence scandals that expose the brutal violence at the core of the American empire.

At a time when elite universities, powerful law firms, and influential media outlets are capitulating to Trump’s intimidation, The Nation is more determined than ever before to hold the powerful to account.

In just the last month, we’ve published reporting on how Trump outsources his mass deportation agenda to other countries, exposed the administration’s appeal to obscure laws to carry out its repressive agenda, and amplified the voices of brave student activists targeted by universities.

We also continue to tell the stories of those who fight back against Trump and Musk, whether on the streets in growing protest movements, in town halls across the country, or in critical state elections—like Wisconsin’s recent state Supreme Court race—that provide a model for resisting Trumpism and prove that Musk can’t buy our democracy.

This is the journalism that matters in 2025. But we can’t do this without you. As a reader-supported publication, we rely on the support of generous donors. Please, help make our essential independent journalism possible with a donation today.

In solidarity,

The Editors

The Nation

Start Making Sense Start Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.  


Jon Wiener Jon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.


Ad Policy
x