To build a coalition, everyone has to give a little. Photograph: AZP Worldwide/Alamy
Abortion rights are central to my identity. As an ambitious teenager, I wanted to have both a vital career and a vibrant intellectual life, and I felt that having a baby at the wrong time would doom me. I went on to a both a full career and motherhood. It all worked out for me, but only because I could control my fertility.
My life has centered around what the sociologist Mary Blair-Loy calls call the norm of work devotion. Work has provided me with joy, social status, dignity, and financial stability. To me, the image of the stay-at-home mom epitomized oppression and thwarted self-fulfillment. Abortion rights are crucial to the logic of lives like mine, which is why I and about two-thirds of college grads support them.
But only about half of Americans without college degrees do. The logic of their lives is different. They fault white-collar professionals for unhealthy work worship and a failure to understand that family comes first. Elites think they are so high and mighty, but its we who keep the world in moral order, the working class believes.
Republicans have top-to-bottom control in 24 states Democrats in only six. Purity may feel good but its not working
The demise of blue-collar jobs means that many families face a daily scramble between two not-very-fulfilling or well-paid jobs, with Mom working one shift and Dad working a different shift, and with each parent caring for the kids while the other is at work.
Tag-team families are under such pressure, and these parents see each other so rarely, that they have three to six times the national divorce rate. In the light of this harsh reality, its no wonder they look back with yearning at the breadwinner-homemaker family, supported by the husbands blue-collar job.
This helps explain why abortion rights look different to those with good jobs and education and those who are struggling. To women like myself, they are the bare minimum of human rights. To working-class women, who often see motherhood, not work, as the key source of social honor, obsession with abortion rights among well-off women is selfish, exemplifying lack of an adequate devotion to family. Seen in this light, opposition to abortion rights becomes, for high-school educated women, a way of claiming social honor.
Thats why research since the 1980s has found class differences in the levels of support for abortion rights. The fight over abortion becomes a fight over what it means to be a good person. Thats why things get ugly really fast. When elites dismiss abortion opponents as mindless misogynists and non-elites dismiss abortion rights advocates as selfish careerists, class conflict becomes acute.
Debates over guns and gun control are similarly visceral, again because identities are at risk. To me, the ready availability of guns is associated with killings among young black men without a future, struggling to find dignity in a society that offers them precious little. Guns mean Sandy Hook and other horrors, and living in a country where mentally unstable kids regularly murder their classmates.
But even as I feel so strongly, I understand how other Americans feel differently. If the abortion debate involves ideals of femininity, guns involve ideals of masculinity. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of women but less than half (43%) of men support stricter guns laws.
Theres also a dramatic class gap: 57% of people with post-graduate education say gun ownership endangers safety; only 35% of those with high school education or less agree. Where I come from, said John Edwards in 2004, guns are about a lot more than guns themselves. They are about independence independence that intertwines with masculinity.
Studies of white working-class men depict the role of hunting in mens lives. Joseph Howell recounts setting off on a hunting trip with Barry Shackelsford, the hard-living, alcoholic, good-hearted hero of Howells Hard Living on Clay Street. Barry does not cling to his guns. Hunting provides him with a way of relating to nature and indulging his love of the countryside; it is a bonding experience he enjoys sharing with close friends and his son.
Jennifer Sherman, in a book written about 40 years later, recounts how men in rural California many on disability due to the lack of jobs often hunt to supplement their families income. These rural white men, in a very different way from inner-city men, use their relationship to guns to claim a full measure of masculine dignity. To them, guns represent pleasure, power, and providing key ingredients of the masculine role. One reason some people hated Hillary Clinton so much is that she wants to take our guns away. Not too subtle, whats going on there.
No one gets their way all the time: thats called a coalition
Look, I wish masculinity worked differently. But whether youre poor or privileged, being a man is something that has to be earned, over and over again. Working-class mens relationship to guns is similar to attitudes in the supposedly enlightened Silicon Valley, where work is a masculinity contest and harassing women is just one way of keeping score. Too often, critiques of manliness deride blue-collar men but are silent about educated mens chosen ways of enacting masculinity.
This is the relevant context for the debate over whether Democrats should make abortion and guns into litmus tests: whether the national party will support candidates who are opposed to abortion rights and strict gun laws. These issues highlight the way the Democratic party has taken sides in the culture clash between the sincerely held truths of folks like me and the sincerely held beliefs of non-college grads, fueling class conflict that leads to Republican victories.
The Democrats have become a regional party, confined to blue coasts and blue-dot islands, leaving an ocean of Republican rural and rust belt red in between. This outcome has not helped abortion rights. Republicans now control so many state legislatures that 87% of American counties have no abortion provider and Roe v Wade may well be overturned. We already have a situation where access to abortion depends on where you live which is what the Roe v Wade decision sought to avoid.
Gun control has not fared any better. Some advocates for a litmus test act as if Democrats just wanted gun control a little more, it would happen. If only that were true. Though polls continually suggest broad support for specific gun control policies the NRA wins time and time again. Clearly, the polling data is not giving us the full picture, noted one writer in Politico.
Whether its the influence of the NRA, that gun control opponents are more likely to vote on single issues than proponents, or both, or neither, who knows? The result is the same.
For Democrats to make progress in that sea of Republican red, we need to be willing to address whats fueling economic populism: economics. When Montanas governor, Steve Bullock, asked Trump supporters what Democrats needed to do to win their votes, a 27-year-old apprentice in a metal shop answered: Get us good jobs. Plain and simple. Seems like I got to work my butt off, and I barely get by.
This sounds like an accurate description to me, as a labor rights advocate. The pollster Stanley Greenberg found the same thing in focus groups of Trump voters who also voted for Obama: Hes trying to create jobs, trying to keep jobs in the United States. Counties that swung for Trump tended to have high levels of white non-college voters dependent on low-skilled jobs and vulnerable to structural economic change.
Democrats need to prioritize good jobs for non-college grads affected by or alarmed about the hollowing out of the middle class ahead of some issues that matter more to me personally, notably abortion rights and gun control.
That strikes me as appropriate for tactical reasons, because now what we have is geographically limited access to abortion, no serious gun control, and a Republican president, Senate, House, and Republican control of 68 out of 99 partisan legislative chambers. Republicans have top-to-bottom control in 27 states; Democrats in only eight. Purity may feel good but its not working.
But we need to prioritize good jobs for low-income and poor people not just for tactical but also for ethical reasons. Americans without college degrees of all races are falling further and further behind economically because we havent cared enough to provide good jobs for them.
For those who say thats impossible in a globalized world, I have a one-word response: Germany. Germany has retained large numbers of blue-collar jobs for a simple reason. The 1930s taught its people just what were learning now. This is vital for social peace.
People who are in low-paying jobs or are unemployed just want what most college-educated people have already: jobs that yield their vision of a solid middle-class life. Providing those jobs, to me, is a pressing progressive priority. Thats why the Democrats Better Deal is an important first step in the right direction.
Democrats need to thread a necklace that includes four overlapping groups: the liberal-to-moderate college-educated elite, the white working class, communities of color, and the progressives and millennials who flocked to Bernie Sanders. Good jobs hold deep appeal for both communities of color and the white working class. College-educated liberals and moderates will vote Democratic regardless.
Sorely needed is something concrete to inspire the millennials who flocked to Sanders. I support single-payer health insurance but thats counterproductive as a campaign issue: it just sets us up for defeat again as Big Government Liberals. Why not focus on college debt relief?
Thats the maw millennials see gobbling up their future, and the current trajectory of college debt is unsustainable anyway. We dont need to design a program: people dont vote on policy details. People vote because, as Kamala Harris once pointed out, youve connected with what keeps them up at night. Economic issues do that.
To build a coalition, everyone has to give a little. But saying abortion should not be a litmus test is very different from saying the party is backing off support for reproductive rights. Democratic leaders last spring failed to articulate this distinction clearly, given Nancy Pelosis statement that abortion rights are kind of fading as an issue and loose talk by Bernie Sanders, too. Great lets give up what matters very deeply to progressive women but not so much to progressive men. Thats what many heard.
What litmus tests should mean is that we wont hold candidates in red districts to progressive purity. Whose issue should we trade off? Trade-offs should be balanced and situational. Announcing that you are always going to abandon the most cherished priority of a single group is a recipe for discord.
The Democratic National Committee should make a considered assessment of who the most viable candidates are in a given district, and make trade-offs about whom to run so that no one groups ox gets gored consistently.
No one gets their way all the time: thats called a coalition. And its coalitions that win, folks. If you want purity, become a priest. Politics is for people not afraid of the messy business of living peaceably with people whose most fundamental truths clash with your own.
Excerpt from:
Liberal elite, it's time to strike a deal with the working class - The Guardian
- Fox News Anchor Comes Unglued, Berates 'Dumb' Liberal Colleague - The Daily Beast - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Mathew Chandy '24, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences - UConn Today - University of Connecticut - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Will No One Rid Me Of These Meddlesome -Isms: Thinking and Rethinking Liberalism - Front Porch Republic - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Why market demand doesn't capture the value of the liberal arts | Letters - Tampa Bay Times - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- See what the students were wearing for the School of Liberal Studies at Savannah High prom - Savannah Morning News - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Is a $330000 liberal arts education still 'worth it?' - Los Angeles Loyolan - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Judge installed by liberal Democrats over centrist Hochul pick responsible for Harvey Weinstein ruling - New York Post - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Liberal Cities, Conservative Towns Seek Supreme Court's Help on Homelessness - The Wall Street Journal - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Luke Grimes on Yellowstones liberal critics: A lot of people see a cowboy hat and think, thats not for me - The Independent - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Liberal pundits really do have weekly meetings to 'shape' message on Trump - Washington Times - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Trump slams 'Bidenomics' ahead of court, claims to have a 'good chance' of winning liberal state - Fox News - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Ones a Conservative, Ones a Liberal. Heres Their Secret to Friendship. - InsideHook - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Bill Cotterell: What? NPR is liberal? Say it ain't so - Tallahassee Democrat - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Orban: Hungary is island in the European progressive liberal ocean - bne IntelliNews - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- NY Times keeps spotlight on NPR crisis on heels of Uri Berliner blowing whistle on liberal bias - Fox News - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- CPAC Hungary: ex Polish PM Morawiecki warns of "destructive ideas of liberal elites" - Notes From Poland - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- The biggest threat to freedom in the West is liberalism itself - The New Statesman - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Letter: NPR Editor Berliner reveals liberal bias of network - Arizona Daily Star - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Chicago native says residents livid over liberal mayor's new migrant funding, ready to vote for Trump - Fox News - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Ontario Liberal leader says Dresden landfill project could be nixed with 'stroke of a pen' - The Chatham Daily News - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Opinion: The Liberals' immigration policies have accomplished the opposite of what was intended - The Globe and Mail - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- At Issue | Was the Liberal budget a bust with Canadians? - CBC.ca - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Have the Liberal Arts Gone Conservative? - The New Yorker - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Letters to the Editor: 'I see myself in Katie Britt' what liberal critics missed in the senator's response - Los Angeles Times - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Even when it criticizes Israel, the liberal world is not against us - opinion - The Jerusalem Post - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Former Trump Aide Alyssa Farah Griffin Becomes a Liberal Favorite - The New York Times - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Renowned author, liberal arts proponent to deliver annual Lester Lectures - Mercer University - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- NYU to Host Zaheer Ali at the Annual Liberal Studies Student Research ColloquiumApril 5 - NYU - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Power to the Neighborhoods!: New York City Growth Politics, Neighborhood Liberalism, and the Origins of the ... - Joint Center for Housing Studies - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Canada's Conservatives back NDP-Liberal anti-scab legislation that undermines the right to strike - WSWS - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- The Surprising Left-Right Alliance That Wants More Apartments in Suburbs - The New York Times - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- PARKER: Clarence Thomas, liberal racism and the ongoing denigration of Black conservatives - Kankakee Daily Journal - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal Media Scream: Hollywoods freaks over Trump - Washington Examiner - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Why liberals failed in the fight against antisemitism - JNS.org - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal Renew manifesto sneak peek and bits from Bucharest congress - EURACTIV - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Katie Britt calls on liberal media 'to pay attention' to border - 1819 News - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal truck wash cited $171k for OSHA violations - KSN-TV - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Over 30,000 Killed in Gaza, but Even Israel's 'Liberal Left' Says: That's War - Opinion - Haaretz - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal Man Injured in Beaver County Accident - KSCB News.net - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- What is the Market's View on China Liberal Education Holdings Ltd (CLEU) Stock's Price and Volume Trends Monday? - InvestorsObserver - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- German liberals send defence expert into tripartite EU election leadership team - EURACTIV - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Ramaswamy warns liberal justices 'buying political latitude' with 9-0 ruling as more Trump cases lie ahead - Fox News - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- How much of this is propelled by white liberal guilt from executives?: Gutfeld - Fox News - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberals and the Libel of Christian Nationalism - The Imaginative Conservative - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal Arts & Science Academy - Austin extends home winning streak to seven - MaxPreps - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal Racism and the Denigration of Black Conservatives - Daily Signal - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Watchdog group exposes radical, liberal ideology of school-based health centers - The Lion - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- What happens when a liberal learns her family owned slaves? - Leader & Times - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Is it Liberal Arts, Without the Arts? - Xavier Newswire - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Quebec Liberal Party would be more popular with Denis Coderre at the helm: poll - Montreal Gazette - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Maine's Liberal Members of Congress Stand by Biden After Disastrous, Confused Press Conference - The Maine Wire - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Liberal Media Scream: Kristen Welker likes to lecture Republicans, too - Washington Examiner - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Australia's only Liberal government lives on - for now - Yahoo News Australia - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Liberal institutions are the threat to liberal institutions Claudine Gay is warning about - Washington Examiner - January 10th, 2024 [January 10th, 2024]
- Elon Musk, the "free speech absolutist" kicks liberal journalists off Twitter - Daily Kos - January 10th, 2024 [January 10th, 2024]
- Liberal Arts and studies in humanities under attack on college campuses - The Community Word - January 10th, 2024 [January 10th, 2024]
- Liberal candidate for federal byelection planned to run for Conservatives last year - National Post - January 10th, 2024 [January 10th, 2024]
- Bill Barton: 'The Liberal by the Bay' - Redheaded Blackbelt - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- OPINION | Female-dominated liberal arts imperative in male-dominated tech world - Tulane Hullabaloo - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Dean of the College of Liberal and Fine Arts job with Tarleton State University | 37572379 - The Chronicle of Higher Education - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Laughing Stock: 'A liberal agenda' may not be what you think - Tucson Weekly - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Justin Trudeau plays the Trump card - POLITICO - POLITICO - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Norman Lear, Producer Of TV's 'All In The Family' And Influential Liberal Advocate, Dies At 101 - Newstalk 750 - 103.7 ... - KFQD - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Kremlin Taps Liberal Businessman to Oppose Putin in 2024 Election Report - The Moscow Times - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Norman Lear, producer of TV's 'All in the Family' and influential liberal advocate, has died at 101 - WV News - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- MoveOn Carries Out Layoffs as Liberal Groups Struggle to Raise Money - The New York Times - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Norman Lear, producer of TV's 'All in the Family' and influential liberal advocate, has died at 101 - El Paso Inc. - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- UW System President suggests universities with high numbers of low income students should shift away from liberal arts - Wisconsin Examiner - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Norman Lear, producer of TV's 'All in the Family' and influential liberal advocate, has died at 101 - The Caledonian-Record - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Israels representative in New York resigned to protest Netanyahu. Now hes got some tough words for liberal New York Jews. - Forward - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Neal Milner: Watch That Swinging Door, Liberals, Lest It Hit You On The Way Out - Honolulu Civil Beat - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- The Liberal Answer to Cancel Culture - Manhattan Institute - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Study: Liberal US priests facing 'progressive' extinction - The Pillar - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Liberal Jewish U.S. Groups Are Walking an Oh-So-Thin Tightrope - The New Republic - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Why a liberal arts degree is often a ticket to career success - USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Open Forum: In their time, founding fathers were liberal - The Winchester Star - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Liberals announce National Campaign Committee Co-Chairs - Liberal Party of Canada - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- UT College of Liberal Arts hosts panel about Senate Bill 17 - The Daily Texan - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Liberal Arts student uses platform to educate others on the ... - Pennsylvania State University - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Stanford celebrates 50 years of Structured Liberal Education ... - Stanford University News - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]