Keen On

Behind all the partisan hysteria, a dramatic political realignment is taking place in America. As SECOND CLASS author Batya Ungar-Sargon told me, the Democrats have become the party of a mostly coastal global knowledge elite and the Republicans the party of the old (most white) working class. This new elite, Ungar-Sargon argues, have broken its contract with the working people by pursuing internationalist policies that hurt most working Americans. There’s obviously some Trumpian hyperbole here, but there is also more than an element of truth, especially in the context of the immigration “debate” and the unwillingness of the coastal elites to acknowledge the damage being done to American workers by both legal and illegal immigration. The New York Times’ David Leonhardt made a similar argument when he came on the show last year. Leonhardt, however, dresses up his argument in the palatable social scientific language of the ruling technocracy; Ungar-Sargon, in contrast, calls out the treason of the American elite