The coalitions that once were the Republican and Democrat Parties have cracked and begun to fall apart, and in their place, a new alignment is developing that is based almost entirely on social class. 

Not economic classes, which in the United States are more fluid than anywhere else in the world, but social classes, which are hardly as fluid because they are foundational to our identity in a way that purchasing power is not. 

White college-educated voters--especially those who have attended prestigious colleges and universities--and the cultural elite are foursquare behind the Democrats in a "vote Blue no matter who" fashion; working-class people, increasingly of every race--are backing Trump and moving toward the populist Republicans. 

Blacks and Hispanics are trending rightward, while suburban white-collar voters are increasingly Democrat. Issues are hardly irrelevant, of course, but social identity is becoming the key metric when it comes to Party ID. 

An essay by Joseph Epstein--an extraordinary writer and social critic--put an exclamation point on this phenomenon for me. 

Writing on the Opinion page of The Wall Street Journal yesterday Epstein explained why he simply cannot vote for Trump, despite finding him ideologically sympatico on most of the major issues. 

Trump is crass, and that is not OK. The world can burn for all he cares, as long as the pants crease is sharp and the diction smooth. 

I can’t vote for Kamala Harris. I find many of Donald Trump’s policies—his stand on closing the borders, his economic programs, his unflinching support for Israel—appealing but for one thing: the man who holds them. A friend of mine, also an independent voter, recently told me that on Election Day he thought he would probably hold his nose and vote for Mr. Trump. For others, even with noses held, the smell remains too strong to do likewise.

What, precisely, is wrong with Donald Trump? To start with the obvious, his vanity: his preposterously bleached and elaborately coiffed hairdo, his sprayed-on tan, the lengthy neckties to cover his avoirdupois. Add to this his propensity for insulting his political enemies. (He calls Gavin Newsom, governor of California, “Gavin Newscum.”) Then there’s his hyperbole, everywhere adding to his opponents’ misdeeds, building up his own achievements.

Still, why can’t I live with all this and vote for the man based on the general soundness of his policies? What I can’t live with, what I can’t vote for, is Mr. Trump’s relentless immodesty. Perhaps no one who seeks the presidency of the United States qualifies as modest, but Mr. Trump is also altogether devoid of modesty’s first cousin, humility. No other politician has so thoroughly availed himself of the first-person singular.

I am, broadly speaking, of the same class as Epstein, if not quite as fluent a writer or as deep a thinker. I am the child of two Harvard grads who became academics; my sister went to Harvard, and I went to a tony private liberal arts college and went on to teach in academia. I, too, admire verbal fluency and bespoke suits, even if I have never owned one myself. And, to be honest, I find Donald Trump crass and bombastic. 

Trump is not of my class, in other words, and I have a residual distaste for his Queens loudness of voice, his locker room talk, and his gaudiness. 

The difference is that I don't really care about any of that. It is not just superficial, it is stupid to care. After all, members of my class are worse in every way. They virtue signal by approving the murder of infants, the sterilization and mutilation of children, and the recruitment of teens into alphabet cults. They sacrifice the well-being of my fellow citizens and import into the country criminals and uneducated welfare recipients, hoping to recruit them to become low-wage workers in farms, nursing homes, and lawn-care companies. 

The modern-day @GOP under President Trump is a changed party.

We are a working-class party.
We are a bottom-up party.
We put the American people first.
We don't want the fanfare or the dinners.
We want real, commonsense solutions.

And our leaders have lived the American Dream. pic.twitter.com/Yv6SVNmVcE

— Byron Donalds (@ByronDonalds) October 21, 2024

The educated class finds their fellow Americans so crass that they must be censored. They view us as disease vectors. They call us "deplorables," and want to restrict our mobility and reduce the energy consumption that we need to make a better life for ourselves. 

That they do all this while speaking in the dulcet tones of midwit NPR hosts is no comfort; in fact, it is even more infuriating. 

CNN's Harry Enten says Harris "is doing ridiculously, ridiculously well" among "white college grads" @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/PSJLu86Hue

— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) October 7, 2024

I respect Epstein very much as a writer and thinker--truly. He is a credit to his class, as it were. But in this, he is betraying a character flaw that is disqualifying. He recognizes that Kamala Harris doesn't even rise to the level of being a midwit, that America is accelerating down a path of decline, and that the world is a worse place because the Democrats are betraying us. 

But Trump. He is so...egotistical. 

No ex-president has been more harassed than Mr. Trump. The term “lawfare” had to be popularized to describe his unfair treatment by the court system under the Democrats. Yet even here, it’s difficult to sympathize much with the man. Not that he asks for sympathy. Overrating his charm, profundity and political acumen, he plunges ahead, never hesitant, brimming with confidence.

This utter confidence, part and parcel of his immodesty, is what I find so off-putting—even dangerous—about the man. But then, I happen to think that one of the qualifications for president of the United States is that one be decent, honorable, fair-minded. Here Donald J. Trump, though he may have been the 45th president of the United States, fails to qualify as a suitable candidate for our 47th president.

I recognize in Trump all the flaws that Epstein does. I would have preferred a different candidate, or a more modest Trump for that matter. 

But Trump is the right man for the job at the right time. That is why mavericks--people who care more about results than vibes--are flocking to Trump. That Elon Musk--whose sophomoric sense of humor is as "classless" as Trump's boastfulness--has allied himself with Trump says quite a bit. 

The man who will get us to Mars before NASA gets us to the moon is backing Trump because he knows that a classy decline is still a decline and that progress and brashness often travel hand in hand. It was not the soft-handed, tweed-wearing college professors who settled the West. It was hard men doing hard things, with hardy wives who braved the wilds. 

It is often the crass and the hardy who push humanity forward. It is General Pattons who win wars on the battlefield. MacArthur was crass and egotistical, and you wouldn't want a world only populated by such people. 

But society needs them. Especially when it is in trouble. And America is in trouble.