But there is a deeper problem. The perception that nonwhite working class voters are a lock for the Democrats is no longer tenable. In the 2020 election, working class nonwhites moved sharply toward Trump by 12 margin points, despite Democratic messaging that focused relentlessly on Trump’s animus toward nonwhites. According to Pew, Trump actually got 41 percent of the Hispanic working class vote in 2016. Since 2012, running against Trump twice, Democrats have lost 18 points off of their margin among nonwhite working class voters.

Given this development, how did the Democrats manage to win in 2020? In broad brush terms, Democrats’ modest gains among the white working class—still by far the largest part of the working class—were about enough to cancel out the nonwhite working class losses, thereby allowing the Democrats’ white college gains to put them over the top. But if both segments of the working class move in tandem against the Democrats, that will be a big, big problem that gains among college voters—even if they continue—may not solve.

And will those gains continue? That is not clear. Liberal college graduates, especially liberal white college graduates, have gained a sort of hegemony in the nation’s elite media, foundations and NGOs, in academic and cultural institutions and in the staffing of the Democratic party’s infrastructure. This hegemony sets the tone for the Democratic party’s commitments and rhetoric on sociocultural issues.