Republicans deliver to their base, even when most Americans disagree. Trump’s administration was a hot mess, but the corporations got deregulation, the evangelicals got their zealous judges, the rich got tax cuts, Big Oil and King Coal got climate action blocked. And for those communities ravaged by plant closures and jobs getting shipped abroad, Trump called out the elites that had failed them and broke with the neoliberal “free trade” shibboleths — torpedoing Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership, renegotiating Clinton’s North American Free Trade Agreement, imposing tariffs on China. He didn’t have a coherent plan or policy, but he did something.

Democrats, by contrast, spurn their activists. Promises on student loan relief have been broken, action on climate and immigration stymied. Biden is more pro-labor than his Democratic predecessors, but the National Labor Relations Board hasn’t been rebuilt, labor law reform is going nowhere. The party is going all out on saving abortion, but it didn’t keep Pelosi and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from putting real energy into fending off a pro-choice primary challenger to Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, who opposes choice and much of the rest of the Democratic agenda.

The Democrats’ problem among the working class isn’t Black Lives Matter or pro-choice activists. It’s that this economy doesn’t work for working people. The rich capture the rewards of growth, while working people’s conditions grow less secure. Working-class Americans may be able to buy more stuff at Walmart, but they struggle to afford the necessities — health care, housing, education, retirement security, and now food and gas.