The return of American class politics Trump is enabling a new aristocracy

In his farewell address, mere days before leaving the White House, Joe Biden made a dramatic intervention. Warning about how an oligarchy of “extreme wealth, power and influence” risked the basic rights of every citizen, he even suggested it could threaten American democracy itself. Given how late Biden’s intervention came, to say nothing of his typically stumbling delivery, it’s tempting to dismiss his comments as the rantings of a tired old man.

In truth, though, I think the speech matters. For in its populist appeal to Main Street over Wall Street, it reflects the revival of something we haven’t seen in years: class politics. Rather than appealing to racial subgroups, or sex or gender identity, Biden instead spoke, however fleetingly, to those many millions of Americans who care more about their paychecks than the colour of their skin.

Nor, of course, is the 46th president alone. Increasingly, both main parties realise that to win at the ballot box, they must appeal to the middle- and working classes, as proven by Trump’s roughly 10-point lead among those two-thirds of Americans without a college degree. Yet, if that speaks vividly to radical shifts across US socioeconomic makeup, it remains unclear if politicians on either side of the aisle are truly willing to back blue-collar workers — especially when the oligarchs continue to have such a grip over them all.

For all Biden’s warnings about oligarchy, the elite did very well during his tenure. Consider the numbers, with the wealthiest Americans increasing their collective net worth by a remarkable one trillion dollars over his time in office. The monopolists, for their part, have been generous in their turn. In 2020, to give one example, Biden received 25 times as much funding from tech companies than Trump, and over three times as much from Wall Street. Among electronics manufacturing firms, many of whom build their products outside the country, the margin was a remarkable $68 million to $4 million.

All the while, American business continued to consolidate, just as it has for a generation. The Review of Finance notes that three quarters of industry has become more concentrated since the late Nineties. This has been most notable across finance, where big banks have doubled their market share since 2000. The same is true elsewhere: a coterie of tech firms now account for a record 35% of market cap. No wonder only 22% of Americans were optimistic about the economy by the end of Biden’s term, even as confidence in his economic leadership had fallen to just 40%.

Taken together, then, Biden’s fall stemmed from an enormous miscalculation. Elected as a moderate, he ignored polls that suggested most Americans were more concerned with their economic prospects than issues like climate change and foreign affairs, let alone social justice manias around trans rights. Nonetheless, the Democrats followed the lead of their oligarchic funders, many of whose biggest contributions have been focused on exactly these side issues.

When the election came, no wonder so many blue collar Americans tried their luck with Trump: including a remarkable number of minority voters. Once again, the statistics here are clear, with 40% of Asians voting for him, well above the 30% in 2020, even as some African Americans headed to the GOP as well. Blue-collar Latinos went heavily for Trump too. The point is that this realignment largely happened on economic grounds, with minorities ignoring Trump’s past litany of racist comments because he offered them a more expansive economy, particularly in blue collar professions. All the while, they saw little promise in the tsunami of promises offered by Harris and her bozo vice-presidential partner Tim Walz. Knowing a winner when they see one, America’s billionaires duly came out for the Republicans too. That included Elon Musk, of course, but also prominent investment bankers like Bill Ackman.

Taken together, what does this revolution show? That class and economics now play a greater role in American politics than skin colour or national origin. If you want to secure minority voters, the new President clearly understands, you appeal to them not as identity groups but as individual people, and families, looking out for their own self-interest. Nor is this really revelatory. America’s working-class remains more aspirational than those in other Western countries. That’s equally true of non-white voters, many of whom appreciate that the politics of race is an impediment to the American Dream. Most of the middle-income people who lately lost their homes to fire, in the minority LA suburb of Altadena, hardly benefited from a city government more obsessed with race and gender than protecting property. No less telling, Democratic policies on water and climate have created what attorney Jennifer Hernandez calls a “green Jim Crow” — where working-class minorities face increasing headwinds in terms of jobs and housing.

This matters: and not just morally. Minorities, after all, encompass over 40% of working class Americans, and will constitute the majority by 2032. To win back the White House, then, Democrats will need to ditch all their woke baggage and focus on addressing the everyday concerns of working-class people, especially the non-white variety. In practice, that’ll involve focusing on bread-and-butter issues. When it comes to education, for instance, this could include expanding charter schools, or else developing skill academies for well-paid blue-collar jobs. When it comes to crime, meanwhile, just enforcing the law would help. That’s clearly a novel idea for some progressives, but would have a real impact on the security of inner cities.

Rhetorically speaking, the Democrats also have that new pro-Trump oligarchy to fall back on, with progressives like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez increasingly railing against a corrupt cabal of kleptocrats goose-stepping America towards fascism. Never mind that Democrats didn’t seem concerned when the tech elite marched in lockstep with Biden four years ago. (Probably the more egregious hypocrite here is Chuck Schumer, who tried to reposition himself as an anti-oligarch radical despite serving as an unofficial consigliere for varied Wall Street ghouls).

At any rate, how likely is it that the Democrats can change course? Backing such things as legalised drug injection sites near schools, as just happened in deep-blue Denver, suggests that not all progressives are ready to take the plunge just yet. As they face the reality of working-class desertions, in fact, the progressive wing of the party will likely move even further to the Left. People like AOC already don’t distinguish between “good” billionaires and “bad” ones. They just think billionaires shouldn’t exist at all, even as they push for even more redistribution, a programme that ultimately looks suspiciously like American Peronism. It hardly helps, of course, that the loudest proponents of radical economic change are often the very same Democrats pushing for unpopular shifts on transgenderism or reparations.

An arguably even bigger problem for liberals is that, their new populist guise notwithstanding, they’re still reliant on many of the oligarchs that Biden now denounces. That’s clear enough in the figures. The Elons of the world have kissed Donald Trump’s greasy ring, but when it comes to “dark money” from the ultra rich, Democrats have tended to be greater recipients. Just as important, the Democrats have become so dependent on affluent professionals, including across the vast government apparatus, making any appeal for redistribution tricky. Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, has explicitly said Democrats should avoid “true economic populism” because it “is bad for our high-income base.”

The Trumpistas face a different class challenge: though one where those troublesome oligarchs still feature heavily. Having won over much of the middle- and working-classes, gaining even in outer borough New York, they now have to find a way to build a common agenda with the billionaires. The recent brouhaha over H1-B visas — essentially allowing for the import of temporary tech workers — revealed the gap between an oligarchic elite addicted to procuring cheap foreign labour and those countless Americans who might want such jobs for themselves or their offspring.

One thing is certain: most oligarchs are not social democrats. Rather than a competitive economy, they represent what Aldous Huxley called “a scientific caste system” where the highly credentialed and technologically dominant have almost total reign. Artificial intelligence, the crack cocaine of the digital age, will accelerate this process, eliminating both high- and low-paid jobs, as power gravitates to those who control the algorithms. This new aristocracy, whatever its current political affiliation, already regards itself as intrinsically more deserving of their wealth and power than the old managerial elites, let alone grubby corporate speculators. Coming from the ADD tech world, they tend, if anything, to be more followers of Ayn Rand than any populist theoretician.

Trump’s dilemma, in short, will be how to please these nabobs while preserving his working-class base. Expect continued battles between populists — including JD Vance and Josh Hawley — and more libertarian, profit-driven Trump whisperers. In particular, expect conflict over Social Security, which Trump has pledged to preserve, and tariffs, despised by most libertarians and their billionaire funders. Then again, in a land where class is king, such bickering is surely to be expected.

---