The Democrats’ Brahmin Left Problem

It’s not going away.

The Democrats have become and remain today a “Brahmin Left” party. “Brahmin Left” is a term coined by economist Thomas Piketty and colleagues to characterize Western left parties increasingly bereft of working-class voters and increasingly dominated by highly educated voters and elites, including of course our own Democratic Party. The Brahmin Left character of the party has evolved over many decades but spiked in the 21^st century. The chart below illustrates this trend.

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The chart does not show the most recent elections but election surveys agree that education polarization spiked further upward in both 2020 and 2024. Indeed, in the most reliable 2024 election survey the differential between unmodeled college and non-college Democratic support (compare the blue line in the chart) reached 27 points—literally off the Piketty chart and more than twice its level in the 2016 Piketty data.

It has not escaped the notice of many Democratic-sympathizing analysts that this ever-increasing education polarization—Brahminization—of the Democrats presents existential dangers to the party. Not only might the continued desertion of working-class (non-college) voters fatally undermine the Democrats’ electoral formula over time, the party’s fundamental purpose is being rapidly obliterated. What does it even mean to be the “progressive” party if the most educated and affluent voters are your most enthusiastic supporters? What does it mean to be “progressive” if working-class voters think your party mostly represents the values and priorities of those educated and affluent voters not their values and priorities?

In theory one way of responding to this dynamic is to just to “own” the Brahminization by (1) seeking to make up working-class losses with ever-increasing shares of educated voters (challenging since the college-educated are a much smaller group); and (2) redefining progressivism so that it centers around the cultural commitments of educated professionals and whatever economic program such voters feel comfortable supporting.

Democrats still appear reluctant to embrace such a path, at least publicly. This makes sense since the electoral arithmetic of an all-in Brahmin Left strategy is very difficult, especially on a state-by-state basis, and Democrats still like to think of themselves as the party of the downtrodden rather than the political vehicle for America’s educated class. Therefore, many Democrats have started to argue, with varying degrees of intensity, that Democrats must reconnect with the working class and win back many of those voters.

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That’s logical and a worthy goal but not so easy to do. How do you de-Brahminize a Brahmin Left party that’s been evolving in the Brahmin direction for decades? Some Democrats seem to think it’s just a matter of playing the economic populist card as in: “Hey working class, over here, we love you and will fight for your interests against the billionaire class and their despicable Republican handmaidens!” Then the working class will realize the Democrats are their party and all will be well.

This is not remotely plausible. You cannot undo the damage of decades of Brahminization by simply asserting you are something so many working-class voters think you are not: the tribune of the working class. The challenge goes much deeper than that and involves a decisive break with the many Brahmin Left priorities that alienate the working class. Some analysts do get this; herewith a sampling.

David Leonhardt, New York Times magazine:

Immigration is a natural issue for the Brahmin left. The old left worried that a labor pool swollen by immigration would undermine unions and lower wages. The new progressives focused instead on the large benefits for the new arrivals. Immigration was a way to help the world’s poor, many of whom were not white….

Supporters of mass migration often claim that it is inevitable, stemming from some combination of demography, globalization and climate change. Yet like most arguments for historical inevitability, this one is more wishful than accurate. Countries can exert substantial control over their borders. Japan has long done so. Denmark has recently done so. Biden tightened policy in his last year in office, and border traffic plummeted. Trump has pushed it even lower. If anything, modern technology, such as employment-verification systems, can make enforcement easier than in the past. When immigration advocates say that controlling borders is impossible, they are adopting an anti-government nihilism inconsistent with larger goals of progressivism.

Trump’s cruel approach to immigration will create an opportunity for Democrats, much as it did during his first term. If they can fashion a moderate approach, and not only in the final months of an election campaign, they will improve their chances of winning back many of the voters they have lost. But doing so will require real change, not merely different marketing. Much of the Brahmin’s left post-election analysis remains tied to the magical idea that working-class voters are simply wrong about mass migration and can be won over with clever narratives rather than substantive policy changes.

Justin Vassallo, Unherd:

[P]rogressives have backed themselves into a corner, disconnected, even in deep-blue cities, from the very people they profess to serve. Thanks to their uncritical defense of all things branded “woke,” Democrats are now viewed by working-class voters of all races as litigious, censorious, and elitist. Indeed, the Democratic Party is seen as the very opposite of the one whose unifying thread, from Bryan’s heyday through the Seventies, was its respect for the dignity—and judgement—of the common man and woman.

It will take much more that clever rhetoric to change perceptions. Democratic allies sermonise about democracy, pluralism, and the rule of law at the same time that they repeat the self-defeating, self-righteous notion that all voters who have rejected the party’s Soviet-esque succession of leaders are rubes and bigots. Such attitudes are, in a way, akin to Trumpian defiance, but with none of the obvious political benefits.

Josh Barro, Very Serious Substack, referring to a talk by Pete Buttigieg:

Pete [while critical of many absurd DEI initiatives] pulled his punches, emphasizing the good “intentions” of the [identity politics-promoting] people who have led Democrats down this road toward being off-putting and unpopular.

These people don’t have good intentions—they have a worldview that is wrong and bad, and they need to be stopped. And while DEI-speak can and does make Democrats seem weird and out of touch, that’s not the main problem with it. The big problem with the approach Pete rightly complains about…is that it entails a strong set of mistaken moral commitments, which have led the party to take unpopular positions on crime, immigration, and education, among other issues. Many non-white voters perceive these positions, correctly, as hostile to their substantive interests.

What worldview am I complaining about? It’s a worldview that obsessively categorizes people by their demographic characteristics, ranks them on how “marginalized” (and therefore important) they are due to those characteristics, and favors or disfavors them accordingly. The holders of this worldview then compound their errors by looking to progressive pressure groups as a barometer of the preferences among the “marginalized” population groups they purport to represent…

[T]he problem here is not really the ten-dollar words…the problem can’t be fixed by dropping [words like] “BIPOC” from the vocabulary. To stop the bleeding, Democrats need to abandon the toxic issue positions they took because they have the sort of worldview that caused them to say “BIPOC” in the first place.

Democrats should say that race should not be a factor in college admissions. They should say the U.S. government should primarily focus on the needs of its citizens, and that a sad story about deprivation in a foreign country isn’t a sufficient reason that you should be admitted to the U.S. and put up in a New York hotel at taxpayer expense. They should say the pullback from policing has been a mistake. They should say they were wrong and they are sorry! After all, Democrats talk easily about how the party has gotten “out of touch,” but they don’t draw the obvious connection about what happens when you’re out of touch—you get things substantively wrong and alienate voters with your unpopular ideas. To fix that, you have to change more than how you talk—you have to change what you stand for, and stand up to those in the party who oppose that change.

Jeff Maurer, I Might Be Wrong Substack:

The Democratic Party is increasingly the party of educated, upper middle-class people. This is a problem, partly because only 38 percent of American adults hold a four year degree, and partly because educated, upper middle-class people are the most annoying twats to ever curse humanity with their presence (and I know this because I’m one of them)…The MAGA movement is a reactionary movement against self-righteous progressive jerk offs, and believe me when I say: When I look at that photo of Democrats holding those stupid paper-plate-and-popsicle-stick paddles, I completely get where MAGA heads are coming from…

Protest culture basically only exists in progressive circles. There’s a type of person who romanticizes protest, and that person is almost always left-wing. Progressives think that when they protest, they’re signaling their opposition to something—and I wouldn’t say that’s not happening—but I think what’s mostly happening is that they’re signaling membership in a cultural group. The more virtue signal-y the protest, the more the cultural weirdness drowns out the message….

When progressives virtue signal, they aren’t just pinning a scarlet “W” for “weird” on their chests; they’re also showing that they don’t share most people’s priorities. And that’s true because feckless, performative protests are a thing that progressives do for each other. Nobody else cares; in fact, most people would like to see the protester fall into a vat of battery acid. And the protest doesn’t do anything…except that it might elicit hands-clapping emojis and “YAS QUEEN”s on Bluesky. When Democrats stage performative protests, they’re making a values statement, and that statement is: “I value plaudits from my progressive peers, not whatever you care about.

And finally, Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal (Yes, I know Noonan is a Republican but she’s a very smart Republican):

Sometimes a party takes a concussive blow, such as the 2024 presidential loss, and you can see: They’ll shape up and come back, they’re pros, they lost an election but not their dignity. But now and then you see: No, these guys don’t know what happened, they are going to lose over and over before they get the message.

What I saw Tuesday night [at Trump’s Congressional address] is that the Democratic Party in 2025, as evinced by its leaders on Capitol Hill, is too proud and stupid to change…

[Here is some] advice for the Democrats.

I will start with something they won’t believe. In politics, there is bringing the love and bringing the hate. When the 13-year-old boy who had brain cancer and has always wanted to be a cop is appointed as an honorary Secret Service agent, laminated ID and all, and the child, surprised by the gesture, hugs the normally taciturn head of the Secret Service, the only thing to do, because you are human, is cheer that child. And when the president honors a young man whose late father, a veteran and policeman, had inspired his wish to serve, and dreams of attending West Point, and the president says that he has some sway in the admissions office and young man you are going to West Point—I not only got choked up when it happened I’m choked up as I write. The boy with cancer high-fives the young man, and the only response to such sweetness is tears in your eyes.

That moment is “the love.” It was showing love for regular Americans. To cheer them is to cheer us. It shows admiration for and affiliation with normal people who try, get through, endure and hold on to good hopes.

The Democrats brought the hate. They sat stone-faced, joyless and loveless. They don’t show love for Americans anymore. They look down on them, feel distance from them, instruct them, remind them to feel bad that they’re surrounded by injustice because, well, they’re unjust….

Mr. Trump says: No, man, I love you.

Which is better? Which is kinder, more generous? Which inspires? Which wins?

Democrats have to understand where they are. They have completely lost their reputation as the party of the workingman. With their bad governance of the major cities and their airy, abstract obsessions with identity politics and gender ideology, they have driven away the working class, for whom life isn’t airy or abstract. Democrats must stop listening to the left of the left of their party. It tugs them too far away from the vast majority of Americans. They have been radical on the border, on crime, on boys in the girls’ locker room. They should take those issues off the table by admitting they got them wrong.

I agree with pretty much every word in these interventions. And I think they make clear just how profound the Democrats’ current challenge is. It really is about comprehensively de-Brahminizing a profoundly Brahmin Left party, not just sanding off a few rough spots in Democratic positions/rhetoric or populist posturing or (that old standby) better messaging. Nor is about just waiting around for Trump to screw up—which is already happening and will continue to happen. Of course Democrats should take advantage of these opportunities but such openings will never suffice for convincing working-class voters that the Democrats have truly become a different kind of party—their party—and not the Brahmin Left party they have been watching evolve for decades.

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Much stronger medicine is needed for that. Just as Trump shook up the Republican Party and decisively changed its image and political base, Democrats need a political entrepreneur who will shake up the Democratic Party and decisively change its Brahmin Left trajectory. That entrepreneur will have to be unafraid of the professional class blowback (accusations that you are racist, sexist, transphobic, a bigot, MAGA-lite, etc.) that will inevitably arise and aggressively push back against that class and its priorities.

In short, Democrats need a class traitor—a politician who’s not afraid to ask Democrats who the social justice they prize so highly is really for. Is it really for the poor and working class who have the short end of the stick in our society or is it to make Democrats feel righteous and onside with Team Progressive? Are Democrats’ social justice commitments and priorities what the poor and working class actually want? Does the language Democrats speak on these issues even make sense to them?

Such a politician might actually be able to remake the party and face down the Brahmin Left dead-enders. But is such a politician or politicians out there in the Democratic ranks? I’ve got my doubts. Not only have breaks with party orthodoxy been extremely modest so far, they have been regularly and mercilessly attacked within the party. Even those like Josh Shapiro who seem to have the right instincts about a lot of issues are reluctant to publicly break with the orthodoxy and criticize the party’s mistakes.

So am I confident the Democratic Party can de-Brahminize? I am not. But I am confident that the party will fall short of both its electoral and policy goals if it can’t.