To win on social issues, the Left has to develop the cultural competence to connect progressive goals with working-class priorities. The gay marriage fight offers a formula for appealing to ordinary Americans’ values without giving up on social progress.
This article is a very abbreviated version of the book that she recently published, “Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back”. If you want to win, you have to address the core issues that the Dems have left behind. Republicans say the right things re: jobs, but they have no follow through, and they aren’t doing anything to help reduce the anger against oligarchs. (And the right thing to do to reduce the anger would be eliminate the oligarchs.)
The problem at the very core is that Dems do not want to address these issues. They have the same donors as Republicans. This is why they only focus on the culture war and fully ignore class.
Is it only about the US?