Excerpt:

The biggest divide in American politics at present is not along the lines of socioeconomic status (SES), nor educational attainment, nor area type (urban, suburban, small town, rural), nor sex and gender—although these factors all serve as important proxies for the distinction that matters most. The key schism that lies at the heart of dysfunction within the Democratic Party and the U.S. political system more broadly is between professionals associated with “knowledge economy” industries and those who feel themselves to be the “losers” in the knowledge economy—including growing numbers of working-class and non-white voters.

Two decades ago, sociologists Jeff Manza and Clem Brooks observed that “professionals have moved from being the most Republican class in the 1950s, to the second most Democratic class by the late 1980s and the most Democratic class in 1996.” This consolidation has only grown even more pronounced in the intervening years. As professionals have increasingly clustered in the Democratic Party, moreover, they’ve grown increasingly progressive, particularly on “cultural” issues surrounding sexuality, race, gender, environmentalism—and especially when compared with blue-collar workers.

Federal Election Commission campaign contribution data provides stark insights into just how strongly knowledge economy professionals have aligned themselves with the Democratic Party in recent cycles. In 2016, roughly nine out of ten political donations from those who work as activists or in the arts, academia, and journalism were given to Democrats. Similarly, Democrats received around 80 percent of donations from workers involved in research, entertainment, non-profits, and science. They also received more than two-thirds of donations from those in information technology, law, engineering, public relations, or civil service jobs. Among industries that skewed Democratic, the party’s highest total contributions came from lawyers and law firms, environmental political action committees, non-profits, the education sector, the entertainment sector, consulting, and publishing.

Similar patterns held in 2020: the occupations and employers with the largest number of workers who donated to the Biden-Harris campaign included teachers, educators and professors, lawyers, medical and psychiatric professionals, people who work in advertising, communications and entertainment, consultants, human resources professionals and administrators, architects and designers, IT specialists and engineers. Industries that provided the highest total contributions to the Democrats included securities and investment, education, lawyers and law firms, health professionals, non-profits, electronics companies, business services, entertainment, and civil service. Geographically speaking, Democratic votes in 2020 were tightly clustered in major cities and college towns where knowledge economy professionals live and work—and outside those zones, it was largely a sea of red.

The alignment of knowledge economy professionals with the Democratic Party has also shifted the socioeconomic composition of the Democratic base. To give some perspective of how much has changed: in 1993 the richest 20 percent of congressional districts were represented by Republicans over Democrats at a ratio of less than two to one. Today, they tilt Democratic by nearly five to one. The socioeconomic profiles of Democratic primary voters have shifted significantly as well. Counties with higher concentrations of working-class Americans are today a much smaller portion of the Democratic primary electorate than they were in 2008, while counties with large concentrations of affluent households comprise an ever-growing share. This has important consequences for the types of candidates that succeed in primary elections, the language those candidates use, the issues they center, what the party platform ends up looking like and, ultimately, who is drawn to the party and its candidates in national elections (and who is alienated from it).

The increasing dominance of knowledge economy professionals over the Democratic Party has had a range of profound impacts on the contemporary U.S. political landscape. First and foremost, it has contributed to a growing disconnect between the economic priorities of the party relative to most others in the U.S., especially working-class Americans. As sociologist Shamus Khan has shown, the economics of elites tend to operate “counter-cyclically” to the rest of society, meaning that developments that tend to be good for elites are often bad for everyone else and vice versa.

For instance, professionals tend to be far more supportive of immigration, globalization, automation, and artificial intelligence than most Americans because they make professionals’ lives more convenient and significantly lower the costs of the premium goods and services they are inclined towards. Those in knowledge professions primarily see upsides with respect to these issues because their lifestyles and livelihoods are much less at risk—indeed, they instead capture a disproportionate share of any resultant GDP increases—and their culture and values are largely affirmed rather than threatened by these phenomena. Others may and often do experience these developments quite differently.

Likewise, most Americans skew “operationally” left, favoring robust social safety nets, government benefits, and infrastructure investment via progressive taxation, but trend more conservative on cultural and symbolic issues. For instance, they tend to support patriotism, religiosity, national security, and public order. Although they are sympathetic to many left-aligned policies, they tend to prefer policies and messages that are universal and appeal to superordinate identities over ones oriented around specific identity groups (e.g., LGBTQ people, women, Hispanics, and so on). They tend to be alienated by political correctness and prefer candidates and messages that are direct, concise, and plainspoken. Knowledge economy professionals tend to have preferences on these fronts that are diametrically opposed to those of most other Americans, especially working-class voters.

With respect to values, knowledge professionals skew culturally and symbolically “left” but favor free markets. As statistician Andrew Gelman showed, elites in the Republican Party tend to be significantly more liberal culturally and symbolically than the rest of the GOP yet more dogmatic about free markets. Meanwhile, Democratic-aligned elites tend to be significantly more “left” on cultural and symbolic issues than most Democrats but tend to be much warmer on markets. The primary difference between Democratic and Republican elites seems to lie in how they rank free markets relative to cultural liberalism: those who prioritize the former have tended to align with the Republicans, while those who prioritize the latter have consistently aligned with the Democrats. To the extent that highly-educated people support left-aligned economic policies, they tend to prioritize redistribution in the form of taxes and transfers whereas most other voters prefer predistribution—higher pay, better benefits, and more robust job protections so less needs to be reallocated in the first place (typically at the expense of some market freedom).

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