When I bewailed Donald Trump’s forthcoming victory to a Spanish friend several weeks ago, he replied phlegmatically: “No te preocupes; el sangre no ha llegado al rio” — “the blood hasn’t yet reached the river.” In other words, countries have been here before, and people live and love even after far right victories. We will survive Trump’s second term and vote out the far right, just as Poland voted out the far right Law and Justice Party in 2023. But it’s going to take work — a different kind of work than is commonly assumed. Many of my friends woke up Wednesday saying they didn’t recognize the country that elected Trump again. They’re right: working-class Trump voters live in a parallel universe — one the left needs to understand. This will require something different than debunking false claims with facts and explaining the threat Trump presents to democracy. These persuaded Democratic voters, 80% of whom rated the defense of democracy as their top issue. They did not persuade Trump voters. Democrats need to understand why. What Trump understands is that the key to American politics isn’t politics; it’s culture. What drove this election was Trump’s working-class support. Kamala Harris won only 32% of whites without college degrees. That put her in a deep hole because noncollege whites were 42% of the electorate as of 2020. Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Ed Fry Arena, Monday, Sept. 23, 2024, in Indiana, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) For decades, the Democrats’ solution was to win overwhelmingly among voters of color. That’s now gone with the wind. A majority of Latino men — 55% — supported Trump. Harris lost only a little among Blacks overall, but in the key swing state of Wisconsin, only 77% voted for her — 15 points lower than voted for Joe Biden in 2020. This year Democrats gained six points among those with bachelor’s degrees…but Trump gained 17 points among voters with no college as compared to 2020. Democrats can no longer hope that understanding race erases the need to understand class. A study of three European countries found that the voters flocking to populists are middle-status workers in routine jobs warily watching the hollowing out of the middle class. This year, Trump gained nearly 18 points among voters earning $30,000 to $100,000 compared to 2020, the sharpest gain among any income group. Why? Virtually all Americans (90%) did better than their parents in the decades after World War II, but only half of those born in 1980 will, with particularly sharp declines in the South and industrial Midwest. As recently as the 1990s, wealth was evenly split between college grads and noncollege grads. Today, college grads own three-fourths of it. No wonder people are pissed. For 80% of Trump voters, the economy was the top issue. Trump channels the rage of voters in routine jobs who feel left behind. How can they support Trump, who agreed when Elon Musk said that striking workers should be fired? The backstory is that Democrats really, truly fumbled. First, they were blasé about inflation-post COVID, influenced by liberal economists like Paul Krugman who first downplayed the risk, then focused on the rate of inflation rather than the cost of a bag of groceries. Inflation is the ultimate kitchen table issue: in 2022, inflation was causing serious problems for up to 42% of Americans without college degrees but only about a quarter of college grads. Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris waves as she walks off the stage during a rally at Muhlenberg College Memorial Hall on November 4, 2024 in Allentown, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) Democrats’ other key mistake was their focus on redistribution during the pandemic, providing stimulus checks and unemployment insurance. This differed from the approach across Europe, which focused on keeping people on the payroll. As a result, Americans lost significantly more jobs during COVID than Europeans: the U.S. had the third largest gap in job loss between workers with and without a college degree in advanced industrialized countries. Middle-status voters want jobs that lead to a stable, middle-class standard of living, not universal basic income or other forms of redistribution. A 2023 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper estimated that nearly half of Democrats’ loss of less educated voters over the past several decades can be directly attributed to Democrats’ focus on redistribution instead of good jobs. These economic issues hurt Harris when she was asked on “The View” what the Biden administration should have done differently — and she said she couldn’t think of anything. Meanwhile, Biden referred to Trump voters as “garbage.” Trump’s superpower is his ability to spark liberal insults to working-class voters. “Disdain for the less educated is the last acceptable prejudice,” to quote philosopher Michael Sandel. A 2018 study found more bias, and dislike, among U.S. college grads against people who hadn’t graduated from college than towards any other stigmatized group. The far right connects with the working class through rage; the left needs to connect through respect. But to do that, we need to actually respect them. Like Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” comment, Biden’s comment was powerful because noncollege voters know that’s how many elite people see them. Liberals’ lack of the cultural competence to connect with noncollege voters goes beyond economic issues. Trump’s Bad-But-Bold protest masculinity is attractive to noncollege men. And women: endorsement of hegemonic masculinity (aka macho) predicted Trump voting in 2016 in both men and women — and it predicted Trump support even more than racism. “Men should be men; women should be women” sexism (aka hostile sexism) strongly predicts Trump voting in the Latino community. “A lot of women think that’s the way guys should be,” noted a masculinity scholar. “They’re not begrudgingly voting for Trump but saying ‘He’s a real man.’ ” Bad-But-Bold style has cross-racial appeal in an era when many working-class men (unlike elite men) have lost the ability to be providers. Studies show that when men’s masculinity is threatened, they tend to go hydraulic: employed wives of unemployed husbands face greater risks of domestic abuse, as do employed wives who earn more than their husbands. Social psychologist Robb Willer and his colleagues brought men into the lab, and told half of them they were masculine but the other half that they scored just inside the feminine range. The men whose masculine identities were threatened reported significantly greater support for the Iraq War, had more negative views of homosexuality, and were more likely to prefer an SUV and to spend more money ($7,320 on average, to be exact). Voting for Trump is a way of staking claim to masculinity — a social ideal working-class men can realize (unlike class ideals). I’m a feminist — but I’m also a realist. Ceding masculinity to the far right is not helping women one little bit. No need to parrot the far right; the left needs to invent different ways of connecting with working-class men (and the women who love them). When Trump won in 2016, many denied the class dynamic, pointing out that many poor people didn’t vote for him and many rich people did. Note well: it’s precarity not poverty that predicts votes for the far right. And rich Republicans will always vote Republican. What’s outrageous is that so many middle-status workers saw no alternative but pin their hopes for dignity and stability on a corrupt billionaire. I’m not proposing just a change in messaging but something much deeper: a changed relationship between noncollege voters and liberal college grads. The left needs to develop the cultural competence to contest far right power by inventing new ways of connecting with noncollege voters. I’m well aware this won’t be easy. But we need to wise up before the blood reaches the river. Williams is a Sullivan professor and director of the Equality Action Center at UC Law San Francisco and the author of the 2017 book “White Working Class.” Her next book, “Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back,” will be released in May 2025.