Since the 2024 election, Democrats have struggled to figure out why their agenda seems to have lost its hold on so many working-class American families. This kind of political introspection has a deep intellectual history, even at the high point for American liberalism. Back at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, a cohort of talented scholars asked why Democrats were unable do more to deal with economic insecurity and inequality. Writers such as the political theorist Louis Hartz