In September, President Joe Biden joined striking autoworkers on a picket line in Michigan. He urged them to “stick with it, because you deserve the significant raise you need and other benefits.” What the president chose to overlook was that the United Auto Workers strike he was cheering on was aimed at companies that already had cripplingly high labor costs. Average wages and benefits at GM, Ford, and Stellantis are $68 an hour, 51 percent higher than at nonunion Tesla, and it is not clear that the Detroit companies can hold their own against lower-cost, technologically adroit rivals. Indeed, Detroit’s only hope in the years to come might be further increases in subsidies from the federal government.

And what would be the best way for the CEOs to keep federal subsidies flowing? As Biden put it in his remarks, “We saved them; it’s about time for them to step up for us.” Though the president has never been a model of clarity on the stump, his message here seems admirably straightforward. Because he and his political allies have championed bailout after bailout to keep Detroit’s broken business models afloat, the CEOs now need to come through for his voters.

If Joe Biden wins reelection in 2024, this is likely how he’ll pull it off. Faced with a growing GOP advantage among working-class voters, Biden managed to win Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in 2020 by promising a surge of government spending that would lift blue-collar fortunes. Granted, that promise hasn’t aged well. Biden’s surge in government spending sparked a surge in inflation that has battered working-class living standards.

But economic populism remains a potent political force, and it might be the best bet for a Democratic Party that has badly alienated its working-class base by indulging a toxic brand of cultural extremism. That is the core argument of Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes, a new book by John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira. They make the case that to build a lasting majority, Democrats should jettison unpopular social policies and focus on an ambitious economic agenda that will uplift working people. President Roosevelt’s New Deal was a massive political success, providing a model that will work again.

Democrats would be wise to consider this book carefully, given the authors’ credibility as political analysts. The last book they wrote together, The Emerging Democratic Majority (2002), made many points that have since become conventional wisdom. Writing at a time when Republicans were dominant in Washington, D.C., Judis and Teixeira noted that the Democratic Party had some significant demographic advantages. Beyond their strength among growing minority groups, Democrats were also making significant inroads among well-educated professionals. This would soon result in an electoral juggernaut that Republicans could not overcome.

In 2008, when President Obama was elected and Democrats enjoyed massive majorities in the House and Senate, their book seemed almost prophetic. A new era of overwhelming Democratic dominance seemed to have arrived. This period of progressive triumphalism was short-lived, however. Just two years later, the “Tea Party” wave returned the House of Representatives to the GOP. Since then, control of Congress has shifted back and forth with some regularity. No stable, long-term Democratic majority has yet emerged. Now, the authors seek to explain what went wrong for the party.

Judis and Teixeira possess a rare trait among political prognosticators: humility. When their predictions failed to materialize, they re-evaluated and updated their arguments. Other progressives still hold fast to the belief that demographics will do the work for them, and that eventually the coalition of ascendant groups — minorities, unmarried women, and the highly educated — will push aside the old white reactionaries who keep the Republican Party competitive. Where Have All the Democrats Gone? challenges this narrative. It is true that Democrats have continued to do well among the groups identified in The Emerging Democratic Majority. But the Democrats have also been hemorrhaging voters from the working class, which they did not anticipate, and these voters are keeping the GOP afloat. The Democrats’ losses have been especially significant among whites without a college degree, but there are warning signs that many Hispanic and Asian-American voters are also reconsidering their partisan allegiances.

The authors tell a familiar story: The rise of neoliberalism, driven by the economic elite, severed the connection between the Democratic elite and its working-class base. Cultural fixations of the educated elite further alienated these voters.

Judis and Teixeira are especially frustrated by the labor movement’s decline over the last several generations. They argue that organized labor once kept the Democrats focused on progressive economic reforms, providing a counterbalance to the influence of big business in the party and serving as a bulwark against the radical cultural Left. Without that ballast, corporate interests can stymie major economic reforms and the far Left is able to dictate social policies. These two trends provide the Republican Party an opening among working-class voters.

The authors are sympathetic to the cause of racial justice, but they conclude that growing radicalism from groups such as Black Lives Matter set the stage for a predictable conservative backlash. They similarly worry that the trans movement, especially the push for gender-affirming care for minors, will drive people away from the Democratic Party. And they condemn the open-borders wing of the party, as well as climate extremists who promise to wreck the economy in pursuit of unrealistic emissions targets. They argue that Democrats should downplay these divisive issues and focus on those policies that are widely popular in the electorate. They are not the first progressives to make this argument. Political consultant David Shor made a similar case when promoting “popularism” as a Democratic strategy. Although its argument has been made before, and Democrats ought to seriously consider its thesis, Where Have All the Democrats Gone? will not be popular among progressive activists. Judis and Teixeira deserve credit for taking a brave stance.

Although they have many important insights, their argument is not unassailable. It is unsurprising that, as old-fashioned Democrats, they would lament the decline of organized labor. But their belief that stronger unions would solve the party’s problems is misguided. While the authors are confident that a rejuvenated labor movement would help rebalance the party, moving it away from unpopular cultural crusades, the truth is that organized labor has itself played a central role in the party’s leftward shift on economic and cultural issues. Consider the growing clout of public-sector unions, which Judis and Teixeira mention only in passing. In addition to distorting spending priorities and imposing rigid work rules, public-sector unions have helped vault ideologically extreme Democrats into high office, including House members Ilhan Omar and Jamaal Bowman and Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson. As for the major private-sector unions, is there any item on the left-wing cultural agenda that they oppose? The labor movement seems just as “woke” as every other element of the Left’s coalition. The major unions also abandoned immigration restriction decades ago, and they are not going to change that position now. A stronger labor movement might move the Democratic Party more toward economic protectionism, but I doubt it would change anything else.

Moreover, Judis and Teixeira take it for granted that a progressive economic agenda would work as intended, that upper-class and corporate tax hikes, new business regulations, and massive new spending would usher in an era of widespread prosperity and greater equality. The book is not an economic treatise, so the authors don’t elaborate on exactly how these policies will translate into robust productivity growth. But the rest of us do not need to passively accept this line of argument. The growing role of business interests within the Democratic Party may indeed block some populist and egalitarian economic policies, but that may well be a good thing. Without countervailing pressure from business leaders, the Democratic Party might pursue radical policies that would undermine long-run prosperity.

Judis and Teixeira are laser-focused on the working class, viewing it as the key to future elections. They accurately note that the Republican Party’s populist rhetoric has made it well liked among demographic groups that were once the Democratic Party’s base. But Republican populism has also come at a cost: Republican identification among the college-educated has tanked.

Trump made up for his weak support among highly educated voters by gaining support from other groups, especially whites without a college degree. When it comes to election outcomes, one group’s votes are as good as another’s. Human capital matters, however. The Democrats currently have a deeper pool to draw from as they look for competent and skilled activists, media allies, scholars, congressional staffers, and political strategists. It makes sense for the Democrats to keep this element of their coalition on board and enthusiastic, which may require embracing progressive cultural pieties.

Judis and Teixeira insist that radical social liberalism is a net negative, electorally. If we restrict our analysis to working-class voters, this is likely true. There are other voters and activists to consider, though. The authors’ critique of progressive identitarianism is compelling, but they fail to reckon with why it has become so entrenched in elite Democratic circles: its attractiveness to educated, affluent, secular people who hold massively disproportionate influence over American public life. Without progressive identitarianism, where does the moral appeal of the American Left come from? The Democratic Party’s activist base is motivated in no small part by a sense of moral superiority over the “deplorables” who reject progressive identitarianism, and moral superiority is a hell of a drug.

Judis and Teixeira suggest that populism, in some form or another, represents the path to electoral victory and that neither party is getting populism right. While Trump campaigned on populist themes, they maintain that powerful interests in the GOP blocked efforts to pursue a real populist agenda. Instead, congressional Republicans pursued traditional conservative policies such as tax cuts. Judis and Teixeira see many positive things coming out of the Biden White House, especially on economic issues. The cultural far Left, however, is driving voters away, and corporate influence makes Democrats hesitant to pursue a sufficiently ambitious economic agenda.

It is telling that the authors do not consider the possibility that a traditional conservative message could build a winning electoral coalition. Judis and Teixeira suggest that industrial policy and wealth redistribution represent the key to working- and middle-class votes. The mainstream Right still contends there’s another path forward: the Right as the party of safe streets, parental rights, wealth creation, color-blind meritocracy, and competent, cost-effective government. Conservatives should hope Judis and Teixeira underestimate the Right’s potential to build a cross-class, multiethnic coalition.