UNWINDING WOKE: America’s Classless Act.

America’s lower class is not revolutionary but aspirational, which is why Trump—who uses his fantastic wealth to express notably plebeian tastes for things like Big Macs and gold plating—can seem to millions of more modestly situated voters like “one of them.” In the terms of the American class system, he is—since our class markers have less to do with money and more to do with cultural sensibility.

Vanity Fair contributing editor Fran Liebowitz was being snide when she said that Trump is “a poor person’s idea of a rich person,” but she was also hitting on a foundational element of his appeal. In American terms, Trump is fundamentally aligned with the working poor because he doesn’t look down on them and because, though he has more money than them, he uses it (and regards them) in ways they find appealing. He may have grown up extremely wealthy and moved to Manhattan—but he’s still Donald from Queens. In European terms, Americans voted for Trump in record numbers in 2024 because we have no class.

Unless and until the American Left relearns that lesson, they will remain in the political wilderness. Mr. Trump’s victory represents our desire for a president who sees his job as serving the broad middle class, against the woke on one side and the aristocratic technocracy on the other. Enacting this attitude as a matter of public policy, however, will be much more of a challenge than one might think.

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