A better way for Democrats on student loan relief

American high schoolers show much less interest in going to college than students did a decade ago. New research showing that higher education no longer increases the wealth of many who attend helps explain why. This trend has important lessons for Democrats advocating college debt relief. 

Democrats should listen to Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who was elected in 2022 in a district that has favored Republicans for the last decade. She clearly has her finger on the pulse of red state, non-college-educated voters. Gluesenkamp Perez was one of the few Democrats who opposed President Biden’s college debt relief plan, saying said she could only do so if it was accompanied by a similar program for people attending vocational programs: “It’s about respect.”

In response, some progressive activists targeted on Yelp the auto-body shop she owns with her husband, posting eviscerating reviews and personal attacks (since taken down). At one level, this only shows that some people are jerks. But the deeper question is why Democrats don’t recognize the core issue Perez raises: the need for college-educated Americans to treat non-college grads with respect. A new study finds that non-college grads are 73 percentage points less likely than grads are to feel they’re treated with dignity. Non-college Americans are feeling distinctly dissed, and far-right populism weaponizes this rage against elites. Donald Trump is the maestro of rage. 

What’s the countermove? It’s a challenge that Democrats need to face head on, given that they have increasingly become the party of the college-educated, while Americans without college degrees veer sharply right. This “diploma divide” is strongest among whites but not limited to them: 41% of Latino non-college-grads voted for Trump in 2020. This is stunning, given the anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican rhetoric often indulged in by the likes of Trump and Stephen Miller.

The countermove is for Democrats to peel off a modest percentage of a group of Trump voters called “anti-elites,” who hold progressive economic views and moderate views on race, the environment, abortion rights and gay marriage. Doing so requires two steps.

The first step is to recognize that there are two distinct elites in this country: the “Merchant Right” and the “Brahmin Left” (to borrow leftist economist Thomas Piketty’s terms). The far right taps into rage against the “woke” left. We Democrats need to connect with the rage of “anti-elites” against the Merchant Right. After all, it’s not purple-haired queer folx who pocketed virtually all the gains from increased economic productivity in recent decades. Workers’ wages would be twicewhat they are today if they had continued to garner the share of the rewards of productivity they enjoyed after World War II. The result is the dimming of the American Dream: Only half of those born in the 1980s will out-earn their parents, whereas over 90 percent did so in the decades after WWII. 

Bidenomics is trying to reverse this, but not gaining much political traction. Remember the 99 percent and the 1 percent? For the 2024 campaign, we need to revive that kind of rhetoric, or come up with new ways to highlight the role of the Merchant Right in replacing good family-sustaining middle-class jobs with precarious, poorly paid gig work.

The second step is equally important. The far right offers not only rage; it offers respect. Media scholar Reece Peck details how Fox News claims to be standing up for the dignity of “real Americans” against the insults of the woke elite. Novelist Barbara Kingsolver, now on book tour for her new novel about West Virginia, speaks eloquently about coastal elites’ condescension towards rural people. But most telling is Arlie Hochschild’s example of a Louisiana woman who lovedRush Limbaugh because of her “basic feeling that Limbaugh was defending her against insults she felt liberals were lobbing at her: ‘Oh, liberals think that Bible-loving Southerners are ignorant, backward, rednecks, losers. They think we are racist, sexist, homophobic and maybe fat.’” 

This is how the left helps the right. Indeed, we are caught in a vicious cycle. Election- and climate-denial have become so extreme that it’s easy for liberals to lob insults that just serve to reinforce the power of the far right. 

We as Democrats can connect with anti-elites not only by embracing their progressive economic views but also by expressing respect for their way of life. Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez shows how to do so by reformulating the progressive position on college debt relief. Link it with debt relief for vocational programs that lead to the kinds of blue-collar jobs that still offer a stable middle-class standard of living. Then go a step further by extending eligibility for Pell Grants to include vocational programs. 

Top off those policies by pointing out that Trump has a personal long history of stiffing blue-collar tradesmen, driving some of the out of business. In sharp contrast, Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act created a million of those jobs and Democrats support grants and debt relief both for Americans who build AI and for those who build bridges.

So who really respects Americans without college degrees? 

Joan C. Williams is a professor at University of California Law SF, the author of “White Working Class” and the founder of Bridging the Diploma Divide in American Politics. Former Rep. Jackie Speier represented California’s 14th congressional district from 2008-2023.