David Brooks

It basically is not a predictor of voting patterns anymore.

It's education levels.

And Democrats are winning over the highly educated former Republican suburbs, and Republicans are winning over the less educated working class in rural areas.

And I guess I use that word working class a little loosely.

I really mean education levels.

And it's simply that's the divide, not only in this country, but across Western Europe.

And why is it the divide?

Because the information engaged economy rewards education with money.

And a lot of people look around their societies, whether it's here in Hungary or in England

in France, and they see the 20% most educated people living in extremely affluent lifestyles, sending their kids to the same schools, replicating a caste system based upon education and inherited privilege.

And by the way, ruling working class and conservative voices out of the media and out of college campuses.

And if you tell people that one top 20% is going to rig the game generation after generation, they're going to flip the table.

And that's why populism is not only an American thing.

This phenomenon is happening everywhere in the Western world as we screw up the need to respond to the nature of the information age economy.

And so to me, that's the central challenge is to separate those people from MAGA.

And I think that is most doable is if we try to put Trump in the rearview mirror.

He would talk about the circulation of elites, that you can circulate elites pretty quickly.

And all the people who were the elites in the Republican party under George W. Bush, they thought they were going to be in every Republican administration going forward.

But that didn't happen because Trump and Heritage Foundation and all those people brought in a new elite.

CPAC, when I was a young conservative, was considered the fringe of the fringe.