As Democrats try to understand their eroding support among working-class voters, we're joined by Sarah Smarsh, author of "Bone of the Bone: Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class.” Together, we delve into the intersection of class and identity, discuss why the Democrats' appeals to working people have fallen short, and consider how progressive politics might rebuild its relationship with working-class communities. Follow The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart on social media for more: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@weeklyshowpodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weeklyshowpodcast TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@weeklyshowpodcast X: https://x.com/weeklyshowpod Host/Executive Producer – Jon Stewart Executive Producer – James Dixon Executive Producer – Chris McShane Executive Producer – Caity Gray Lead Producer – Lauren Walker Producer – Brittany Mehmedovic Video Editor & Engineer – Sam Reid Audio Editor & Engineer – Nicole Boyce Researcher & Associate Producer – Gillian Spear Music by Hansdle Hsu — This podcast is brought to you by: ZipRecruiter Try it for free at this exclusive web address: ziprecruiter.com/ZipWeekly Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why did Democrats lose the working class?
Hello, everybody. Welcome once again to another episode of The Weekly Show. My name is Jon Stewart, and we are... How many days in are we to the new era of America? Do I have to say it now, always with a question mark? We are now... Oh, God. It's only been a fucking week. That cannot be possible. You know, and I...
I hesitate to say it because it's been a week where like the faint taste of like a shit taco has been in my mouth for like a week. And I don't think that that's, by the way, it probably should taste like that. You should feel this discomfort. I just wish the discomfort wasn't always present. I feel like I have tried this week very much to just go about my normal routine.
Nick's box score obsessing or those types of things. But there is this faint discomfort that is always in the background of my mind of like this moment slipping away from us and the country. I'm hoping that that dull home slightly goes away because I find it
very distracting that i'm constantly checking twitter to be like oh my god he nominated brian kilmeade to run commerce like what are we doing here people but but i don't want to also lose the discomfort because the discomfort is it is it is an incentive it is incentive to think about how to reverse, how to change this, how to improve upon outcomes that I would prefer.
If it didn't taste like a shit, it should taste bad. It shouldn't be something that leaves our, our collective souls immediately that we wear so lightly, like a, perhaps a windbreaker. I didn't really know where I was going with the metaphor. So I'm going to go with a light jacket because it's fall and because I lack imagination.
And so I'm unable to come up with metaphors other than literally what I was wearing this morning. That's how sad I am. I'm an old man who no longer has the imagination to get the taste of a shit taco out of his mouth. Folks, action is the antidote to anxiety. And action is creating forward momentum, whether it be through discussion or action, about what it is you would rather see in this country.
And to that end, I think we have a great guest for that today. I'm so excited to speak with her. I'm going to get to that now. So we're going to bring out our guest. Her name is Sarah Smarsh. She's a journalist. She's the author of Bone of the Bone, Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class. And I would imagine, Sarah, first of all, thank you so much for joining us.
I would imagine in this election in particular, as Democrats struggle to understand the alien creature that is the white working class voter that you are seen as the Rosetta Stone. Do you find right now that people are looking to you for answers in this confusing world of the rural voter?
First, thanks for having me, John. And yes, I do find I'm getting a lot of calls right now. That's been true to some extent for some time through the current political era. But this really feels like a moment when maybe my message about class and the way that we need to center it and discuss it as an identity unto itself is really critical right now. So yeah, I'm happy to be here to talk about it.
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Chapter 2: What role does class identity play in politics?
Right. Yeah. So, yeah, people are hurting. And if you're looking at in the face and saying, actually, you're not in whether that's a move to kind of defend your own administration that, of course, the Democratic candidate was part of. And that's a very difficult to thread that needle, you know, the task she was handed to kind of
propose how it will change, but also still be riding with the last administration.
You were about to say riding with Biden. I think you were about to go for a rhyme there, Sarah.
But most people are hurting. And here's the thing, because I know that a lot of liberals and Democrats and progressives alike might be saying, but you're saying all that. And the Democrats have the better policies. They address all of those needs better, even if imperfectly in the end. Ain't the Republicans worse? And while I happen to agree with that, here's the trick.
The Republicans, meanwhile, are the ones validating the pain. Right. And politics is an emotional business before it's a rational one. And that's why they win.
That is incredibly interesting to me. Because I'll agree with you. I have sort of a disconnect. And actually not even necessarily, oh, the Democrats are better. Because I do think Democrats have bought into, I guess, what they would call neoliberalism to a large extent. And as you were talking, I was thinking,
This is a much larger conversation about, since Reagan probably, we've kind of moved into this investment economy, that investment and capital, money, means more than work. Labor is devalued and investment is king. And administrations, Republican and Democratic, you know, you mentioned Bernie Sanders. I think he was one of the few that kind of bucked that trend.
But it does feel as though since Reagan, we have devalued labor. And Both parties, policy or otherwise, seem to agree that this idea of capital and investment being having primacy is a winning one economically. Would that ring true to you?
It does. And, you know. just to go back to neoliberalism and the way that it crosses those party lines. NAFTA, I think, kind of originated with the first Bush administration, but was, of course, signed into law and celebrated as a major victory for the Clinton administration. And the person who held that pin, by the way, I think there's been a bitter taste in a lot of workers' mouths recently.
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Chapter 3: How has the perception of labor changed over time?
I think this might go back to culture actually and the way that that relates to class as an identity. So here's the thing. Even if you got in on that gravy, that gravy itself is unto a class and a mode of thinking and a relationship to economy that actually threatens your way of life and your place in your community and your skills. And so what I'm getting at here is like –
The folks who I know who do manual labor or would identify as members of the working class, even in the service industry and and all sorts of jobs, they're very proud of their work. They aren't actually trying to get out of work. Some of them like to work.
Their identity has to do with that steel, or their identity has to do with that wheat field, or with that hammer, or even with that relationship they have with customers, waiting tables, and so on. So It's like trying to say to a bunch of folks that are looking at everything in a macro way, here on the ground, we're talking about the dignity of our work.
We're also defending our rights and we're trying to get more money and we're trying to get you to back off working us into the ground. But that's not the same thing as saying we actually don't, like our gig and feel very proud of the skills that we have. And by God, we could talk about AI all you want, but for the time being, we need people who have those skills and they know it.
So while I don't think it's a bad idea what you're talking about, I think it's two different realities in terms of a relationship to capital, how you build it, and how you value yourself.
If a worker hands over just like the inherent value of her ability to fix a sink and now she's swimming with the real sharks trying to get ahead, swimming in the gravy, if you will, that's maybe a really precarious way to be because they've already got you beaten every other way. At least they don't know how to fix their sink.
All right. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. And we are back. I was almost thinking about it as it's adding another revenue stream for that work more than redefining, uh, that work.
It's like almost trying to come up with, in the ways that they're very creative about padding their bottom line, and you have this with a lot of corporations, they'll pay a certain wage that's not a living wage.
And so you're forcing people who are still having, as you say, that work that they're proud of, that dignity that they're proud of, but it's not bringing them enough that they don't still have to reach out to some government programs to help them even to just get by. I mean, I don't, I don't know if people realize how much people who work still rely on programs from the government to benefit that.
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Chapter 4: What are the consequences of neoliberalism on working-class voters?
Meat grinder.
Um, but, uh, but yeah. And God bless him. He had a good run. Um, So what I'm getting at here is I'm not so sure that it's that the structures themselves are unresponsive by definition, but rather the folks who are driving, who are behind the wheel have – Enormous class blind spots and often racial blind spots and gender blind spots as well.
But across the board, there is just a gross inability to truly understand race. the day-to-day lives of the average American. And that's true in both parties, of course. I talked about the little trick that the Republicans pull off meanwhile earlier. But if the Democrats also have that problem and then they're telling you you're wrong, that the economy sucks, recipe for disaster.
Right. And you look at, I mean, J.D. Vance is supposed to be the avatar for the politician who comes from, you know, Appalachia, comes from a white working class. background but I think you're right then you tie it into but there's a dude who like his story is I worked my ass off and went to Yale and got out of that place and maybe the thing that you're saying is
What if we recognized a pride of place that not everybody necessarily wants to leave, has great pride in not just the work that they do, but the culture that surrounds them. They don't want a way out. They want a way to live where they live, how they live with dignity and some economic security.
Yes, 100%. So when I moved to New York in my 20s, a question I often got was, how did you get out? And I think the idea was it was a compliment. And I actually love the place I'm from. I live there again now in rural Kansas, happily. But I had no choice in terms of my career path and my goals and my aspirations professionally and academically, but to leave.
I'm kind of a homecomer, if you will, who returned home. um with the on the Odyssean journey um but uh that's how I ended up back in Jersey same thing Yeah, you get it. But yes, home and place. And I believe those things often kind of relate to class. But the capitalist and industrialized and globalized and urbanized way of looking at reality often leaves place out of the equation.
Boy, is that still a tie that binds, I find, when I talk to people about my work. um, all colors and ethnicities and, and, uh, uh, political stripes, even, you know, where I'm from, you just, you say, where are you from? And what, uh, so your daddy was down at, oh, you worked at that grain elevator. And, um, and there's different versions of that all, all over this beautiful country, of course.
And, um, if, if all of the policy and the aspiration that you're talking about, you know, something we haven't mentioned yet is how like, um, the Democrats, uh, throughout that campaign, uh, John, I don't think I heard him say the word working class once, the term. Maybe I missed it. It wasn't in an important economic policy speech.
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Chapter 5: How do rural voters feel about representation?
You know, in the red states, some of this is a rejection of what they would call identity politics. We're so tired of pandering to identity, black, gay, Jewish, you know, we don't want to pander. We don't want woke policies. On the flip side of that is see our identity, value our identity. It is a sort of bizarro world DEI identity politics. It's- Yes.
That there is an identity here that isn't being addressed. Yes. And that in some ways what's effective about what you're talking about, about the feeling is, it seems to me that the most effective message that the Republicans have is,
you work hard and you pay money into a system that doesn't deliver for you because it's too busy giving money to undocumented trans athletes who are there to destroy your work like they've painted this picture of a system that you work to pay into but undeserving people get all the benefit of it which is in some ways just a different kind of identity politics no
Well, I think it's a manipulation of the way in which we've been handling identity politics. And I don't use that term negatively. It's important that we're talking about racial inequality and gender inequality and the way that those things affect your probable outcomes. But if you're doing that, if your DEI statement isn't also talking about socioeconomic class. Right.
If your definition of diversity is not also acknowledging wealth or, you know, I'm a first-generation college student, so I often find myself in, or college graduate, I often find myself in professional spaces where I'm the only person who has a background remotely like mine, regardless of color and gender. Right.
And and and yet when when I was kind of, you know, crossing that bridge from, you know, one class experience or reality to another, if you will. And I contain both today. But that bridge was on that college campus as that first generation student. There were you know, they were rightly race and gender and other and other aspects of identity were being addressed.
But there was something very specific about what I was that made a really hard go of it for me that was not being discussed. And so if we as a culture and a country are not acknowledging that class is also an identity, then... In that void, in that vacuum where deep pain of a valid sense of not being seen arises.
There, there then comes in swooping, comes in writing on a demon horse Rush Limbaugh. There comes in writing the messages about death. The immigrants. Don't make me conjure up images. And the reason and the brown people. And so there is actually, in my view, a real... Now, I want to be careful here because when I talk about a grievance...
you can simultaneously have white privilege and economic disadvantage. My family would be an example. I grew up on a fifth generation wheat farm and we struggled to get by. And we were below the poverty line, as we say, I qualified for a Pell Grant. And it's also true that we owned a little bit of land. That land was stolen from indigenous peoples.
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Chapter 6: What is the importance of pride in place for working-class individuals?
Well, and you might even start with speaking to the millions of white working class people who aren't Trumpers. Believe it or not, they're out there. My family are among them. And make inroads in those communities and allow that to spread out. You know, I'm not a political strategist, but I know you got to go there and you got to talk to that group of people. And they've got some real concerns.
Right. Well, Sarah, I really appreciate you being here. We've been talking with Sarah Smarsh. She's a journalist. She's the author of Bone of the Bone, Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class. And it's much appreciated, Sarah. Thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you, John.
That was, boy, that just, that started cooking. When I felt like I was in her class, she was the professor and I'd been sitting there for weeks, like a dumb fuck. She's sitting there the whole time going like, I don't get any of this. And then like, there was one class or I just woke up and went,
It's an identity.
Oh.
Epiphany. You did the reading.
Jillian, that really sums it up. I should have done the reading.
We've all been told that.
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Chapter 7: How do economic policies reflect the needs of the working class?
Yeah.
Yeah, it definitely differs from what I've been reading in the mainstream press about what happened.
Right.
There was no reducing this down to a group of people were not even addressed. Right.
Why wouldn't class be what defines you when it defines your entire life? Right. It's your entire approach.
your entire sense of security. But it's what's so interesting about us. And Lauren, to your point, there's so many things that people are writing about. Oh, you focus too much on identity.
And really what the point is that actually you just don't have enough identities that you haven't considered these other avenues in the same way with the same fervor that you defend other groupings that you look at as marginalized. disenfranchisement and marginalization happens across a much broader swath than, than, Perhaps, you know, for instance, why aren't short people talking about more?
I was just going to say that. And their grievances. We need to be hearing their grievances.
That feels personal. See, Brittany can walk away from that, not being a short person. Sorry, guys. That's okay.
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Chapter 8: What are the emotional aspects of political affiliation for voters?
Oh, sure. Yeah. Is there stuff that- Always. Oh, please. Always.
Okay. Does the left need a Joe Rogan experience?
What does that mean?
Like, does the left need a Joe Rogan type of podcast? Or also, how do they get their message out? You know, there was a whole conversation like the left needs, who's the left's Joe Rogan?
Oh, oh, oh. I mean, I think that's oversimplifying Joe Rogan. I mean, as somebody who does listen to Joe Rogan, like, I don't think, like, I don't know what I would necessarily classify him as. He has some ideas that I think are wildly progressive, other ideas that are probably I would less agree with, but I think what, what's interesting about Joe is talks to anybody.
He does it with a kind of a genuine curiosity, whether you, you know, I hate this thing we've gotten into of how dare you platform, you know, or do the, like he's platform. He has a voice. We have a system that is capitalistic, that voices that resonate tend to be amplified. Bernie went on Joe Rogan, which I think was, exactly the right thing to do.
But it's all these people that have never really, I think, listened to him going, how do we get one of those? And you're like, I don't mean, I'm not even sure you know what that is.
Yeah. You don't need your own. You just need to go on.
Right. And also I think they always, that question is always framed in the negative. Like that's a shit thing and we need to counter it with a good thing of equivalent value. And I think that's a mistake as well. I wouldn't even know how to classify the things that he does and says.
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