The Clinton 1992 mantra, once again: Milktoast centrism for the 2020s

Steve Clemons interviews Joan Williams about her new book, Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back (2025).

It's an intriguing title. But what she says in the interview sounds more like yet another variation on the Bill Clinton 1992 mantra that centrist- and Conserva-Dems have been using ever since. Elissa Slotkin should be able to borrow some platitudes from her.

Williams talks about the working class. But she never manages to say who that is in the interview. She does mention blue collar workers in passing. At another point she seems to be using the lazy and unhelpful journalistic habit of defining “working class” as people without a four-year college degree.

She offers the pedestrian advice that Democratic candidates shouldn’t condescend to ordinary voters. She didn’t make any mention of Donald Trump’s habit of disparaging his opponents and their voters, e.g., "We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country." (2)

She herself sticks pretty close to standard cant about understanding the vague discontent among the voters attracted by the guy campaigning against his opponents as “vermin” and other villains he describes in, uh, unflattering terms. In other words, when Trump and his followers talk and act like Hitler, the Democratic response needs to be something like, say, “When they go low, we go high.”

This comes off as pretty much standard consultant-class pablum that the legacy media repeats on a loop. I hope that doesn’t sound condescending of me to say.

The interview is worth watching, especially if you in the mood for a recitation of centrist truisms that have been serving Democratic candidates poorly for the last three decades or so.

It’s notable that she offers little in the way of policy initiatives that would attract the voter she considers to be part of her vague generalization she refers to as the “working class.” Nor anything useful in how the Democrats could develop an appealing broad framing for their political messaging that would be distinct from vague centrism. Could lack of state and local Democratic Party infrastructure be a problem that needs addressing? Should the Democrats emphasize campaign-finance reform to limit the influence of sociopathic billionaires and TechBro dystopian eugenicists on elections?

Apparently none of that matters, as long as the Democrats are careful to be sympathetic to people who find Trumpista “cultural issues” appealing. And talk about the virtue of “working hard and playing by the rules” or something along those standard Clintonian lines.

I hope her book is more useful than this instance of her promotion of it is.

Notes:

(1) How elites destroyed the Democratic Party in the US and fuelled populism-The Bottom Line. Aljazeera YouTube channel 08/31/2025. <https://youtu.be/BoD6ccdmlfI?si=DxEB7r1q0xWZKbOp> (Accessed: 2025-01-09).

(2) Kurtzleben, Danielle (2023): Why Trump's authoritarian language about 'vermin' matters. NPR 11/17/2023. <https://www.npr.org/2023/11/17/1213746885/trump-vermin-hitler-immigration-authoritarian-republican-primary> (Accessed: 2025-01-09).