In “Who Lost the White Working Class?” Robert Reich argues that the Democratic Party is largely to blame for white, working-class voters’ defection to the Republican Party.  Beginning in the 1980s, he writes, Democratic politicians “began drinking from the same campaign funding trough as the Republicans – big corporations, Wall Street, and the very wealthy.”  Certainly, money plays a hugely important role in U.S. partisan politics — one that has grown exponentially since the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. the F.E.C. in 2010.  And yet, Reich states, “Nothing in politics is ever final. Democrats could still win back the white working class – putting together a huge coalition of the working class and poor, of whites, blacks, and Latinos, of everyone who has been shafted by the shift in wealth and power to the top.” He asks, “Will they? That’s one of the biggest political unknowns in 2016 and beyond.”

What do you think?  How might issues of social class might inform U.S. political campaigns going forward?