Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins, Polarized By Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics (2024)

This book is like Jalen Brunson on an off night. One wishes it had been as good as one knows it could have been. But it's still very good. Grossmann and Hopkins teamed up on an earlier book that I found quite illuminating - Asymmetric Politics, about the role of specific policies and interest groups, on the one hand, and general attitudes (liberal or conservative), on the other. The current collaboration is about a very important topic, the reshuffling of Republican and Democratic voters over the last 30 years, and especially since 2016. Above all, the Democratic Party has lost significant support among the white working class, and instead gained the loyalty of whites with college degrees. Republicans are now the political home for the vast majority of white working-class voters. This switch has happened as both parties focus increasingly on cultural and social - "post-material" - issues. As the Democrats have become dominated by educated whites, the party has openly and assertively taken ever more progressive stances on these cultural issues. The topic will be much more prominent in my the next iteration of my course "How Democracies Die," which I'll be offering this fall. Unfortunately, Grossmann and Hopkins' writing is too dense and academic to serve my students well.