In his review, Christopher Ellis demonstrates his thoughtful consideration of my research and his intellectual range. I am grateful for his praise, but want to address his three principal critiques. 1) What explains the fact that many Trump supporters were not among the working class? 2) Are race relations a greater driver of white working class marginality than I acknowledge? 3) How can policymakers channel the behavior of white working class voters in “more productive ways”?

First, President Donald Trump did not win the 2016 election because of white working class people, but he could not have won it without them. They constituted the pivotal swing vote, particularly in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—where he won by a mere 77,000 votes combined. There, he galvanized large numbers of white people who had previously backed President Barack Obama or abstained, by appealing to their sense of marginality and nostalgia for an earlier era. The key was his ability to simultaneously maintain the support of wealthier Republican moderates by provoking their deep disdain for Hillary Clinton and distrust of the Democratic Party. Some of these Republicans held their nose and picked the “better of two evils.” Others overlooked Trump’s character flaws and populist economic rhetoric because he promised to fulfill Republican priorities related to tax cuts, religion, and judicial appointments. Still others secretly found some of Trump’s rhetoric viscerally appealing. These types of constituents raised the class profile of Trump voters to one that was similar to earlier Republican presidential campaigns, despite the infusion of working class support.

Second, I do not think I downplay race as a factor in the book; rather, I contextualize racial resentment, and do not consider it the singular explanation alleged by many since the 2016 election. My subjects’ concern about their loss of power and status cannot be separated from their (sometimes subtle, sometimes overt) sense of racial resentment. Their consuming nostalgia cannot be divorced from the homogeneous demography and white supremacy of the earlier era for which they yearn. In eliciting my respondents’ fear of demographic change and sense of socioeconomic disorientation, I show the way that many of them feel out of control and, worse, displaced. It is not just that their “political system is significantly less likely to attend to the interests and values of lower-income citizens”—as Ellis writes; it is that their central place in American identity has been supplanted by the virtue now assigned to diversity instead of heritage. It is that the Democratic coalition traded in (largely white working class) unions for working class immigrants and urban elites.

These conclusions resonate with polling research conducted since the 2016 election. In particular, John Sides (Race, Religion, and Immigration in 2016, Voter Study Group, 2017) found that a substantial number of 2012 Obama voters harbored unfavorable attitudes toward black people, Muslims, and immigrants, and that these sentiments became strongly related to support for Donald Trump in 2016. Similarly, Loren Collingwood, Tyler Reny, and Ali Valenzuela (“Vote Switching in the 2016 Election: How Racial and Immigration Attitudes, Not Economics, Explain Shifts in White Voting,” Political Opinion Quarterly, forthcoming) found that the principal driver for vote switching from Obama to Trump was a backlash against immigration. According to Ashley Jardina (The New Role of White Identity in American Politics, unpublished manuscript), these trends have coincided with the expansion of white identity and racial consciousness.

Third, President Trump has thus far used divisive identity politics to mobilize his core supporters, and assuaged Republican partisans with tax cuts and conservative judicial appointees. This challenges Democrats to persuade white working class voters that their material interests outweigh their cultural anxieties, and that Democrats can deliver meaningful economic change. Democrats have tried this before, often with good policy ideas, and failed—not because they were not innovative or passionate enough, but because they have trouble convincing white working class people that they are “one of us.” As President Trump understands, these politics are a matter of symbolism and of recognition. If you are not relatable and at least perceived—rightly or wrongly—as sincere, it does not matter how ingenious your five-point plan is. Can Democrats revere American heritage while embracing a diverse future? Can Democrats ally with start-ups and financial donors but ensure that people are not left behind in the markets they transform? And most related to Ellis’s work, can Democrats convince white working class people that when they speak of equal opportunity and representation for all, they really mean “all”?