Cory Booker makes the working class pitch Democrats need

It fell to Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to make a pitch for the working class on Thursday night during the Democratic National Convention.

You notice I didn't say "white working class," that subset of Donald Trump voters that campaign strategists and the media obsessed over in the aftermath of the president's surprise 2016 victory. By telling the story of how his grandfather moved to Detroit and got a job working on an assembly line during World War II, Booker signaled that the working class is important to Democrats — and that it is far from monochromatic.

"I'm here because a union job lifted my family out of poverty and into the middle class," Booker said, promising that Democrats would fight (for example) for a higher minimum wage for the kinds of folks "whose hands are thick with calluses, like my grandad's were, who lifted me high, who held my hand when I was a boy." It was the kind of personal touch speech that might've been given 20 years ago by a white, union-loving politician like Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Missouri) — or even Joe Biden himself.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

But of course, the working class — like America itself — isn't so white anymore. In most states, members of the labor force without a four-year college degree are more diverse than the overall population; in eight states, workers of color make up the bulk of the working class. That's a trend that will only continue: One study predicts that people of color will comprise a majority of the American working class in 2031 — 11 years before the country itself is projected to become "majority minority." This matters because nearly a third of Americans describe themselves as working class, a sizable chunk of the electorate.

All of this means that — despite ample fretting by Democrats after Hillary Clinton's loss — politicians don't have to choose between appealing to minorities or working class voters. As Booker suggested on Thursday, the two groups are often one and the same.