Socialists believe the working class is the key agent of social transformation in a capitalist society. So, perhaps the most important problem for socialists today is the fact that significant swaths of the working-class are shifting to the populist right — not just in the United States but all over the world.

A new report from Joan C. Williams and Jared Abbott, The Left’s Coalition Crisis, explains how working-class views in the US diverge sharply from the views of the educated and affluent liberals and progressives that increasingly dominate the Democratic party coalition — a party that the American working class once saw as their natural home. This divergence has grown so wide — and the Democratic Party so deeply unpopular — that in many parts of the country there is a “Democratic penalty,” where candidates can expect losing sizable support by merely being associated with the party’s brand.

As the Center for Working-Class Politics newsletter summarized it, “A key finding of this report is that college-educated liberals live in a class bubble where virtually everyone agrees with them on culture and climate issues — but working-class people don’t.”