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Opinion|How to Turn the Middle Against Trump
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/opinion/elissa-slotkin-democrats-future.html
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The Opinions
Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and David Leonhardt on the fundamental question Democrats need to answer.
May 28, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET
In this episode, David Leonhardt, an Opinion editorial director, asks Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan why the Democratic Party has lost so many voters without four-year college degrees, what Americans should do to stand up for democracy and what she appreciates about Senator Bernie Sanders.
How to Turn the Middle Against Trump
Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and David Leonhardt on the fundamental question Democrats need to answer.
Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
David Leonhardt: I’m David Leonhardt, the editorial director of the New York Times editorial board. Today we’re going to talk about what I think is the single most important trend in American politics: the class inversion.
For a long time, the Democrats were the party of the working class and Republicans were the party of educated professionals. But that’s just not true anymore. Last year, Kamala Harris won people with a four-year college degree easily, and Donald Trump won people without a four-year college degree.
This trade-off is bad news for Democrats because of simple math. There are more Americans without a four-year college degree than with one. Our editorial board recently published a piece arguing that the Democrats were in denial about their unpopularity with large parts of the American public. But one Democrat who is not in denial is Elissa Slotkin, the new senator from Michigan. She first won election to Congress in 2018, when she won a House seat in a district that had voted for Donald Trump, and then last year she won a hard-fought Senate race in Michigan at the same time that Trump was winning that race in the presidential election.
