Coming up on the road to now.

The division between the skilled, unskilled, immigrant, native-born workers within the labor movement dissolved, not disappeared, but dissolved.

But then also workers, both skilled native-born and then immigrant relatively unskilled, For the first time, came together in one political party, the Democrats.

Prior to this, they'd been divided between the Republicans and the Democrats.

So for the first time, you have the working class broadly conceived

voting for one party instead of being politically divided.

You know, we're always talking about ceilings in this country,

getting through glass ceilings.

But really what we need is a floor that nobody falls below and then find ways to create a higher tech, higher road, higher education, innovative economy, I think, that will be very inclusive.

Because what we're talking about is security, right?

And we've moved generally from what I call a economy of security to an economy

of anxiety or politics of security to politics of anxiety. Now, everything is individualized,

everything's scary, everything's up to you. There's no, there's very little social safety net.

You're on your own. I'm Bob Crawford. I'm Ben Sawyer. This is The Road to Now. And the Road to Now for this

episode, for me anyway, was not very long. It was actually very nice. We went up the road, just a

couple of miles from my place in Nashville over to Vanderbilt University to speak with Dr.

Jefferson Cowie, who is a professor of history there, just recently joined the faculty.

And it was a great conversation, don't you think, Bob?

It was maybe one of our best interviews, which is terrible to say before anyone's heard it,

because now they're going to be listening carefully to be like, they're going to be judging it.

But for us, we're both big

fans of his. He's written some amazing books and, yeah, uh, the great exception is, is, uh, what he's all,

...