Hello on point and Jack BD fans. This is episode four of our special podcast series featuring weekly conversations with Jack on points news analyst where Jack brings us unique insights on America in our current political moment and what we really need to understand that we might not yet see.

I'm Megna Chakrabardi, but you're here to listen to Jack. So hello there Jack. Hello Megna. Okay, so what's the headline for today's conversation?

The line we're going to talk about the line a resident metaphor for white working class anxiety. Okay, so actually the line that I'm thinking about right now is the picket line for the United Auto Workers. Is that part of this story?

Well, it is. I mean, it's this week. The president is walking a picket line a first. Okay, so we have that kind of line, but regarding a working class Americans, I think there's there's another line that you're talking about to tell us more about that.

Well, that's a line that Arleigh Russell Hawkschild, a Berkeley sociologist coined really used as an explanatory device in a really canonical passage of political sociology contained in her book.

Strangers in the land anger and mourning on the American right and her metaphor of the line is based on years of research and interviews with white working class voters in Louisiana.

And she says this metaphor of the line, this is the deep story. These Americans tell themselves to make sense of the world. The story is this quote, you are patiently standing in the middle of a long line stretching toward the horizon where the American dream waits.

But as you wait, you see people cutting in line ahead of you, many of these line cutters are black beneficiaries of affirmative action or welfare, some are career driven women pushing into jobs never held by women before.

And then there are immigrants too many groups to name as you wait in this unmoving line. You're not you're being asked to feel sorry for them all. You have a good heart, but who is deciding who you should have compassion for.

As you wait your turn, Obama, this was written in the Obama administration is using the money in your pocket to help the line cutters.

The government has become an instrument for redistributing your money to the undeserving. It is not your government anymore. It's theirs.

And one of her subjects said, I live your analogy about this analogy. And she concludes just with this last tagline, we blue collar whites are in the same fix liberals think blacks are in we resent it and liberals don't get why we resent it.

That's the line. That's the line that the Donald Trump has in the sense of persuasion has used to capture this vote as he has by by double digits white working class vote.

And it's it's the what Hawkshire would say is what we need to understand about the deep story white working class voters tell themselves.

So that's so interesting and Jack, I just did some quick Googling because I have to admit I hadn't heard of Arlie Russell Hawks child, but I see here that she's professor emerita at the University of California Berkeley, whose research is focused on human emotions that underlie moral beliefs and practices over the years, that is really, really interesting.

Okay, so this is the story, the line as she's put it that emerges from Oliver interviews, as you said, with white working class Americans.

Let's go back for a second, Jack, because why did you want to talk about this this week when last week, we were talking about black and Hispanic working class Americans in their view of Joe Biden and the democratic party.

Is there is there sort of a counterpoint amongst the political statistics amongst white working class voters that you see.

Yes, there is. Last week, we talked about the attrition, the really fall in support from minority working class voters for the Democrats for Joe Biden.

That fall is nothing compared to the situation among the white working class. Trump is now up by 34 points over Biden among the white working class. That's 14 points more than in 2020.

And this is despite Biden's announcement in his state of the union speech of what he called a blue collar blueprint to rebuild America.

That message isn't getting through. And if it doesn't, he's in severe trouble because a shift of just a one point more from what he got into 20 for Trump from the white working class would simulation say tip Arizona, Georgia to Trump and a shift of two points would deliver Pennsylvania to Trump.

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