The Supreme Court ruling last week banning affirmative action by race might lead to selective

colleges trying to integrate more by class that's still allowed.

Class is an imperfect surrogate for the black Americans left behind by 400 years of structural

racism, but there is some overlap there and it's legal to count freshman heads by whatever

we mean by class.

That's one example of how race and class intersect in American politics, sometimes

aligning, sometimes in competition with each other.

New York Times correspondent David Leighenhart writes a lot these days about what he calls

the class inversion of American politics.

That is, Americans with college degrees are increasingly likely to vote for Democrats.

Americans without are increasingly likely to vote for Republicans.

That does pertain mostly to white voters, so again race and class are imperfect surrogates

for each other, but non-college graduate Latinos and to a lesser extent non-college

degree black voters also vote Republicans, a Republican more than they used to.

Why is this politically important?

Well in one recent article Leighenhart noted that most U.S. voters, about 60% do not have

college degrees and they live disproportionately in swing states.

And the way Leighenhart crunches the numbers, if President Biden wins exactly 50% of the

non-college vote next year, he will almost certainly be reelected 50%.

If he wins 45%, just five points less, Leighenhart says he will probably lose.

So Leighenhart has been writing about how both Democrats and Republicans might compete

effectively for that potentially decisive 5%.

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