tonight, we will hear from west virginia independent senator joe manchin. wednesday, north carolina republican congressman patrick mchenry. michigan democratic congressman dan kelly and oregon democratic congressman dan blumenauer. friday, delaware democratic senator john carper and california democratic congresswoman rachel paula tom. this week, starting at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, c-span now, our free mobile video app or online at c-span.org. >> witness democracy in action with c-span.

experience history as it unfolds with c-span's live coverage this january, as republicans take control of both chambers in congress and a new chapter begins with the swearing in of the 47th president of the united states. on friday, january 3, don't miss the opening day of the 119th congress. watch the election of the house speaker, the swearing in of the new members of congress and the senate. on monday, january sixth, live from the house chamber. witness vice president kamala harris preside over the certification of the electoral college votes. that will confirm donald trump as the winner of the 2024 election. and on january 20, tune in for our live all day coverage of the presidential inauguration as donald trump takes the oath of office, becoming the 47th president of the united states. stay with c-span throughout january for copper hints of, live coverage of the 119th congress and the presidential inauguration.

c-span, democracy unfiltered. >> washington journal continues. host: welcome back. it is waon jrnal's annual holiday authors week series. it continues this warning, eight ys oconversations with america's top writers room ss t political spectrum on a variety of public policy and political topics. today, we have batya ungar -sargon. her book is called second class, how the elite betrayed america's working men and women. thank you for being here. guest: thank you for having me. it's great to be here with all of your viewers. host: from the title of your book, how are you defining elite? guest: one of the things that economic sociologists, anthropologists, people who study america from a data point of view have noticed over the last few decades is that this

country that was founded on the idea of classless nests, on the idea that every person should have equal access to the american dream, has increasingly become divided by class. and by what i am -- and what i mean by that is if you have a college degree, you are increasingly likely to become a homeowner, to have children who have that passed on to them, the privilege of the american dream. to be able to afford an education for your children and afford adequate health care. you live longer. you may, on average, about one million more dollars over the course of your career than people without a college degree. in general, this idea of the american dream has become something that only people with a college degree have access to. meanwhile, people without a college degree are increasingly facing things like death and despair by suicide, by overdose, by alcoholism. they are less likely to be homeowners.

there children are downwardly mobile. this class divide has really opened up in america, separating out the haves from the have-nots, along class lines based on your education. that's what i write about in the book, how that process happened. host: just to go back to the question, is it anybody with a college education then that you would define as an elite? guest: i would define elite as anybody who is working in a job that requires skills that they have learned in college, who are in the top 20%. making more than $135,000 a year. host: and then how do you -- how would you say that this group, the elites as you call them, have betrayed the working class? what do you think they did to the working class? guest: basically, over the last 60 years, since 1971, which was the high watermark for working-class rages -- wages, after which they became to stagnate and decline when you

factor dating inflation, we have put into place policy that was an upward transfer of wealth from people who work their hands for a living to people who are in that top 20%, who work at jobs that require skills you learn in college. those policies took money from our working-class neighbors and put them in the pockets of people who are in that elite. and those policies include things like nasca, which ships 5 million very good paid working-class jobs overseas to china and mexico to build up their middle-class. you had downward mobility in the rust belt and other areas that were manufacturing powerhouses where working-class people could not achieve the american dream. we imported millions and millions and millions of low-wage workers to compete with the jobs that remain here, further driving down the wages of the working class.

but, putting those savings in the pockets of people who hire working-class people. and then we defunded vocational training in high school. meaning that now, you don't have that avenue to the middle class for working-class kids who want to work with their hands rather than to college. all of these things were policies that took money that would have gone to the working class in previous generations and put them back in the pockets of the people who hire working-class people. that's what i call a betrayal of our working-class neighbors by the elites. the consumers of low-wage labor. host: and do you think this betrayal was one party over the other or do you think both political parties are to blame for this? guest: i think there was a handshake agreement on both sides. those policies were enacted by democratic administrations. while the republicans were certainly supportive of nafta,

it was bill clinton but that into practice. while i'm sure republicans didn't object, it was president barack obama who defunded vocational training. it used to be the democrats that wanted strong borders to protect working-class wages. we have a play quote realignment where republicans are saying you need a strong border and it is democrats who believe we need a much more permissive policy. they will say explicitly why. they will say americans will not be able to afford things if suddenly you limit the supply of labor. these are jobs americans just won't do. that is a myth. there is no industry in america that is a majority done by immigrants. certainly not illegal immigrants. that includes farming. every job in america, the majority of people working at our americans. and it is so insulting to say to those hard-working americans,

this is not a job that is worthy of an american. audi you think that makes them feel? -- how do you think that makes them feel? host: i'm going to play senator bernie sanders for you. he talked about his thoughts on how the democratic party is abandoned the working class. take a look and i will get your reaction. >> 60% of our people are living paycheck-to-paycheck. how do we not talk and fight for raising the minimum wage to a living wage? in the state of missouri, a conservative state, they became one of the many states to vote, i think 50%, to raise the minimum wages. how is it in congress and the senate, we have not brought a minimum wage bill to our floor? the affordable care act is a stopgap measure read it's not addressing the real health care crisis in america. why aren't we saying yes, health care is a human right, we will

take on the insurance companies and the drug companies. we will pass the proactive make it easier for workers to join unions. we will expand social security. we will demand that the billionaires start paying their fair share. out of all of these issues that i am talking about, these are not bernie sanders ideas. these are all, without exception, popular ideas that democrats, republicans and independents support. the people who don't support it is the billionaire class and they have a lot of power. but we have to be prepared. host: your reaction to that? guest: i have to commend senator sanders for even speaking in this way. the rage he feels about how working-class americans are treated in this country, i think a lot of them feel it. huge kudos to him for sticking up to the issue. the solutions he proposes are not the solutions i found when i was traveling around the country and interviewing working-class

people and hearing what they want. bernie sanders is the perfect example of the good-faith left-wing effort to describe the plague of the working class. but the solutions there are redistributionist. his answer is raise taxes on the rich, take that money and give things to working-class people. it's not what working-class people want. what they actually want is something senator sanders talked about in 2015 when he was asked by ezra klein, shouldn't you support open borders if you care so much about the poor, what about the global part? to which senator sanders said open borders? that's a coke brothers proposal. they would love to bring in people to work for two dollars or three dollars an hour and have them compete with the working class. that is the type of solution senator sanders no longer believes in but people understand very intuitively that

the supply of labor, an endless supply of people to compete with them will drive down their wages. they see the at the end of every month. they understand that trade deals that don't favor america, that favor china, mexico, vietnam, these are coming at their expense. they don't want the proceeds of someone else's labor. they want their very hard work to pay more. you can't get there with the minimum wage bill. i support people making minimum wage making much more than they are making. but i think what trump is offering, which is why he got so much support not just from white working-class people but from hispanic working-class people, he got the majority of hispanic men and 25% of black men, why? he was providing an alternative to the redistribution model. he was providing a protectionist model that said i will protect the labor of the american worker, by limiting the supply of the competition. by making better trade deals with tariffs.

these are all things that will make sure that when a working-class person goes to work, their employer has to pay them more money, rather than taking that money from a rich person and handing it over. i think that appeals to the much more. host: if you would like to join our conversation with our author, batya ungar-sargon, our lines are regional this time. if you are in the eastern or central time zones, call us at (202) 748-8000. if you are in mountain or pacific, you can use (202) 748-8001. batya, senator sanders talked about access to affordable health care. what do you think about policies geared toward that? guest: health care is so unbelievably important. our health care system is so broken. there are cartels in the hospital administration world and in big pharma that all collude to make sure that the hardest working americans, who

worked with their physical bodies, cannot access high quality, affordable health care. here is the thing. what i found my book is the same thing that they find again and again and again. the vast majority of working-class people in america, whether they vote for democrats or republicans, what they want is much less immigration. and much more access to health care. the first party that gets to that combination is going to do extremely, extremely well. what we have right now is one party that believes in controlling the border but does not have a health care plan. and the other party that is willing to talk about care but has basically ceded to the open borders activists and donor class because the democrat donors like that far left, radical ideology. and neither party is saying we will make sure you have both of those things. if the republicans realize this for the democrats, they will have a ruling majority for a very long time. host: i want to read a portion

of your book called a second class. this is about political party. it says this. majority of people i spoke to have views that don't fit with either party. for the liberal or conservative, most people supported significantl limiting immigration butlsmajorly expanding access to health care. theyupported gay marriage and were very pro-gay. but also very worried abou spread of transgender ideology. especially in schools. they were "anti-woke report but ." but it was not a topic they thought about. instead, they thought about housing and why they couldn't afford it. guest: i would say the american working class is defined by a radical, radical tolerance. a radical moderation. these are people who are unbelievably generous, both in what they do and how they see other people.

so, the majority of the women i interviewed said i would never get an abortion. but i sure as heck would never judge another woman who didn't have the luxury of making this decision. so they are pro-life and anti-ban. which party should they vote for? it's funny because donald trump showed up and gave voice to that exact idea. and he sidelined the far-right, which had been saying no exceptions and all of the stuff. they are very, very pro-gay read this includes very christian people. -- pro-gay. this includes very christian people. a lot of people i talked to that no gay people that they want treated with respect. there is a fear of transgender ideology in sports and women's bathrooms. it doesn't necessarily fit with how the elites talk about politics. we talk about lgbtq as if it is

one thing. regular americans don't see it that way. they see it as we need to be tolerant and respectful and treat every individual with dignity. but i don't want someone coming into my kids school and confusing them with things i should be teaching them. they care a lot about their material circumstances and don't want political parties or leaders to tell them what to believe or what values to have. this is the american working class, radically, radically moderate and fatally underserved by both parties. host: can you talk a little bit about the book itself and you spoke to, how you did the research and how you got this information and how you went about writing this book? guest: so, finding the people who are profiled in the book was the biggest challenge. once you find the right people, they tell their own story. the book is full of people's stories about the struggles and triumphs of being working class in america. i was reporting it in 2022-2023.

the way i went about finding them was what i wanted was for the people's stories to be interesting enough to carry the story and the narrative. i wanted each person to be representative of a larger cross-section of the american working class. i started with data. this wonderful professor at brigham young university called joe price, he has a team of grad students can help people like me who studied amid humanities and don't have a good grasp of how to handle surveys. he helps you understand the sort of data, birdseye view. who is in the american working class. i said to him i want that herds i view from a data, quantitative perspective. how many people are working class in america? are there races? where do they live, what jobs do they work in? how many of them are homeowners? which jobs have the highest homeownership rate? which states have the highest homeownership rate? one of the biggest surprises is

the american dream for working class americans is much healthier in red states because the price of housing is so much lower. and so, working-class people can afford to become homeowners, which is not the case anymore in places like california, new york and seattle. once i had that data set, i knew i was looking for. for example, i didn't notice but 52% of women clean homes for a living are homeowners. i knew that in my sample of stories, i had to include at least woman who was a home cleaner and homeowner and at least one who wasn't. so that i knew going into this that both i and my reader would get a complete feeling having read this book of what the american working class looks like. once i had that data set, i travel around the country. i interviewed many, many people. i did a lot of phone interviews. when i would do a phone interview and felt someone had a good story, i would get on my plane or in my car and talk to

them so i could give the reader a full sense of who they were. that's the first half of the book. in the second half, what i did was i narrowed down the top impediments to working-class people achieving the american dream, and came up with five or six totally nonpartisan, easy to implement solutions that could be implemented by either party tomorrow, which would greatly increase the ease of the hardest working americans to achieve the american dream. >> let's talk to callers. we will start with gary in meridian, connecticut. good morning. caller: good morning, amy. i want to take issue with how you began your discussion. you posited that this country was based on the egalitarian principles. it wasn't. it took until 1920 for women to have the right to vote.

initially, people didn't own property couldn't vote. this country was designed to protect the wealthy and it has been years of fighting to change that. african-americans are still fighting for the right to vote. so, how you posited that this country was based on egalitarian principles really bewilders me. i don't disagree with much of what you are saying about the way things are now. but i have to disagree with that premise that you stated. i am curious what your educational background is to qualify you to write this book. i'm a retired history professor from a major ivy league university. and it is contrary to everything i understand. so, i would like to hear your answer. host: all right, gary. guest: thank you, gary. that's an important point. i don't think i said egalitarian. i said classless this. the idea that anybody could rise up and make something of themselves.

you are right that that did not include women and black americans until the civil rights movement. i should have made that much clearer, not to erase the work of the abolitionist movement and abraham lincoln and the civil-rights movement. so, i accept that criticism completely. but, the whole idea of the declaration of independence, the bill of rights, the constitution, was to protect not just tolerance, but actually liberty itself, which the founding fathers believed was something that was granted by god. so, i would say i accept the criticism. it was limited. we would not have gotten where we are today without those founding documents and that founding principle, which, to me, makes the betrayal of america's multiethnic and multiracial working class all the more keen. host: we have a question for you on x from jb reding, who says given trump's policies that do

classes, how do factors l cultural residents, the perc of fighting thelite , misinformaand strategic leadership choices, contribute to his continued support among his demographic? guest: so, one of the things you hear a lot, if you turn on liberal media or if you watch msnbc or cnn or the new york times, you will hear this refrain. trump's signature achievement was a tax cut for the rich. i'm sure we've heard that many times. i don't think that is an accurate statement. first of all, a lot of the people that i interviewed for my book recall getting a tax cut that was significant to them. the percentage of tax cuts that were given to working-class and middle-class families is much higher than the percentage given to the rich. the top 1% only saw below a 5% tax cut.

for the working-class and middle-class people, it was 15% to 24%. of course, if you are a billionaire, 1% is much more money than if you are making $55,000 a year and you get a 24% tax cut but to the person making $55,000 a year, that's significant. beyond that, trump started a trade war with china at a time when both parties were pursuing this free-trade globalization model. he controlled the border at a time when both parties had basically committed to importing many, many people to work here for starvation wages. many of them, enslaved to the cartels who bring them here illegally. so, these were big achievements. as a result of them, if you look at 2019, the bottom 25% of wage earners saw a 4.5 percent wage increase for the first time in decades. whereas the top 25% of wage

earners saw a 2.9% wage increase, which means trump was the first person to shrink the gap between the top 25% and the bottom 25% in decades. you look at that, at the same time, if he was limiting the supply of labor, imposing massive tariffs, 25% to 30% on china, inflation was only 1.8%. to me, that's what people who voted for him are trying to get back to. in the liberal media, they were cast as white supremacists trying to return to the 1950's and the jim crow era. what they wanted was to get back to 2019, when they had a little more money in there account at the end of the month to spend on things that gave them dignity. i say this as someone who heard this many times from people who are working class. they could point to the specific trump era policies that put money back in their pockets.

i don't think that trump won because he was fighting wokeness. i think that is a fantasy of republican elites who don't want to talk about the economy and want to talk about the transgender issue because that is there -- i think the reason trump won is because many people who were democrats five years ago voted for him in swing states. they did so because he put money back in their pockets and they believe he will do so again. host: let's talk to ron in tennessee. hi, ron. caller: thanks for taking my call. i agree with a lot of your opinions here. my opinion is the democratic party has aligned with the elitist. the davo's-switzerland people. that's who they have aligned with. they want to destroy this economy. you cannot have communism with the middle class because if people have hope, you can't have communism.

you have to have no hope. that makes you have the government take care of you. i think we would be in big trouble here if it wasn't for the second amendment. during covid, more billionaires were created from covid, because all of these large corporations got to stay open. and all the muzzle tov shops got shut down. it destroyed the middle class. this is what they are aiming to do. they are aiming to kill the middle-class so they can usher in communism. i hope people wake up to that fact. because it is going on. 95% of the media is owned by people from davo, switzerland. cnn, comcast, disney, paramount. host: let's get a response. go ahead, batya. guest: i often say the

democratic party is like a plane. there are a few people in first class and a lot of people in economy. and what their message to the people in economy is is you can fly for free, so long as you stay in the back of the plane. [laughter] you look at the data, the democratic party's coalition is no longer the multiracial working class like it used to be for so long. that is now the maga movement. the people who vote for democrats consistently are the dependent poor people. they are this polarized party. and, you look at so much of the policy and it reflects that. it is either bolstering the status of the poor but without actually improving their life. there is no upward mobility. or, it is helping the rich, putting money back in the pockets of the rich. there is so much data to back this up, this realignment to where democrats became the party

of the rich. 65% of americans who make more than $500,000 per year today are living in democratic areas. these are democrats. 75% of donations coming out of silicon valley argent request. joe biden got 10% more of the votes from silicon valley. 95% of donations of top three management consultant companies go to democrats. 75% of hedge fund donations go to democrats. we are seeing this realignment. nine of the 10 richest counties in america now are democrats. meanwhile, trump won with the majority of people who earn under $100,000 a year. we have seen this radical realignment. what we are in the midst of right now is the republican party deciding whether they are happy with this. for so long, it was the democrats who were the party of labor and the republicans were the party of the rich.

donald trump took an ax to all of that. of course there are elites on the right who would go back to catering to rich conservatives who only care about the woke issue and symbolic issues. i think they are not quite sure. we will see in the next four years whether the republican party has realized who their new base is and i think health care, which came up earlier, will be a big part of that. whether we see them being willing to talk about this issue or not will be a signal about whether the trump revolution, the trump realignment has legs and staying power. host: we will talk to sean in california. good morning. caller: good morning. i am enjoying the conversation. i do believe or actually side with the things this young lady is saying. however, i am one of those democrats that i do believe we need to, first of all, not group

people because of the fact that if it's a democratic political party, but i'm an individual that happens to vote for a lot of things that are right for a lot of people. i have been there before and i have been helped. when i hear of, the democratic party are elites and this and that, i'm that moderate democrat. i'm in the middle class. i have a masters degree. i work. i am probably at the bottom of that middle class. and yes, you are correct. we are scuffling to continue to be able to provide for our families. i take care of an 80-year-old family member. i also have a disabled son that i'm trying to get through college. i see on the job where, when

money is supposed to go to the correct party or correct people that are doing all of the legwork, that money only goes up to the higher people that are in the organization. that is your ceo's, your manager. and they are all in cahoots together. and pretty much kind of whip you down at the bottom to do the work. we worked through the pandemic. in this young lady, she is telling the truth about a lot of things that people don't hear about. but, please don't group me with -- i'm not saying you, ma'am, but a lot of people, don't group certain people or don't group people with higher up people that are making these millions of dollars. us down here, are democrats are scuffling. and we are trying to do the best for everyone, all over the world. thank you very much.

host: go ahead. guest: god bless you, shawn. you are the exact person that both parties should be fighting for your vote. taking care of both a child who has struggled and a parent, while working full time. that is the struggle for dignity for the american dream. as far as i'm concerned, whichever party successfully convinces you that you have your interest at heart and makes your life a little easier, that's the future. what i want to see and why i wrote this book is because instead of seeing both parties ignore people like you, i want to see both parties fighting for your respect. that's the america that i want to live in. is a country where somebody like you, who works so hard and comes home and is taken -- taking care

of the generation above you and generation below you has two parties struggling, fighting for your respect and to make your life a little easier. you are the backbone of this country. that's why i wrote this book. and i hope that what i say resonates with you. thank you so much for the call. host: we have a text from greg in dallas. he says this. however, making the wealthy and the corporations they own p americans fairly is the same thing as takingheir money and giving it to the working class. you see, the w do not see work as having any value other than someone else's work enriching them. guest: that is so true. i think when you -- you are right. you can't convince these rich fools to pay people -- ghouls to pay people more. they will not do this out of the

kindness of their heart. it's not in the nature of corporations who have had two parties encouraging them to sell out the working class to suddenly grow a conscience. what you can do is what i think trump did in the first term. if you limit the supply of labor, labor like every thing else, it adheres to the ironclad law of supply and demand. so if there are less workers, each one has to be paid more or they can't get the profits. by simply controlling the border, working class people are going to see an immediate increase in their wages. when joe biden him into office and the first thing joe biden did was undo all of trump's border executive actions, remain in mexico and all these other ones that were effective, immediately you saw people streaming across the border. we now have the highest percentage of illegal immigrants living in the country then we have ever had in our history. the percentage of americans who are foreign-born right now is at

15%. that was very intentional because i think president biden and his administration, alejandro mayorkas, they thought this would bring down inflation because it would bring down working-class wages. and that's exactly what it did. it brought down working-class wages which had been seeing all of this growth. i will give one quick example of this because it is so infuriating. but meatpacking. this used to be the job to have. you would have communities and they would have a big plant and they would get great jobs there. the wages were incredible, the conditions were incredible. the hours were incredible. you could retire in dignity. if you look at who is doing our meat patting -- meatpacking, it's illegal immigrants working for much less wages in much less safe conditions. the scandal is a lot of them are children who have been trafficked here by these cartels and are effectively

enslaved and have to pay off $5,000 to $10,000 that was used to get them here by these murderers cartels while making six dollars an hour. it is so utterly infuriating and yet this was done completely by design, in order to bring down the prices for people who have that college degree, who are in those elites. host: let's talk to marvin in michigan. hi, marvin. caller: good morning. i would like to ask some questions about the lady talking about high school students and how the program was cut. i disagree with her saying you have to have a college education to be an elite. i don't know where she gets that from. i worked 30 years in detroit. working in construction. and i made over $120,000 a year.

and i just have a high school education. the lady should be trying to uplift people. i totally disagree with that statement. i would also like to give a rebuttal. she keeps saying the trump administration. [indiscernible] the trump administration is trying to eliminate the prayer ship programs. they will never become pilots because if you cut their training, like she was saying in the first statement how they have done to high school students, you will never get that funding back. i would like hurt you give me some kind of -- her to give me some kind of rebuttal and give

an uplifting view. host: all right. we've got that. go ahead, batya. guest: marvin is right. trade unions are one of the remaining avenues for working class people to achieve the american dream. they are incredibly important. they do secure the middle-class life for working-class people. the problem is only 6% of the private sector is unionized. while americans feel really good about unions right now, they are not flocking to join them. i think it's because in high school, they don't get pushed. in high school, it's common for kids to be told you are a loser if you don't go to college. i think that is terrible. we should be uplifting kids and telling them this is a dignified way to live and be able to support a family on this wage. you will have great benefits and be able to retire in dignity. i agree with that. i agree with him that the trade unions are great and are a

mainstay of this country. very supportive. the problem is not enough americans are unionized. as a result, they don't have access to those benefits. in terms of cutting the apprenticeship, i had not heard of that. i will look into that, marvin. that's a terrible thing. if that's happening, i will raise my voice against it. apprenticeship programs that get young men, specifically, into working-class jobs that have a future are unbelievably important. host: batya, you said the obama administration had cut vocational training in high school's. can you tell us more about that, why those were cut. and in the next trump administration, what has he said about those programs? we know he has said he wants to close the department of education and give that function over to the state. host: the idea i think from the democrats is they saw this globalized economy, they saw

these jobs being shipped overseas to china and mexico due to very good trade deals that they had signed. i think the idea was look, those jobs are not coming back. president obama said that many times. what we have to do is get everyone to go to college. we will build a knowledge industry here and sent all of our young people to college. they will join the college industry and consume -- we will consume goods that are made elsewhere. forget about manufacturing. it is clear now that that was not a good idea. 50% of people who have a college degree are underemployed. they are not using the skills they learned because the economy has overproduced people with a college degree. we have enough accountants and lawyers and programmers. what we need now is we have a huge dearth of trade jobs. the idea was everyone will go to

college. not every wants that. not everybody is suited for the and the economy is not suited to handle so many people doing those specific jobs. i think that was what went wrong. there was a slight attempt to correct that with pell grant's later on in the ministry should. president trump has talked about vocational training. there are plans being put out now by the gop that focus very much on this idea that you don't have to have a college degree. you shouldn't have to have a college degree in order to achieve the american dream and support your family. i think all of that is great. i think a lot of it from the right comes from this feeling that when people go to college, they become indoctrinated and leftists with democratic ideas, which i think is true. -- we will start to restore this view. it's not just the training. it's the romance of the idea. it's the cultural respect for

people who work with their hands for a living. which you just don't really see so much in culture today, which is very much created for the ideal american consumer. which, if you think about that as a person who has extra money, disposable income, who these ads are targeted at, it's going to be people in the elite. we need to see a revolution in terms of the economics, the training, the material side of things, but also the cultural aspect of things, restoring respect of the hardest working americans. host: kevin is in ellicott city, maryland. good morning. caller: i don't know where to begin. the idea that you go to college and you become indoctrinated. i went to college, my wife and children went to college. this is exactly the problem with america today. we make these broad statements that they say are true, it's

like she's listening to joe rogan. this is the challenge of america today. we have some any people making these big comments like it is real. but everyone -- like everyone is woke. it is this idea that is making america less smart in the decisions they make because the information they get is from podcasts and people like this, who make the statements. they are so ignorant that it is unbelievable. college education, regardless of how you use it, is a benefit for a lot of americans. and you should not be discouraging it. trades are wonderful, if you can get into trade and that's your decision, that's wonderful. what we can't continue to demonize so many things and say it was bad to go there. if you look at the specifics, who makes more money, who has a better life, who lives longer, it is typically people that are either college educated or could have a trade in there.

don't discourage people from getting a college degree like you are going to come out brainwashed like your parents didn't raise you properly. it's just a bad comment. the last point is this. donald trump lost 2.5 million jobs. he spent $8.2 trillion. in the end, he spent 4.2 trillion dollars of unmanaged covert money that he was giving -- covid money that he was giving away two. -- to people. our international relations were horrible. he rewrites history. i promise, after four years, you will see some of the same things. i lost so much money in the stock market under donald trump. it has finally gotten back. with biden, manufacturing is up. it gets disappointing. when i listen to someone like this talk -- host: let's get hurt response. -- her response.

guest: i guess he was triggered by the word indoctrinated. the truth is the number one predictor for whether or not people will vote for democrats is a college degree. i should not have said indoctrinated. i apologize to kevin and respect is common. the only group that kamala harris won with was college women, especially educated. you go somewhere, i have a phd so i spent a lot of time in the context of universities. it is very hard to be a conservative there. in humanities, 90% of professors are not just liberal very liberal. it's a thing. i think most people can see that it's a thing. but i apologize for using the word indoctrinating. i see that that is triggering and i will try to be more careful with my words.

the problem is i think he's agreeing with me even though he things he's disagreeing. he's agreeing that a college education has become a prerequisite for the american dream and that is terrible, unfair and unjust. it's wrong. we need many more people. our economy relies on the labor of the working class. so when we say a college education is the only way for us to allow people to have the american dream, we are saying that we get it but all of the people who we were lie on -- rely on to survive, you don't get it. you will deliver my amazon packages and groceries but you won't get to be a homeowner in this neighborhood and i think that's discussing, i think it's godless and i think it is un-american. host: we have a text for you that says ribution is the answer. it doesn'tter if that is not what the people i talked want. you may not want your taxes raised, batya. but don't tell us redistribution is taking money from the rich and handing it to the poor.

you talked about health care. how exact we do we create and fund that without raising taxes? or are you not for the actual solution, universal health care? guest: i would support universal health care in a heartbeat. i have no problem raising my taxes. the problem is i think i have much more in common and donald trump has much more in common and the maga people have more in common with the aoc, bernie sanders wing of the democratic party have in common than the middle. i don't think you have to pay for improvements to medicare with peoples tax dollars. i think that there are a lot of very easy, obvious policies, things you can implement tomorrow that would make health care much more affordable and much easier for people to deal

with, starting with things like price transparency. starting with things like permitting ai from being used to deny claims. a lot of these conversations we are having now, after the horrific shooting of brian thompson, these are important conversations to have. what i would say to this person is they immediately jumped to assuming bad faith on my part because i don't support the solution that they want. i don't feel that way about them, i would support your solution even if it's not the one i would implement. why can't we do that? why can't we say we recognize the same problem, let's have that conversation instead of saying you are clearly on the other side. obviously, batya doesn't want to pay more taxes. we are on the same side. it's not left versus right anymore. those distinctions don't exist. it's the populists who care about the working class versus the establishment elitists, who don't. the establishment elitists on both sides. versus the populists who will not agree on the solution but we are much closer than we are to

either of them and why don't we recognize that and come together and have these conversations? host: thomas is in dear wood, marilyn. hi, thomas. caller: i listen to your guest and she's speaking from a lot of linguistic propaganda. the reason i use that term is because if you look at what's going on today, you see the segregation and the segregation is being pushed by white americans. it's not being pushed by latinos . it's being pushed by white americans. this is why you see when she talks about the unions and things like that, they should be uplifting people who go to college. you see, white people have realized that they are being, like the group said, replaced. numbers wise. not physically.

numbers wise. and you see, even if you look at her, she wears the star of david on her neck. her parents didn't tell her go to the union. her parents told her you have to try to get to harvard or an ivy league school. this woman here is just talking a bunch of linguistic propaganda. and she is a trump stir all the way, but she doesn't want to -- host: thomas, you talked about segregation. what kind of segregation are you talking about? caller: the segregation i am talking about is that the majority of white america right now is pulling together. they are not spreading out and diverse and with the rest of the population. they are segregating to themselves. and you can see it if you look at who -- you talk about the elites. who are the elites? white segregationists.

host: any comment, batya? guest: white people are the only group he lost ground within this election. in a significant way. he gained with minorities, including black men, blackman gave him 25% of the vote -- black men gave him 25% of the vote. he got more votes with jewish americans which i feel some type of way about. i don't see this holding water. i don't think americans feel negatively toward people based on the color of their skin. i feel like americans are proud of having overcome that on an individual level and a national scale. i think that the thought that we are dividing by race, if november 5 potus anything, it's time to put that to bed. i appreciate the call -- told us

anything, it's time to put that to bed. i appreciate the call. host: cindy, your next. are you there? caller: yes, can you hear me? host: go ahead. caller: i want to say to your guest, i appreciate her comments. maybe about a month or so ago, a little more, i saw her on c-span book tv, possibly being interviewed and was highly impressed with her being interviewed there as well. i want to thank you for the comments about the first party that gets to limiting immigration and combining the bernie sanders economic message is the one that will be the ultimate winner. i want to say i am much older than you. i am college educated, a prestigious, whatever i heard david brooks say, one of the 34 prestigious colleges in this country graduate. what i have heard is coming from

flint, michigan. that says a lot. working class in my values. but not stupid enough to work fo -- vote for maga. i think they are highly intelligent about what gets voters going. but the maga voters are not so educated or astute. i was too young to pay attention back in the day, go back to win nafta -- go back to nafta and when george bush senior. rid of defined retirement and if it plans and switched everybody to the 401(k) system and look at congressional votes and who voted that is still around. i was shocked to see that the nafta vote, which happened during the clinton administration, but was an idea,

my understand, that came from george bush senior and maybe even someone in the reagan administration, which he was. nancy pelosi voted for nafta. dick durbin in the senate from illinois voted for nafta. i expect chuck grassley to be on that list. he's a republican from iowa. i was blown away that democratic people -- nancy pelosi needs to retire now that she has broken her head. these people who claim to be for the democrats are really, as you say, for the corporate elite. i couldn't believe some of the names on that list. i checked all of the california senators at that time. a lot of them have passed away. but the ones who are still around, and you claim to be a democrat and you shipped all of the jobs from flint and detroit down to mexico and china, i will never vote for them again. host: all right, cindy.

guest: thank you. i have not done that but now i want to go back and take a look at that list. thank you so much for the comments. host: here is michael, who is in texas. hi, michael. caller: hi, how are you? host: good. caller: thanks for taking my call. i am a diehard, you could call me a bleeding heart liberal but i think your comments about -- to me, i take it as degrading. degrading the educational aspirations. everyone does -- our country needs to have people that are ditch diggers. someone has to make the burgers. but the fact you seem to want to denigrate wanting a higher education seems a little harsh. you brought this thing about causation versus correlation,

saying that people who become more educated tend to be democrats maybe you are looking at it from the wrong point of view. maybe because you are educated, you tend to see a better way forward. conservatives want to go back. progressives, i.e. your elitism and your causation to education makes us want to go forward. maybe you are looking at it a different way. i also wanted to address the fact that america seems to be stuck on binary reasoning and thinking. you are either black or white, republican or democrat or man or woman. in the real world, we operate on varying degrees within those two polars. i think socialism or capitalism, there are ways to figure out the best way forward in between those points. there is a gray area for everything. host: we are running low on time. let me get you an answer. guest: i agree. there is so much more consensus.

polarization is an elite phenomenon. that's the number-one message of my book. if you travel around the country, you will find enormous unity and love americans have for each other including for people across the political spectrum. working-class people don't have the luxury or appetite of hating people based on who they vote for. across the country, you have working class people working side-by-side with, praying side-by-side with, breaking bread with people who voted for trump, even if they didn't. we have to take a page from their playbook. on the college thing, the reason i am so down on college, is because in the name of this so-called expertise, we have come to worship not actual expertise but the interest, the economic interest of the elite, the expert class who have implement it again and again and again, policies that hurt their less fortunate neighbors, while they continue to rely on those neighbors labor to survive. that is the thing i find appalling and unacceptable. in the name of higher ideals and progress that we have overseen

an upward transfer of wealth into our own pockets from our neighbors who work harder than us and yet now have not just less but do not have access to health care. do not have access to the american dream or homeownership. their children are worse off. that is what i find unacceptable. host: about policies for the incoming trump administration, the people you talk to, did you find them in favor of higher tariffs and keeping the trump tax cuts and extending the trump tax cuts? what do you think? guest: they love tariffs. working-class people feel those tariffs protect the fruits of their labor and make them worth more. the average steelworker makes $80,000 a year. that is since trump put a tariff on steel and aluminum. it protects wages. we should want our neighbors to make more money and they were in

favor of controlling the border. these people are not anti-immigrant. these people would apologize and say i am not anti-immigrant but it is an undeniable fact that they brought down the wages of the working class and they appreciated trump's attempt to reverse that. host: batya ungar-sargon, opinion editor at newsweek. the book is called "second class: how the elites betrayed america's working men and women." thank you for joining us. after the break, more of your calls in open forum, anything you want to talk about, public policy or politics wise. please start calling in now. republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. we will be right back.

♪ >> during christmas week each night at 9:00 p.m. eastern, c-span will feature interviews with departing members of congress. republicans, democrats and independents from both chambers. they will discuss their careers, key edgely live achievements, the state of congress and american politics in their farewell speeches. tonight, we will hear from west virginia independent senator joe manchin and maryland democratic senator ben cardin. tuesday, california democratic congresswoman anna eshoo and republican congresswoman kathryn -- kathy rogers. wednesday, congressman patrick mchenry, michigan congressman patrick kilby and oregon congressman earl blumenauer.

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