This column originally appeared in Kyle Whitmire’s newsletter, Alabamafication. Sign up here to get it in your inbox for free.

A few years back, I did something I usually don’t. I watched Tucker Carlson.

He was ranting, as he does, in one of his fourth-wall-breaking monologues and his message seemed familiar: Globalist elites control everything and they own everything — technology, the media, the government — and they don’t want working people like you to have any of it. They don’t like you. They despise you. They want people like you to shine their shoes and that’s it.

I’m roughly paraphrasing, obviously, but that was the gist.

Watching this, I had an epiphany. I could take the word globalist and replace it with aristocracy, swap out elites for bourgeoisie, and switch working people with proletariat, and …

Oh my God, this dude’s a fire-breathing Marxist in a bowtie!

Something is happening in this country that we should take a lot more seriously, but that may require some of us to set aside assumptions regarding people we might have dismissed.

The 2016 election saw the emergence of two adjacent groups of voters that many found hard to explain. One group was OOT voters — people who voted for Obama, then Obama again, and then Trump. The other group was Bernie Bros who defected to Donald Trump because they felt the Democratic establishment had treated Sanders unfairly.

There has been no shortage of pundits since then who have considered these groups with disdain and contempt. (I mean, how could they not see that Sanders and Trump are not the same thing?!?) Or they wrote them off as my least-favorite euphemism — low-information voters. Others have pointed to racism and toxic masculinity to explain the phenomenon, and perhaps those are factors, but I don’t believe either of those things burns without oxygen.

The assumption that Bernie and Trump are light years apart depends on placing people on a left-right spectrum. A line. Literally one-dimensional thinking.

People aren’t that simple and politics doesn’t work like that.

And sometimes, so-called opposite ends of the spectrum are closer than they appear.

Consider for a moment what Donald Trump did before his political career. His schtick was a common one in America, one she shared with Oprah, Martha Stewart and that Goop lady. He achieved a gilded lifestyle (sometimes literally) and, for a price, he promised to crack the door open for people who aspired to live like him.

There might not be a better example of this than Trump Steaks.

“When it comes to great steaks, I’ve just raised the stakes!” Trump shouted at the camera like the world’s greatest car salesman. “The Sharper Image is one of my favorite stores with fantastic products of all kinds!”

Now, we can question whether Sharper Image was ever known for its quality butcher counter, but the pitch here is simple — I have the good life and I want you to have it, too — for $199.99 plus shipping and handling.

In his political life, he has added another layer — something much like the screeds Tucker Carlson shouts at the camera. Not only does Trump want you to taste the good life but (fill in blank: Hillary, Biden, Democrats, Globalists, Elites, They) don’t want you to have it.

And this time the price is almost free — just your vote. All he wants in return is loyalty, allegiance and support.

This might seem like a deal from the devil or a scam from a store that sells massage chairs pivoting into …bone-in ribeyes? OK, that’s still weird.

But on some level, it’s the pitch every politician makes — give me your support and I’ll give you something in return.

Now, let’s change the channel for a second.

At the same time Donald Trump was groping his way through the Republican primary, Bernie Sanders was taking a not-disimilar message to voters.

There’s a billionaire class that owns everything, controls everything, who reap the benefits of the status quo and who don’t give a rip for regular people. Elect me and I’ll make them open the vault of America’s wealth to improve your standard of life — health care, education, housing …

Again, I’m roughly paraphrasing, but not by much.

Let me be clear. I do not think Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are the same thing. I do not think they have the same intentions. If Sanders had won, I do not think it would have had the same outcome.

What’s important to understand is that they are both, in a sense, salesmen, pitching a vision to a similar group of people. They are both effective communicators, and as all good communicators do, they are shaping their messages to match the wants and needs of their audience.

And their target audiences are very similar, if not the same.

There is a significant chunk of the American public who, rightly or wrongly, feel like they have been excluded from the benefits this country has to offer, who feel like they have been shut out by people above them from achieving more and having more. And they want someone who cares about them and who will work to fix it.

And there’s a lot to be had right now by politicians who promise to give it to them.

We saw this phenomenon express itself again Tuesday night in New York City.

There, a Democratic establishment had rallied behind a Democratic establishment candidate, ignoring all his disqualifying qualities, because they didn’t want — ick!— a democratic socialist representing their party in the general.

And then voters went with the socialist, Zohran Mamdani, who felt their pain and promised to fix their problems.

There’s a lesson here. It’s not that Democrats need to connect with working-class voters to be successful. Every political party has to connect with working-class voters to be successful, no matter whether they’re Brooklynites struggling to pay rent on shoebox apartments or Alabamians in deer stands rethinking how they wound up spending all their time in the woods.

Class warfare in American politics is here to stay — at least until we do something about growing inequality in this country — and the elites/globalists/bourgeoisie should consider themselves on notice.

Just ask Tucker Carlson.

THIS WILL BE ON THE TEST

😟 Gone in a SNAP. Proposed cuts to the social safety net could mean more than hungry families. It could create new food deserts in Alabama, where some rural grocery stores depend on SNAP benefits for much of their business.

Massive SNAP cuts could kill hundreds of Alabama grocery stores, ‘send hunger soaring’

[AL.com]

🤪 “Big Balls” has left the building. DOGE employee Edward Coristine, whose online handle became the butt of jokes and Exhibit A against the Musk-led take-over of federal agencies, has resigned from his federal job, Wired reports. The Deep State is healing.

‘Big Balls’ No Longer Works for the US Government

[WIRED]

🧐 Please hold for the next administration. Congresswoman Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, wanted to talk to UAB officials about the impact the Trump administration is having there. Their weren’t in a hurry to respond, John Archibald reports.

Congresswoman ghosted? UAB shows the cowardice of its convictions

[AL.com]

😔 Defunding history. An executive order from President Trump dismantled the Institute of Museum and Library Services which had been funding an oral history project collecting the stories of civil rights heroes and activists. Among those stories is that of 86-year-old James Pruitt, who as an 18-year-old janitor saved Temple Beth-El from a Ku Klux Klan bombing in 1958.

Dynamite outside a synagogue: Civil rights stories imperiled by federal cuts

[The Washington Post]