The Most Dangerous Class in America? High Education/Low Income Voters

It is tempting to believe that the worst people in America are the AWFLS–affluent white liberal females–but perhaps there is an even more dangerous cohort we need to worry about. 

The Lumpencommentariate is a larger and growing class of political actors who provide the ground troops and the numbers for the woke mob. 

Gregory Conti explains in this edition of First Things, and he is on to something. 

Worth reading the full piece: https://t.co/6MvXNQtexO

— John Sailer (@JohnDSailer) July 29, 2025

AWFLs are an easy target for critics of woke because they are highly performative and have the resources to showcase their supposed virtue in ways that break through culturally. They have The View, Race2Dinner, and move in social circles that amplify and influence culturally elite institutions. They are also similar enough in class to be recognizable to most people as overlapping with their own bourgeois aspirations, while at the same time loudly rejecting the comforts of bourgeois life, while enjoying them. 

In other words, they are grossly hypocritical and easy to mock. 

The Lumpencommentariate is a distinct breed, typically younger. They share the same education and, if anything, even more radical politics born of resentment rather than vague guilt born out of unearned wealth. This is the base of support for truly radical politics. Highly-educated but low-income voters who feel betrayed by society. 

the heart of Mamdani’s support is neither the poor—Cuomo dominated among those with yearly incomes less than roughly $40,000—nor the truly wealthy, among whom Cuomo again was preferred. Both ends of the income spectrum are averse to Mamdanism. Instead, Mamdani flourished among college degree-holders who make roughly $70,000 to $140,000 per year. Though in many parts of the country an income in this range is fairly robust, in the absurdly expensive environment of New York City, those in this bracket often struggle to afford comforts the American bourgeoisie largely takes for granted.

This is a group we might call, to adapt Karl Marx, the lumpencommentariat. They are those whose investment in education and induction into the worldview of university progressivism leads them to expect knowledge-work that is not only financially remunerative but also morally or socially fulfilling and valorized. Think here of NGO staff, grad students, many full-time academics, social workers, journalists, those in (or trying to break into) the city’s artistic scenes and cultural industries, and the medley of folks one acerbic twitterato calls “marginal creatives.” For several years, political scientists have been noting that the surest source of support for left-wing parties is now “high-education, low-income voters.” This cohort was the beating heart of wokeism even at its apex. (Wokeism was never, despite leftist self-fashioning, widely popular among the working class.) But now that wokeism has receded, this class is just about its last bastion. Mamdani’s own trajectory—graduate of an elite college, lifelong activist devoted to social justice causes, failed rapper, intern on his mother’s films, social media personality—was practically designed in a lab to provoke identification and empathy from this band of society, even if most of them are not backstopped by anything like Mamdani’s family resources.

You would never find an AWFL at a riot, gluing themselves to a painting, throwing Molotov Cocktails, or chanting slogans in hot weather. They write checks and discuss social injustice over a $200 bottle of wine under a $10,000 chandelier while eating fine cuisine. Their leftism is performative–aimed at impressing each other, and the damage they do is once removed. Cynthia Nixon is their kind of radical. They can imagine themselves discussing Ibram X. Kendi over a nice Chianti. 

The marginal creatives went to the same schools, had similar aspirations for a nice life in which they imagined themselves liberating the working classes, but instead, they are slaving away in nonprofits and as lower-tier creatives with few prospects for advancement and who see it is unlikely to get ahead. 

They claim they are fighting for social justice for others, but their real complaint is that their performative virtue has no economic value and that their lives will consist of living with roommates in run-down 600 square foot apartments in a bad part of the city. It’s not that Black Lives Matter to them, but that their lives suck. 

Not only does Mamdani’s cultural message resonate with this class’s values, but his economic message hits the sweet spot for them. He dangles the prospect of a bonanza of jobs for left-aligned degree-holders in legal and nonprofit and public-sector work. His signature promise of expanding rent stabilization is a great temptation as well, since rent stabilization in New York City is not means-tested, and often these apartments are passed down across generations. Extending this program will almost certainly harm New York’s housing stock in the medium- to long-term, but the short-term financial boon that “freezing the rent” would represent to strapped degree-holders is too enticing to turn down.

More generally, Mamdani’s vision of increasing free or subsidized public services while hiking taxes only on corporations and millionaires is maximally attractive for this class. Mamdanian economics gestures toward the European benefit system, while making America’s already progressive tax structure even more progressive. Unlike in Europe, where the middle and lower-middle classes pay heavily for the generous public services they enjoy, in Mamdani’s New York the lumpencommentariat would receive more largesse without making further contributions.

If Mamdani is a socialist, then, his is a clerical socialism—targeted at the (aspirant) clerical class’s financial complaints, and framed in terms of their progressive moralism.

Man, does this ring true. A Columbia student who went to college with that unwoke jerk who now makes a million two at a financial firm for moving money around grates on them something fierce. Now a million two in New York isn’t generational wealth–like Mamdani has, and that backstops his activism with a very comfortable life–but it sure beats $100k in a city like New York. In that city, the poverty line — where even affording the basics of food and shelter is almost $ 50,000 and is growing at nearly 8% a year — far exceeds income growth. 

It’s so unfair. People who bought the line sold at elite schools, that one can do well by doing good, turns out to have been a lie. Professors making $500k or more lecture about social justice and overturning the system, convinced these students that pursuing filthy lucre was evil, but it turns out that living poor sucks. 

So they turn to Mamdani. 

Both the poor and the wealthy rejected Mamdani; it was the lumpencommentariate who put him over the top. They, too, want to be rappers for social justice, and they also want a soft cushion to fall back on when their dream of fame and fortune fighting for Hamas doesn’t quite work out. 

Marx famously relied on Engels’ wealth to subsidize his radicalism, but it turns out that, even backstopped by USAID, George Soros is not wealthy enough to sustain a good lifestyle for the marginal creatives. They want more. 

Mamdani’s success proves that in major cities—even cities like New York, which tilted rightward in 2024—it is still possible to win with an essentially clerical coalition. At least, it is possible to do so if one can complement this largely white demographic with outreach to minority voters. Mamdani fared very poorly with African-Americans, but he won among Hispanics and South Asians. (Interestingly, Mamdani also did better with men than with women, despite the #MeToo allegations against his rival. We may be entering not only a post-peak, but also a less Longhouse-oriented phase of wokeism.) Nationally, a more socioeconomically diverse coalition—one that would unite non-college workers, minorities turned off by progressive values, and some high-earners in friendly precincts of American capitalism (as with the tech sector in the Obama era)—would make for a much larger tent. But in places like New York, organizing such a disparate bunch against an engaged base of lumpencommentarians is not an easy task. This means that figures like Mamdani will continue to find prominent places on the Democratic stage—likely to the detriment of a party that is plummeting in popularity.

Of course, the Lumpencommentariate is an urban phenomenon, concentrated in places like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. You will not find many in Omaha or Houston because that’s not where the “creative” action is. That means that less progressive Democrats have plenty of room for maneuver, although it’s hard to see that they are trying yet. All the energy is with AOC, Mamdani, and politicians who talk the lefty talk, even if their version is more along the lines that appeal to AWFLs.

Conti’s analysis is spot on, and fits nicely with Peter Turchin’s argument that societal discord in America is rooted in what he calls the “overproduction of elites”–people who go to college, expect six-figure starting salaries as their right, but whose actual skills don’t justify half that much. 

The push to send so many kids to college was based on the promise that higher education leads to higher incomes, but it turns out that for many college-educated graduates, their skills only justify salaries well below those of electricians and plumbers. Your gender studies degree gets you a barista job, not a university professorship, of which there are few. 

…wokeness has found its level as the authentic expression of a set of squeezed strivers: creatives, professionals, and knowledge-workers who feel that their compensation and social standing do not reflect their education, abilities, and moral insight. And Mamdani shows that even after its peak, wokeness is here to stay, a diminished force nationally but supported by a unified base in our most important cities.

Yep. Sounds right. 

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