Don’t believe the new myths about America’s white working class

THIS HAS BEEN AN ELECTION YEAR FILLED WITH SLOPPY sociology. Democrats, as usual, mistakenly see voters primarily as members of vast, amorphous “identity” groups rather than as individuals. Now the Republicans have joined in. “An odd symmetry has emerged between the political parties,” William Galston of the Brookings Institution told me recently. “Many Democrats have viewed racial and ethnic minorities as victims in the grip of larger forces, and now Republicans are doing the same