Working Class Dropout

On JD Vance, Moving Up and Losing Touch

In the AMC hit series Mad Men, there’s a scene in which the protagonist, Madison Avenue marketing mogul Don Draper, has an exchange with millionaire hotel founder Conrad Hilton. In their interaction, Draper and Hilton have a chance meeting in an empty bar in a country club. Draper mixes them both a whiskey old fashioned (with a customary 1960s heavy pour) and they enjoyed their cocktails while reminiscing on their humble beginnings. Draper told Hilton about how he used to be a chauffeur for a similar club in his youth. However, because he was just a poor kid who was part of the staff, they wouldn’t let him inside to use the restroom. In an act of juvenile rebellion, Draper would instead relieve himself in the trunks of the cars he parked. Hilton laughs and shares a story of his own. Hilton regaled Don with how he would watch all the rich, fancy people going into a mansion across the river and wondered what it would be like to go inside someday. He and Don share a meaningful look, some solidarity found. Both men had overcome abject poverty to become wealthy and successful. But Hilton goes on wistfully about feeling out of place once he was allowed in the country club: “It’s different inside”.

This is a sentiment that I relate to more and more as I get older. By trade, I’m an engineer. I won’t get too specific since what I do is a little niche and I don’t want to dox myself, but I work in a cutting-edge sector of the tech world designing, building and maintaining data centers. I had pretty humble beginnings installing TVs or setting up your router, but I’ve gone on to work in startups, maintaining national internet infrastructure to my current role in development. In fact, I actually installed a few flat screen TVs at the company where I now work. I remember all those years back looking around the campus, seeing the chic building design and the people walking around talking about important, technical sounding things while I worked to affix a TV to the wall. Someday, I thought, I would be one of them. Someday I wouldn’t be broke and working a service job that makes most people see me as just a part of the scenery. Well, now I’m one of them. But there is always something that keeps me from feeling comfortable in these spaces. I can’t help but find myself agreeing with Conrad Hilton. It really is different inside.

I may have a “professional” job now, but I didn’t come to it by the traditional path. I didn’t go to college, something that sets me apart from most of my peers. I wasn’t really a “computer kid”, either who was always naturally interested in and gifted with technology. As a result, I’m usually older than my peers at my skill and experience level or behind peers closer to my age. Instead of formal education, I learned through experience and studying on my own time. Until the age of twenty-seven, my work experience was blue collar- working in factories, warehouses, construction, retail or food service. That said, there’s a part of me that also feels a fierce sense of pride in this fact. No, I didn’t have the advantages some of my peers had, but I’m here all the same. To most people, the tech world is viewed as a white-collar profession. But to me and the way I clawed my way up, it almost feels like a blue-collar trade. That’s how I see it, at least. Even though I work in a fancy, high tech environment and make a salary that would have seemed like a pipe dream to me in my youth, I still proudly see myself as a working-class kid who made good.

But what does that mean? What, or who, is the working class? Everyone seems to have their own definition and many of them seem to conflict with each other. Is it about how much money you make? The type of job you have? Where you live? Level of education? Is it something independent of all of these factors that depends on your identity? If you do some research on this question and listen to Both Sides™ of the culture war, you could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that there is no working class in America. Anyone on the right isn’t working class because they live in a McMansion, own a truck, a boat dealership and are (probably) a racist. Anyone on the left isn't actually working class because they have an iPhone and went to college for gender feelings instead of learning to code. We’re all spoiled children who deserve nothing. But that can’t be right.

As we find ourselves in the final stretch of the 2024 US presidential election, the “working class” is a group venerated regardless of political party or cultural affectation. One figure who has taken up the mantle of “the working class” this election cycle is Ohio Senator JD Vance. On the surface, Vance may not seem like someone you would expect to be an avatar of the elusive working class. Vance is a Yale-educated lawyer, politician and entrepreneur. He has ties to eccentric billionaire Peter Theil who he encountered during his time in Silicon Valley. Vance is also the running mate of the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, a New York billionaire that expanded his already substantial inherited wealth through shady real estate deals and a media empire. Vance, by contrast, came from more humble beginnings.

In his 2015 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy”, Vance details his upbringing in a small, Ohio town ravaged by deindustrialization, poverty and drug addiction. Full disclosure, I honestly didn’t have much of an opinion of Vance prior to his nomination for Vice President in 2024. I vaguely remembered hearing his book discussed at the time and being popular with the Oprah crowd. I knew there was a Netflix adaptation of the movie starring Glen Close that was well received. I vaguely remembered there being some discourse on Vance and whether he was sincere or just exaggerating for political clout. That said, it wasn’t something that more than pinged the fringes of my radar until his nomination. At that time, I decided to give his book Hillbilly Elegy a read out of curiosity. If I’m being honest, I related to the upbringing he described more than I would care to admit.

I won’t give a full early life rundown since this isn’t that kind of blog and I do want to maintain some level of privacy, but I’ll go in broad strokes. In Hillbilly Elegy, Vance describes a life growing up in the deindustrialized Midwest. He describes generational poverty. Drug-addicted family members, an unstable and abusive home. Friends and neighbors whose teeth rot out of their mouths due to poor nutrition and lack of access to dental care (termed “Mountain Dew Mouth”). A general downward mobility and lack of hope for the future.

My experience didn’t mirror his completely, but more than a few points rhymed. My grandma lived in a trailer park, and I spent many of my summers there. I recall growing up and not being allowed to play with kids who lived in what I learned later in life was a crackhouse. The corner store we would buy five cent loose candies from was apparently owned and operated by the Hell’s Angels. I had family members who were hit hard by deindustrialization and went from once proud tradesmen to unemployed. I have friends and family members who I lost to the opioid epidemic. Friends and family in jail. Where I grew up, police sirens in the distance were a ubiquitous sound that harmonized with the crickets on any given summer night.

Look, I’m not naïve. I know the book most likely contains exaggerations and outright lies. In researching this article, I discovered a whole cottage industry dedicated to debunking the memoir or making a case for why Vance isn’t really a hillbilly, working class or that he’s a fraud pandering for political clout. Personally, I have a hard time believing his nomination isn’t a cynical attempt to appeal to the Republican base and Silicon Valley donors. That may or may not be true- after all, most memoirs are some proprietary blend of fact and fiction. How honest Vance is being about his upbringing isn’t as important as the experience he spoke to. Why did I and many others emotionally resonate with his story, real or exaggerated?

JD Vance may not be what you resonate with culturally, but he is a template we’ve seen many times before in American politics. We had Barak Obama and his rags to riches story in The Audacity of Hope. From the real-life Conrad Hilton to the fictional Don Draper, there’s nothing we love more than an underdog story.  We love the working-class kid who made good. Were Desperate for someone who seems like they’re on our side, and it’s not hard to see why. Call me a cynic, but US labor policy since WWII has been a long, slow tightening of the noose around the necks of the American worker.

If the 2020 pandemic and subsequent lockdown proved anything, it was that the workers in our society who are paid the least who are most essential for it to function. The average American is only two or three missed paychecks away from homelessness. Wages have not kept up with inflation and have stagnated since the 70’s. It doesn’t matter if you’re the skilled laborer who lost his job to offshoring or the formerly middle-class striver who did everything “right”, got a degree and now she’s drowning in deb. It doesn’t matter if you’re you were able to “make it” for a slightly better wage only to find yourself deracinated and without a community. It doesn’t matter if you’re living in a down and out area with few prospects and fewer reasons to hope for a better future. We’re all in the same boat.

In modern America, more and more people are struggling to make ends meet as traditional working-class industries are offshored and white-collar jobs are increasingly automated. Despite these challenges, there’s still a deep desire for dignity and respect. The loss of stable, jobs paying a living wage has left many feeling overlooked and left behind. It could be in a warehouse, an office, or gig work, people want to feel that their contributions matter. This desperate need for dignity cuts across class lines, reflecting a basic human need for respect, even as an ever-changing economy continue to erode job security and opportunities.

There’s something seductive about the desire to wait for a leader to come along and solve all our problems. I’m distrustful of JD Vance and the supposed shift of the Republican party to being the party of the working class. Maybe I’ve just been burned before- I was a member of the brethren of Bernard, and I’ve seen this play out before. I would be happy to be proven wrong, but I won’t hold my breath. But history shows that victories for the working class are rarely top-down. Real change comes from organizing, taking small steps, and standing in solidarity with one another. It will require building community and planting seeds you will likely not see the fruits of. Leaders can inspire, but it’s the everyday power of people coming together that creates lasting change. From the fight for the eight-hour workday to safer working conditions, these victories were the result of people uniting, pushing for change, and refusing to accept exploitation. It’s the everyday efforts- building networks, educating each other, and taking action- that ultimately will win the fight.