Thurs­day night, Trump spent con­sid­er­able air time speak­ing (more like yelling) about how America’s steel and coal work­ers have been ignored and sold-out for decades by both polit­i­cal par­ties. He promised to bring back those long-dis­ap­pear­ing jobs and to put their needs front and cen­ter in his admin­is­tra­tion. As the daugh­ter of a steel work­er, I admit it was nice to final­ly hear some­one talk about how the old indus­tri­al work­ing class was robbed of their dig­ni­ty and liveli­hood, with lit­tle regard for the dev­as­ta­tion left behind.

But that work­ing class — the blue-col­lar, hard-hat, most­ly male arche­type of the great post-war pros­per­i­ty — is long gone. In its place is a new work­ing class whose jobs are in the now mas­sive sec­tors of our serv­ing and car­ing econ­o­my. And so far, nei­ther Trump nor Clin­ton have talked about this new work­ing class, which is much more female and racial­ly diverse than the one of my dad’s gen­er­a­tion. With Trump’s racial­ly charged and nativis­tic rhetoric, he’s offer­ing red meat to a group of Amer­i­cans who have every right to be angry — but not at the vil­lains Trump has served up.

The decades-long destruc­tion of Amer­i­can man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­found­ly changed the work­ing class — neigh­bor­hoods, jobs and fam­i­lies. What had once been near­ly uni­ver­sal, guar­an­teed well-pay­ing jobs for young men fresh from high school grad­u­a­tion were yanked over­seas with lit­tle regard for the dev­as­ta­tion left behind.

To add insult to injury, the loss of man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs was often her­ald­ed as a sign of progress. As the eco­nom­ic con­tri­bu­tion of these for­mer work­ing-class heroes to our nation dwin­dled and the tech­nol­o­gy rev­o­lu­tion siz­zled, in many people’s minds, mil­lions of men became zeroes. They seemed to be a dusty anachro­nism in a sparkling new economy.

Black men, who had fought for decades for their right to these well-pay­ing jobs, watched them evap­o­rate just as they were final­ly admit­ted to com­pet­i­tive appren­tice­ships and added to senior­i­ty lists. When cap­i­tal fled for Mex­i­co or Chi­na, the shut­tered fac­to­ries in America’s biggest cities left a giant vac­u­um in their wake, dec­i­mat­ing a pri­ma­ry source of jobs for black men that would nev­er be replaced.

The eco­nom­ic vac­u­um would be filled with a bur­geon­ing under­ground econ­o­my in the drug trade, which was met with a mil­i­ta­rized war on drugs rather than an eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment plan. That war con­tin­ues today — the scaf­fold­ing upon which our prison indus­tri­al com­plex is built and the fir­ma­ment uphold­ing the police bru­tal­i­ty and oppres­sion in black com­mu­ni­ties that result in far too many unarmed black men being shot and killed by police.

As for the once priv­i­leged, white work­ing-class man, the dig­ni­ty and sense of self-worth that came with a union con­tract and the trap­pings of mid­dle-class life are sore­ly missed and their absence bit­ter­ly resent­ed. In the absence of real com­mit­ments from either polit­i­cal par­ty to pro­mote high-qual­i­ty job cre­ation for work­ers with­out col­lege degrees, con­ser­v­a­tive talk-radio’s echo cham­ber and the rhetoric of far-right con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians have con­coct­ed a sto­ry about who is win­ning (and tak­ing from gov­ern­ment) in this post-indus­tri­al econ­o­my: African-Amer­i­cans and immigrants.

These are the con­tours shap­ing our nation’s polit­i­cal debate.

Don­ald Trump has hitched his pres­i­den­tial wag­on to the pain of the white work­ing class, though far more rhetor­i­cal­ly than sub­stan­tive­ly. With his anti-immi­grant pledge to ​“build a wall” and his uni­corn promis­es to rip up trade agree­ments and bring man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs back to our shores, Trump promis­es to make the white work­ing class ​“win­ners” again.

But the sad real­i­ty is that his cam­paign rep­re­sents noth­ing more than yet anoth­er cyn­i­cal polit­i­cal ploy to tap the racial anx­i­ety and eco­nom­ic despair felt by white work­ing-class men. It is a salve to soothe with no real med­i­cine for heal­ing the under­ly­ing wound.

Trump, and the Repub­li­can Par­ty more broad­ly, offer no solu­tions or even promis­es to address the grave eco­nom­ic inse­cu­ri­ty of the broad­er work­ing class today, whose jobs are more like­ly to be in fast food, retail, home health care and jan­i­to­r­i­al ser­vices than on an assem­bly line. Unlike their pre­de­ces­sors, today’s work­ing class toils in a labor mar­ket where dis­re­spect — in the form of low wages, errat­ic sched­ules, zero or few sick days and arbi­trary dis­ci­pline — is ubiq­ui­tous. Gone are the unions and work­place pro­tec­tions that cre­at­ed a blue-col­lar mid­dle class — the best descrip­tor for my own fam­i­ly back­ground. Today’s work­ing class punch the clock in a coun­try with the largest per­cent­age of low-paid work­ers among advanced nations, with the pay­checks of African-Amer­i­cans and immi­grants plung­ing even fur­ther, par­tic­u­lar­ly among women.

Thanks to the brave action and demands of move­ments like Fight for $15, Unit­ed We Dream and Black Lives Mat­ter, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is final­ly offer­ing a robust offi­cial plat­form to improve the lives of today’s work­ing class, not the one of my father’s gen­er­a­tion. After decades in which work­ing-class plight went large­ly over­looked by the Democ­rats in favor of a more cen­trist, pro-busi­ness stance, the party’s pro­gres­sive eco­nom­ic shift should claim broad sup­port among the new work­ing class. As not­ed in my book, Sleep­ing Giant, unlike a gen­er­a­tion ago, today’s work­ing class is mul­tira­cial and much more female — more than one-third of today’s work­ing class are peo­ple of col­or. Near­ly half (47 per­cent) of today’s young work­ing class, those aged 25 – 34, are not white peo­ple. And two-thirds of non-col­lege edu­cat­ed women are in the paid labor force, up from about half in 1980.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, both through its plat­form and its can­di­date, sup­ports high­er wages, paid sick days, afford­able child care, col­lege with­out debt and reify­ing the right to a union. With a plat­form more pro­gres­sive than any in recent his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly on eco­nom­ic and racial jus­tice issues, there should be no doubt that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is the cham­pi­on of the work­ing class, at least on the mer­its. But most peo­ple don’t read par­ty plat­forms or study pol­i­cy posi­tions. Instead, they lis­ten and watch, wait­ing for cues that a can­di­date ​“gets” them and is actu­al­ly talk­ing to them.

For despite the plat­form lan­guage and Hillary Clinton’s stat­ed posi­tions, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty hasn’t been talk­ing to the work­ing class. The words ​“work­ing class” seem all but erased from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic lex­i­con — in its speech­es, ads and on its social media. The party’s lan­guage still clings to vague notions of ​“work­ing peo­ple” or ​“hard-work­ing Amer­i­cans” or the false notion of a ubiq­ui­tous ​“mid­dle class.” It may well be that the par­ty has bought the polit­i­cal spin that ​“work­ing class” is code for ​“white and male” — but actu­al­ly, it’s peo­ple of col­or who are much more like­ly to con­sid­er them­selves work­ing class. And as the par­ty of racial and social jus­tice, Democ­rats are miss­ing a big oppor­tu­ni­ty to sell its eco­nom­ic plat­form to this new work­ing class.

The Gen­er­al Social Sur­vey, a long-run­ning pub­lic opin­ion sur­vey, found in 2014 that 46 per­cent of respon­dents iden­ti­fied them­selves as work­ing class com­pared to 42 per­cent who iden­ti­fy as mid­dle class. Black and Lati­no indi­vid­u­als were much more like­ly than whites to iden­ti­fy as work­ing class. Six out of 10 Lati­nos and 56 per­cent of blacks con­sid­er them­selves work­ing class, com­pared to just 42 per­cent of whites. In fact, in every year since the ear­ly 1970s, the per­cent­age of Amer­i­cans who iden­ti­fy as work­ing class has ranged between 44 and 50 per­cent. Inter­est­ing­ly, younger peo­ple are also more like­ly to con­sid­er them­selves work­ing class, with 55 per­cent of 18 – 29 year olds iden­ti­fy­ing as work­ing class com­pared to 36 per­cent who iden­ti­fy as mid­dle class.

Yet Trump has won the rhetor­i­cal war for the work­ing class — despite his pitch being nar­row­ly tai­lored to dis­af­fect­ed white men. There is no doubt in my mind that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is the par­ty of the work­ing class — white, black and brown — at least sub­stan­tive­ly. But by fail­ing to explic­it­ly use the term ​“work­ing class,” the par­ty risks not being heard by the very vot­ers who have the most at stake in this election.