A framed eighth-grade diploma, dated June 19, 1913, hangs on the wall opposite my computer. It belonged to my grandmother, Minnie Rothenhoefer, one of eight children in a German immigrant family, who was forced to quit school at age 14 after her alcoholic father abandoned his family. Her first job was picking onions and her greatest regret — she lived to age 99 — was that she never attended high school. “But there’s no excuse for ignorance when you can go right down to the public library,” she often said.

Gran has been in my thoughts even more than usual this year, because I know that she would have scoffed at one of the unanticipated consequences of the Trump presidency. I am referring to the endless self-flagellation among well-educated liberals — “the elites,” in pejorative parlance — about their failure to “get” the concerns of white working-class voters. Gran never expected anyone to “get” her. She was determined to educate herself for what she considered the privilege of citizenship.

Our current political discourse is corrupted by two equally flawed narratives about the relationship between social class and politics. The first is a fable accepted by many intellectuals, who have found themselves guilty because just enough white working-class voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin handed Mr. Trump his Electoral College win in 2016. Many fear that this year’s midterm elections will once again result in a rejection of “elitism” by the same voters.

In a second, equally flawed narrative — adopted by a segment of both blue-collar workers and intellectuals — the American working class is so victimized that almost none of its members are capable of accepting the responsibility of civic self-education.