This fiery evangelical pastor offers a blueprint for Democrats’ revival in Trump’s second term

By John Blake, CNN

(CNN) — The high price of bread and eggs doomed her. Nope, it was raw racism and sexism. Well, maybe she should have gone on Joe Rogan’s show.

If you’re looking for a reason why Vice President Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump, there are plenty to choose from. Many of Harris’ reeling supporters are still trying to understand the forces behind Trump’s win. Trump won less than half of the popular vote, where his margin of victory was smaller than President Biden’s in 2020. Still, he swept all seven swing states and he has forced Democrats to ask what they must do to reach more working-class and Latino voters.

One prominent evangelical pastor offers some insight. The Rev. William J. Barber II has long been one of America’s most persistent and eloquent spokespersons for poor and working-class Americans. Barber, who has been called “the closest person we have to MLK” in contemporary America, has organized coalitions of the poor, working-class Whites and people of color around such causes as raising the minimum wage, expanding health care and strengthening unions. Barber is the recipient of a MacArthur “genius grant” and helps lead the Poor People’s Campaign, which seeks national solutions to ongoing poverty.

Barber also has done something else: He’s shown Democrats how they can win political victories in red states. Barber is currently the founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School and Repairers of the Breach, a group that trains social justice leaders.

But he made his mark from his home state of North Carolina. As one of the architects of the “Moral Mondays” movement, he helped lead a racially diverse coalition that is credited with toppling a Republican governor and turning North Carolina into a swing state. Though Harris lost North Carolina, Democrats in 2024 won races for governor and attorney general, and the GOP appears likely to lose its veto-proof majority in the state legislature.

For Democrats debating how best to reach new voters, Barber’s perspective could be valuable. He has written a blueprint for expanding the Democratic base in North Carolina and elsewhere through what he calls “fusion politics,” a multiracial and multiclass coalition that transcends the conservative-vs.-progressive binary. Racism is often depicted as a Black problem, but Barber insists it’s also been used throughout US history to hurt the economic interests of everyday White people. He once said, “Racism may target Black people, but it damns a democracy, and it damns humanity.”

CNN spoke with Barber about the country’s future in Trump’s impending second term. In his rumbling preacher’s baritone, Barber explained why he thinks both political parties fail the working class, how the Democratic Party can move forward and why he still believes America can become a genuine multiracial democracy.

His answers were edited for clarity and brevity.

Were you shocked by the election results?

I don’t know if shocked is the word. I’m deeply concerned for this country. I’m deeply disappointed that you could have someone who spews as much violence and viciousness, a sexual abuser (a federal jury found last year in a civil case that Trump sexually abused a woman in 1996 in New York City) who clearly doesn’t believe in the rule of law. He lies, curses and creates an enemy list. If Vice President Harris had done a half of one of those things, her poll numbers would have dropped and she would have not even been able to stay in the race. Trump is able to do it, and somehow so many Americans look the other way.

For people to say they still support him, there’s something deeply wrong with a large section of the country. And then what’s really shocking to me is the number of people who still choose not to vote. What is it about our society that we can see someone who leans into fascism, and there is not an all-out effort to get to the polls and say no?

What’s your answer to that question? What is it about people that saw all this and still didn’t vote?

I think people get turned off because they feel as though politics is just a game of the rich and things are not going to really change. From one study, we found out that 30 million poor and low-wage people did not vote because they said nobody talked to them. Nobody talked to their issues. If you look at the two (2024 presidential and vice-presidential) debates, not one candidate was asked how would their policies affect the issues of people dying every day from poverty and low wages. Not one candidate was asked would they raise the minimum wage, which we’ve not raised for 15 years.

The debates write a lot of people off. They (low-income viewers) don’t hear their names, they don’t hear their conditions. So our discourse, or lack thereof, is causing more and more people to just remove themselves (from the political process). We have a lot of questions to ask about our soul and mindset in this culture.

Critics say Democrats are elitist and look down on working-class people. What do you say to that?

Neither party has done enough, and all of them dismiss poor and low-wage service people in different ways. The Republicans tend to say poverty and low wage is your own fault. And then they try to racialize poverty and make it like it’s a Black issue. When they talk about poverty, the first thing they do is show a Black woman with food stamps.

On the other side, Democrats think that they can just talk “middle class.” They don’t have to say “poverty.” They don’t have to say “low wages.” They fall in the trap of allowing poverty to be marginalized.

Democrats — I don’t know if I would use the word elitism — they just haven’t done what could have been done when they had the opportunity. I go back to the fact that the $15 (minimum wage) was a part of the Covid relief package. It was taken out of the package and it was allowed to be voted on individually but some so-called moderate Democrats said no to it at that time.

We have a deep moral problem in this country. We’re just writing off a whole swath of people. We begged and pushed and marched and demanded that there’d be a roundtable in the White House, bringing in poor, low-wage people from Appalachia and Alabama to face this issue. We said the Senate should have a vote on a living wage before the election and make people like (Vice President-elect) JD Vance vote and say where they stand right before the election so the American people could know. There’s not a battleground state where poor and low-wage people don’t make up more than 40% of the electorate. There’s not a battleground state where if just 10% of poor, low-wage people were to vote around an agenda that they wouldn’t fundamentally shift the outcome of the election.

There are people who say it’s a mistake to reduce Trump’s victory to racism or sexism because large numbers of Latino men voted for Trump. What role do you think racism and sexism played in the election result?

Racism certainly is a part of it. But you got to go beyond just race because 66 million poor, low-wage folks are White, and they vote for policies that hurt them as well. You have to look at the level of chauvinism in the election. We’ve had two highly qualified women (Hillary Clinton in 2016; Harris in 2024), both better people (than Trump) in terms of character and policy, lose to Trump and the MAGA movement.

In North Carolina, you had a Democrat — the governor, the lieutenant governor, the superintendent of schools, the attorney general — win (in 2024). And yet the vice president loses in North Carolina. That is not an easy thing to solve. The votes went down, rather than up, for both candidates (Harris and Trump). We know that extremists love election numbers to be down. That’s where they flourish.

I talked to a Black woman who said after the election that she is done with America. She doesn’t want to live in this country anymore. What would you say to people who are in despair and just want to check out?

They should have a level of grief, hurt and anger to see someone who can be as fascist-leaning and mean-spirited, both in words and in public policy, as Trump beat someone who is upstanding and cares about the whole of all people.

But what you saw election night is not the whole of America. It’s a part of America in a particular moment around the election. You have to stop and say, wait a minute, this is the same America that I went to sleep in the night before. It’s not some strange America. This is part of America. America has always had multiple stories running at the same time.

A democracy is a hard struggle. Sixty years after the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the first Reconstruction, you had something similar. An extremist got elected named Woodrow Wilson. He played “Birth of a Nation” (the 1915 silent film that featured racist depictions of Black people while glorifying the Ku Klux Klan, which Wilson screened at the White House). But the point I’m making is people were hurt. He lied to the Black community. He got elected, he started wanting to turn back all kinds of (civil rights) laws. The Supreme Court voted to begin separate but equal (the notorious “Plessy v. Ferguson” decision that legitimated Jim Crow laws). But what did people do? They hurt, they grieved and then they got up and fought.

We’re in the birth pangs of what I call a Third Reconstruction. We have to grab on to our foreparents. They didn’t have the luxury to go anywhere. It is not a moment to walk away. It is not a moment to say this is all of America. All of America’s voice wasn’t even heard (in this election). We can’t blame it all on Trump. If less people voted, we got to own that. A democracy demands engagement. It’s built on “we the people.” Checking out is how extremists get elected.

Do you still believe we could have a genuine multiracial democracy in America?

Oh, yes. I believe it. I think it’s hard work. We’ve had two attempts at reconstructing the country (Reconstruction in the 19th century and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s). And remember: the reconstructionists didn’t just quit or lose. People were beaten down, cheated and assassinated. But I believe in the possibility of a Third Reconstruction. Out all of this grief and struggle we’ve seen, it’s going to cause a massive pushback. I know the history of folk who tend to wield injustice. They always go too far. And they end up producing their own resistance.

My word to progressives and Democrats is to not try to have a left or a right agenda. Have a moral agenda. Look at what issues are a violation of our deepest moral values. Lift from the bottom. Own the fact that the things we talk about — a living wage, health care — are highly popular in the public square.

John Blake is a CNN senior writer and author of the award-winning memoir, “More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.”

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