Resisting authoritarianism is the second-highest priority for Democrats’ college-educated base. But for working-class Americans, it’s only the 19th priority (out of 20), we found in a new survey. The gap between these two groups was larger than on any other issues: elites prioritized resisting authoritarianism an astonishing 33 percentage points more than non-elites did.

Democrats’ dilemma is that their college-educated base insists they stand up to Donald Trump’s attacks on democracy, but they also need to win working-class votes. The way to thread that needle is to recognize that what’s needed to defend democracy in the short term is different from what’s needed to defend it in the long term.

In the short term, Democrats’ base is right: immediate action is needed in the courts, exemplified by the more than 150 lawsuits that Democracy Forward has filed against the Trump administration and the 82 filed by California attorney general Rob Bonta, contesting alleged corruption, funding cuts, election interference and more. Action in the streets is powerful, too, from the protests in Minnesota to the mobilization of more than 8 million people (chiefly highly-educated women) at No Kings rallies across the country. But while #resistance is necessary, it’s not enough. Democrats also need to take two additional steps.

The first is to talk about defending democracy in ways that connect with working-class voters, which our survey defines as those without college degrees in the middle 50% of US income distribution.........

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