Evan Barker once considered herself a lifelong Democrat. Raised in a union family from Kansas City, she actively campaigned for Barack Obama as a high school student and served as a community organizer for Hillary Clinton in 2015. Through her work with the consultancy Left Rising, she states, “I built my name as a ruthless fundraiser … I was a live player who helped progressive insurgents” — including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush, and Jasmine Crockett — “infiltrate from within.” However, her recent book, “Nothing Left” (Threshold Editions), released today, provides insights into why Barker lost faith in her party, leading her to vote for Donald Trump in 2024. In this exclusive excerpt, she shares a pivotal moment that revealed how Democrats have disregarded heartland voters.
On a chilly evening in late March 2022, I felt the unbearable weight of what progressives had become. This realization was my breaking point.
“We won’t be getting those voters; they’re not coming back — the ones who left and switched to Donald Trump — the future is young people of color!” declared Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez into the microphone.
That’s a great way to get Donald Trump re-elected, I thought, feeling frustrated as I observed an affluent, predominantly white audience applauding her like drunken seals.
I stood in front of Tom Steyer’s mansion in one of San Francisco’s most exclusive neighborhoods. Tom, a billionaire and Democratic mega-donor, had run for president in 2020.
I was seven months pregnant, nearing the end of my pregnancy.
Cristina, whom I had previously worked for during her US Senate race in Texas, was now the executive director of Tom Steyer’s organization NextGen America, a leading liberal youth organization. NextGen was the Left’s counterpart to Turning Point USA, aiming to mobilize millions of young voters with substantial financial resources.
Tom’s front yard offered a stunning view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Waiters carried silver trays of exquisite hors d’oeuvres among the small gathering, as champagne and wine glasses clinked.
At one point, Steyer’s wife sang a cappella for nearly ten minutes. She was off-key and had altered the lyrics of Brandi Carlile’s song “The Mother” to create her own political anthem. (I can’t recall the song’s theme, possibly about saving democracy or abortion.)
As the midterms approached, I was invited to Tom’s party by Cristina. The event aimed to introduce donors to her and her vision for the 2022 midterms. At the time, I was still working at Left Rising as a director. Cristina and I had developed a friendship. She stayed at my house during her visits, called me at least weekly, and even attended my wedding reception, offering a toast.
I’d heard Cristina talk about flipping Texas and emphasizing young people of color as a neglected voter bloc, but I had never heard her so openly dismiss the idea of winning back people like my grandmother or uncle.
When Cristina mentioned that Tom would allocate $60 million to the midterms and grant her full control over spending, I suggested investing in Missouri. In the midterms, low-propensity MAGA voters were less likely to vote since Trump wasn’t on the ballot. The races seemed winnable.
“Evan, I can promise you, we will never, ever go to Missouri,” she said with a smirk. I knew what she implied without needing to ask. It still baffled me.
Missouri was home to many who once voted Democrat. Texas hadn’t elected a Democrat statewide since 1994. Missouri elected a Democrat statewide as recently as 2018. However, progressives were fixated on flipping Texas.
I suspect they abandoned places like Missouri because winning there would require cultural moderation. They believed Texas would flip due to changing demographics, particularly young people of color, seen as natural progressives. Their dream was to flip Texas, altering the electoral map for Democrats without appealing to the “deplorables” like my family, who left for Trump.
Interestingly, Democrats easily won states like Ohio and Missouri in the past.
Democrats now struggle to win working-class Midwestern voters largely due to policies like NAFTA. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements into law. Although bipartisan, Clinton’s signature made him the figurehead for its consequences. If George H. W. Bush had signed NAFTA, he wouldn’t have betrayed his base as Clinton did.
At that time, Republican supporters were mainly college-educated and pro-big business, favoring free trade. Many viewed job losses as a natural trend of de-growth and automation, overlooking the Midwest and Rust Belt’s higher job loss concentration due to trade policy changes.
I once asked my uncle if he felt the Democratic Party looked down on people like him. He’s a bricklayer, construction worker, union member for over forty years, Navy veteran, gun owner, and lifelong Democrat. But since 2016, he has voted for Donald Trump.
He laughed. “Do Democrats look down on me? They don’t even look at me at all!”
Another uncle, the last Democrat voter in my family, said about 70% of his local union voted for Trump. When he asked why they liked Trump, members would say:
“Trump just gets me, man.”
“But Trump’s not going to help our union,” he’d say.
“Neither do Democrats,” they’d respond.
I wonder if Cristina and others realized they were alienating these men or if they even cared.
My dad was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, a town an hour north of Kansas City, once an industrial hub and home to Jesse James. St. Joe is now filled with abandoned factories and boarded-up buildings. My family knew workers who lost jobs when Lee Jeans closed its factory in 1996. NAFTA hit towns like St. Joe hard, especially for men without college degrees who once held well-paying manufacturing jobs.
In 2000, NAFTA’s impact became evident on the national electoral map. That year, Al Gore won St. Joseph’s county by just two points. In 2004, George W. Bush won it by six points. By 2016, Donald Trump won by twenty-seven points, the most dramatic shift yet. This reflects worsening conditions, job loss, and economic hardship, showing that Trump’s platform of bringing jobs back through tariffs and ending free trade resonated, unlike Democrats.
But it wasn’t just economic policy driving these voters away. Cultural issues such as identity politics, boys in girls’ sports, and immigration played significant roles in the white working class’s departure from Democrats. It’s evident from Democratic policies and party culture that they do not prioritize these voters, especially if they are white.
Texas was a demographic change test. If Democrats won Texas, it would indicate they could alter any state’s politics by mobilizing enough Latinos. They believed they didn’t need the white working class anymore, as they had Latino working-class support. (Or so they thought.)
Missouri was seen as the past, while Texas was the future. Ironically, Democrats need to economically deliver and be culturally moderate to win both states. They need to adopt anti-progressive populism to succeed. Somehow, they don’t recognize that the winning strategy is the same in both places, despite racial differences.
Excerpted from Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative. Copyright © 2026 by Evan Barker. Reprinted by permission of Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.
