ABSTRACT
Confronting conservatism in U.S. politics, especially within the working class, demands a rethinking of the concept of “interests” that underlies contemporary Left critiques of the last two federal elections. Plumbing the depths of “interests” or class “interest” will provide little analytical or political purchase without some recognition of the temporal orientation of working-class conservatism. If the Left’s interests are only “about” the future, we cede political terrain absolutely fundamental to working-class cultural politics (i.e., “values”): the struggle over the past, of which nostalgia is perhaps the best evidence.
