For more than fifty years, working people in the United States have seen their wages stagnate, their jobs disappear, and their political influence collapse-while billionaires consolidate unprecedented wealth and power. Today, millions of voters feel politically homeless, alienated from both major parties and skeptical that either one is capable of delivering real change.
In The Billionaires Have Two Parties, We Need a Party of Our Own, labor educator and political strategist Les Leopold argues that this crisis is not a failure of working people-but a failure of the political system itself.
Grounded in original polling of voters in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the book reveals a striking truth: working people across the political spectrum are far more economically progressive than either party leadership acknowledges. They support bold policies like banning mass layoffs at profitable corporations, capping prescription drug prices, expanding health care, and guaranteeing the right to a living-wage job-while rejecting the culture-war distractions that dominate elite political discourse.
Leopold traces how both Democrats and Republicans became vehicles for corporate power, how gerrymandering and money in politics hollowed out democracy, and why efforts to "save" one party or find the next charismatic leader are unlikely to succeed without a mass working-class movement behind them.
Most importantly, Billionaires Have Two Parties is a book about what comes next. It explores whether a new working-class political organization is feasible, how it could be built, and why unions-despite their limitations-remain essential to any serious democratic revival. Rather than offering slogans or shortcuts, Leopold lays out a realistic, bottom-up strategy rooted in worker education, solidarity, and democratic participation. He reveals a strategy for reaching working people in ruby-red Congressional districts.
Clear-eyed but hopeful, rigorous but accessible, this book speaks directly to union members, community leaders, faith organizers, and anyone who believes American democracy cannot survive without economic justice. The billionaires already have two parties. The rest of us deserve one of our own.
