Recently, Jerusalem Demsas and Matthew Yglesias debated the merits of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs on a new podcast for the liberal magazine the Argument. Demsas took the view that these programs are, on the whole, fine. Yglesias argues that they are rotten and politically dangerous.

He gives an eye-popping example featuring billionaire former NBA star Magic Johnson, whose company, Magic Johnson Enterprises, has a subsidiary that’s 51 percent owned by Johnson and 49 percent owned by Sodexo, a French-based multinational corporation with $32.9 billion in revenue. The subsidiary only exists, however, to spin Sodexo’s cafeteria services as “a minority-owned business” — billionaire Johnson is, of course, black — so that they qualify for lucrative contracts with District of Columbia Public Schools.

Yglesias’s frustration is clear. “And it’s like, what is being achieved here right now?

Demsas interrupts:

Who cares, man? Like there are other situations where I’m like, “Yeah, like someone’s really missing out here.” Like who cares? Like, this is like, “Yeah, this seems sub-optimal and like it shouldn’t happen. It’d be better if it didn’t happen.” But I’m like, this is not like. . .

It goes on like this.

This is a dodge. And Demsas knows it’s a dodge. She knows exactly “who cares.” Demsas herself cares, seeing as she is debating the question publicly — if anything, she seems exasperated. And she knows that lots of people care, specifically, about the kind of abuse Yglesias highlights.

The problem with so many of these diversity programs is exactly this: they benefit those who need no help to begin with. They are programs designed by the elite, for the elite. Even the acronym gives it away. DEI is about “diversifying” the elite. The corporate boardroom might be free to buy back their own companies’ stocks, in order to pay for laying off thousands of workers, but that boardroom better be diverse.

Johnson, for instance, could buy a $200,000 car every week until he died and it would look like a rounding error on his bank statement. Instead, the DEI-defenders endorse the horizontal distribution of opportunities among the elite. And doing so puts them in the position of having to defend the very rich at a time when — thanks to our K-shaped economy — the bottom 80 percent of the country is struggling just to get by.

Their thinking seems to be: “Look, if Sodexo is already gobbling up tax dollars, then the billionaire Johnson ought to get a piece of the pie too, right? Why should the private pillaging of public money be confined to those with fair skin?”

Politically, it’s a disastrous argument.

None of this is a secret. None of this is an accident. And none of it is new. In 2026, much of the Left is clear about what “inclusion,” “equity,” and “diversity” has meant in practice. Extensive left-wing critiques of those programs have been advanced for years. Many from this very publication. But most liberals still haven’t come to that conclusion. No matter how flawed these kinds of policies are, no matter how much evidence we have that they do nothing to help ordinary people in any meaningful way and that they are, in fact, politically toxic, criticizing DEI is always out of the question. Because any criticism of “our side” sounds a little “too Trumpy” for comfort. That’s what Demsas means when she says, “Who cares?”

She’s not alone. “Who cares?” has become a default reply from liberals to a whole host of criticisms. Voters in poor neighborhoods concerned about crime? Who cares. A spike in drug overdoses? Who cares. Rise in public disorder? The escalating price of eggs? Who cares.

It’s become the easy way to laugh off any criticism of an increasingly ossified liberal worldview and a way to defend bad positions developed in the algorithm-deranged 2010s. It takes as a given that whatever policy Team Blue has endorsed must be correct, simply because Team Red is dumb and crazy. It says, sure our policies aren’t perfect, but why should we revise them? Look how bad the other guys are! I mean really, who cares if we get some of this stuff wrong?

But people do care. In fact, most working-class people care. Turns out that while a majority of the college-educated are fine with diversity programs, an inverse majority of noncollege-educated people think these programs are unfair and bad.

Working-class whites are the most offended by such policies — with a whopping 79 percent of them opposing race-based diversity initiatives. Is that because they’re all bigots? Or is it that, after decades of struggling to get by, you’re being told you’re too “privileged” to qualify for help.

It’s not that Demsas is unaware of this. She knows the statistics. What she’s really saying is that those people don’t count in the math of liberalism today. They aren’t in The Club, so “who cares” what they think? You can see how the psychodrama plays out in real time, after Demsas drops the “Who cares, man?” Yglesias gulps. He knows the Johnson thing is indefensible but, nevertheless, he’s been served. What she’s asking is, “Do you really want to die on this hill?”

Then again, “Who cares?” might be another way of saying, “We won’t change.” Because it’s not just working-class voters who are begging Democrats to be the responsible adults in the room. A recent paper by the political scientists David Broockman and Joshua Kalla makes clear that if Democrats want to win the support of working people, abandoning their commitment to race-first diversity schemes is a pretty good place to start.

Of course, liberals know that many of their positions are a liability with voters, but they also know they have half the country held hostage. Support for Donald Trump is imploding thanks to his increasingly volatile attacks (on democratic traditions, on Iran, on our paychecks, and more). And elite Democrats are counting on political physics: if the Right has swung too far, they suppose, the pendulum will whip back in their direction sooner or later. They don’t need to change; they just need to wait. The trouble is it may not work like that anymore.

Remember, this is exactly how liberals brunched-themselves-backward into yet another Trump administration. When Joe Biden declared that he would pick a woman to be his vice president — and then soon specified that it would be a black woman — anyone who voiced even mild concern that this was unnecessarily limiting his choices was met with the same kind of threatening questions. Why do you care about that? It’s not hurting anyone. Besides, is there something wrong with picking a black woman?

Well, Biden didn’t pick a great candidate. He picked Kamala Harris. Whose political skill consists of being an elite liberal from the citadel of elite liberalism. He had every reason in the world to doubt that she could win a national election in four years. And sure enough, she lost one.

The world is now living with the consequences of that decision. Dead schoolgirls in Iran. Israel unleashed and unbowed. Chaotic, and increasingly unstable, global relations. Rising prices. Incomprehensible stock fluctuations. Exploding inequality. Crushing poverty. These are the real consequences of “Who cares?”

To be clear, it’s not that liberals should abandon their principles; if there are policies worth defending, worth persuading people of, then for God’s sake: defend them! Make The Argument. The trouble is “Who cares?” is not an argument. It’s a dismissal of dissent. And it will be read by the electorate, correctly, as just more out-of-touch elitism from the Democratic Party’s salaried clergy.