Opinion | The Communal Power of a Real Job

In other cases, conservatives will head in new directions or even reverse course. Our society’s intensive commitment to the college pathway might make sense if we plan to have the one-fifth of students who move smoothly from high school to college to career take care of everyone else. But an insistence that workers throughout the labor market share in productivity growth will shift the education system focus from college completion to alternative pathways from high school to productive careers.

Conservatives’ longstanding hostility toward organized labor will give way to an emphasis on reform. The 1930s-style unions mandated by the National Labor Relations Act have passed their expiration date, but new forms of organizing through which workers can support one another, engage with management and contribute to civil society should be a conservative priority.

Rather than focus safety-net debates on budget savings, conservatives will ask how to use existing budgets better — for instance, by transforming at least some portion of the safety net into a wage subsidy delivered directly into each low-wage paycheck, encouraging less skilled workers to enter the labor force and businesses to employ them. Mr. Hawley proposed such a work credit in his successful campaign to unseat Claire McCaskill.

And yes, conservatives will bring a skepticism of unfettered international trade and immigration to the discussion as well. If the emphasis is on a healthy labor market, rather than merely rising consumption, then borders matter. Few things could benefit American workers more than forcing companies to rely on them — something progressives always acknowledged in their calls for greater worker power, until it began conflicting with other priorities.

More trade is good, if that trade is balanced. But huge trade deficits represent supplies of foreign workers entering the United States market from afar with no commensurate rise in foreign demand for what American workers produce. Immigration, likewise, can be constructive — if those immigrants enter segments of the labor market where native workers are doing well. But if a lack of economic opportunity for less-educated Americans is seen as one of society’s great challenges, allowing yet more less-educated workers to enter the labor market won’t make sense.

Mr. Rubio has co-sponsored legislation with Senator Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat, to confront China’s unfair trade practices and held hearings and published research on its industrial policy. This past week, Mr. Hawley and Ms. Baldwin co-sponsored legislation that would require the Federal Reserve to close the trade deficit by taxing foreign purchases of American assets.

Political realignments occur when core values collide with changed conditions, creating rifts that both divide longstanding alliances and bring new sets of constituencies and concerns into contact. The one underway in America is frequently mischaracterized as pitting an “open” progressive side that favors desirable things like trade, immigration, the environment and college against a “closed” conservative side that finds them scary. But the actual divide is between a progressive enthusiasm for pushing ahead and a conservative concern about restoring fractured foundations.