On Christmas Eve, I was in a coffee shop in my hometown of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. While there, I overheard a group of women discussing a newspaper article about transgender issues.

One woman said, “You know—I would care more about this and want to learn more if the only thing I didn’t focus on every day was making a living for me and family.”

She wasn’t a deplorable person. She struck me as a decent woman trying to move forward in life.

Democrats speak eloquently about social justice and civil rights. But as surely as safeguarding human dignity depends on both those things, it depends on people being able to simply secure their livelihoods—the ability to face the day without a series of unjust and impossible choices: the mortgage or medication, lunch money or groceries, visiting a loved one in the hospital or keeping your job.

We must never underestimate what it means to be able to provide for you and your family and how deeply it destroys you when you can’t.

In this illusory contest between social inclusion and economic opportunity, Democrats must reject the false choices that divide us against each other.

We choose both.

You can watch me discuss this and more in my latest Fox News appearance: