LSU’s Nancy Isenberg is the fourth most influential mind of the 2016 American political landscape, according to Politico.

Isenberg, a history professor, tied with writer and investor J.D. Vance for the No. 4 spot on the “Politico 50” list.

Isenberg’s book “White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America” published in June details the history of the American class system, examining the origin of the working-class grievances Donald Trump’s presidential campaign played on.

“As she writes … the white poor — referred to over the decades as ‘offals,’ ‘crackers,’ ‘mudsills,’ ‘rednecks’ and more — have a troubled past going back to their early years in the country as indentured servants considered lazy and stupid by British colonizers. Poor whites got some help thanks to the New Deal and the Great Society, but they still represent a sizable, often derided, strain of American society, and American politics too,” Politico’s biography on Isenberg reads.
Isenberg and Vance ranked just above U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin.