2016 Postmortem

You bring up some good points.

Let me just touch on the ones where we might not be on 100% agreement.

How do I conclude that white suburbanites won't come back?

Partly for the very reasons you mention (combined with their overtly racist behaviors), partly because of the post-Bill elections, a lot because of the last election. Let me talk about them in reverse order.

Trump had only one message, hate. I know the "still Bernie" folks want to say Trump pushed the anti-TPP idea too, but he really didn't and, besides, Bernie was out pushing the same message for Hillary. The simple and I think indisputable fact is that every single (euphemistically, not literally) person who put a check next to Trump's name was driven by hate. What's more, they believed so strongly in hate that they didn't vote for a candidate who (even if you were the staunchest Hillary opponent during the primary) was, at very least (and we know she was much more), as acceptable as any other Democrat who has run. They showed they were one issue voters of the most reprehensible kind and that issue was keeping us down. You don't come back from that.

If you take that revelation and look at the post-Bill demise of our party, you start to realize that, over that period of time, we ran lots of candidates who were very similar to Hillary to the extent that they were not overtly "liberal" and often times vastly superior to their opponents. They also failed to bring in the suburban vote. I think it logical to conclude that what was, at least in my mind, conclusively proven reasons for their rejection of the astoundingly better Hillary Clinton, was what also drove them away from other Democrats.

Finally, I think when you combine your observation about the Democratic Party becoming the champion of "the very poor, feminists, the unemployed, African Americans, Latinos, and other groups" with long lines of suburbanites cuing up to by guns when the only "danger" is the racist myth perpetrated by the NRA, their support for anti-gay referendums (even in states like California), the virulent anti-mosque demonstrations in the suburbs, and the (again, primarily suburban) rise in hate crimes, it's hard to deny that hatred is the driving factor in white suburbia. This is especially true when you recall that, unlike the <$50K working folks who voted for Hillary who have seen hardships even during the recovery, suburbanites have seen their 401Ks explode, their home values bounce, and their cost of living stay low. In other words, they have ZERO reason to be anything to be disgruntled over (other than hate) and they still voted for a psychopath.

As for Stan Greenberg's analysis, I thought is was pretty result-oriented at the time (evidence, limiting his sample pool to union workers), but even assuming that he was correct then, those people don't exist in significant numbers any more. We're not looking at a big mass of union workers who watched their jobs go overseas while Obama was president (and by Stan's theory, working for "us folks&quot . These are folks who either never made a union wage in their life or, if they did, haven't made one for two decades. These are now the sub-$50k workers who Hillary actually did bring back to the fold.

I have to tell you that on everything else, we couldn't agree more.

I do think there is one other path which can get us back at every level and maybe sooner than a generation (which may just be wishful thinking because I won't live to see another generation). It is what somehow became a "dirty word" around here . . . "identity politics." If we take up the mantle of "the very poor, feminists, the unemployed, African Americans, Latinos, and other groups" (AND the working class voters Hillary already kept in line) with the kind of vigor we've been too scared to do for years upon years. If we stand up not just for the bright-eyed high achiever who has been kept down by overt racism but the also the Michael Browns who have been kept down by subtle racism even before they were shot down in the street; if we stand up for the right to vote of not just the ninety year old daughter of slaves, but also of the black man who just got out of prison for murder; if we tell working people of all races colors and creeds that THEY are the "producers" of wealth and that the controllers of capital are the "takers;" in short, that there is "good" and there is "bad" and they are the "good," we might just stop the haters in their tracks.

Thank you so much for getting back to me. I honestly appreciate it more than you can imagine.