2016 Postmortem

But there's a reason that the vast majority of fake news pieces, which were all the rage this past cycle, were pro-Trump. His supporters are far more inclined to believe utter nonsense. Long gone are the days when it might be reasonable to assume most are working off a set of agreed-upon facts (with differences of opinion over the causes and appropriate response to those facts). In this era of 24-hour cable "news"/infotainment and the Internet, tens of millions of people simply deny facts and have created an alternate reality. This, along with a white backlash, has contributed to increased polarization.

The year is 2016 and a candidate endorsed by the KKK just got more than 60 million votes and is the president-elect with the help of a vestige of slavery (i.e., the electoral college system).

As I posted about a month ago:

Trump brags about and commits sexual assault

Trump was endorsed by the KKK and has a long history of overt bigotry (plus he discriminated at his housing developments)

Trump suggested banning Muslims

Trump suggested most Mexican immigrants are rapists and drug dealers (in fact, that's precisely when his campaign picked up steam)

Trump lies and contradicts himself constantly (at a rate *much* higher than Clinton, according to Politico and anyone with a brain)

Trump cheered the housing collapse because he could capitalize on it

Trump ran a fraudulent "University"

Trump stiffed the contractors/blue collar workers he hired

Trump isn't even coherent much of the time (read the transcripts from his speeches and debate performances)

Trump didn't put forth substantive policy positions, whereas Clinton did (on economic matters and everything else)

Keep all of that (and more) in mind when you excuse people for supporting Trump. There was *no* excuse for voting for Trump. And inherent in the "working class whites" narrative is the notion that working class POC don't care about economic issues, as well as the notion that Clinton didn't discuss economic issues at length. Nothing could be further from the truth. Someone in another thread said Clinton didn't address rising health care costs, which is completely untrue. Her website (which you can still access), as well as speeches she gave, addressed rising health care costs at length--to a much greater extent than Trump did.

Again, Clinton won among the working class. If a segment of the *white* working class has much different priorities than the working class as a whole, one need not think too long and hard to determine why that might be.

In an increasingly diverse nation, racism, sexism, xenophobia, heterosexism and Christian supremacy takes precedence for tens of millions of Americans. Those things 'trump' everything else. And it is the GOP that plays "identity politics."

The fact is a large percentage of the American electorate cannot be reached by the Democratic Party no matter what (that's always been the case). Toss in some voter suppression, unprecedented FBI interference, a pathetic ratings-focused, spectacle-obsessed media (that promotes false equivalencies in the name of "balance" and doesn't think it appropriate to fact check) and a candidate (Clinton) who was victimized by decades of hate (with a boring, moderate running mate) and there you have it--a razor thin margin in a few battleground states being the difference. I'm fairly confident that the 2020 Democratic nominee can win with the exact same message as Clinton, so long as that person isn't Clinton. Which is not to say there aren't things the Clinton campaign should have done differently (such as more outreach to Democrats, particularly in rural areas, in purple states).

Also, one must consider just how many people subscribe to patently false beliefs:

1) http://www.alternet.org/story/148826/16_of_the_dumbest_things_americans_believe_--_and_the_right-wing_lies_behind_them

2) http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/you-think-you-knew-crazy-think-again-10-shockers-increasingly-unhinged-right

We must accept that we live in a country in which tens of millions of people believe wholeheartedly in some of the most absurd (and often vile) things imaginable.