As we were fretting whether 88% vs 92% of blacks would vote, we missed out on the "missing white vote". Ridiculous as Trump asking black voters to vote for him, he asked - directly if not obscenely.

Sure, we tackled issues that affected white lives, but we didn't directly address "hey you, over there, I'm talking to you".

We have advocacy for blacks, Hispanics, LGBT, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and so on. But advocacy for white Protestants, or "Evangelicals" always takes on the tone of talking to the Klan, an implicit distaste and condemnation.

Salesfolks know you can't think contempt without it coming out to the customer. Our message to whites is "you can join our Big Tent if you embrace all our ideals". We don't demand that of any other group - we take them as they are, sympathise with them, try to work with them. The White Majority? Not so much.

"Whitelash" was a taste of a pretty coherent response to our not so subtle wish that the perceived intolerant white majority would just fade into a minority. It didn't, and it won't for a long time, for many of us' lifetimes.

Yeah, most of us see ourselves as white, but we aren't - we're somewhere else, and we qualify ourselves as somewhere else. Meaning we're not the customer for this message, and we're largely not ready to deliver or recognize it. 

I have some advantage having grown up in the South, but I was never fully a Southerner and now I'm miles away physically and psychically. But I still recognize a diss when I see one.

The old white Southern wing of the party is gone - Carter, Clinton, Gore, et al. Even there, Clinton long ago ceased to be Southern - he's global. Our farm team is in shambles.

Brexit should have been our wakeup call, but it was cast aside as a European thing or as "illogical", self-defeating, voting against their own interests. But all our issues are a bit loony or more complex than we like to admit. We thought America would be horrified by Trump's language, but quite rightly, you can't pal around with Jay Z writing & singing about "Pussy" in wretched terms - read the lyrics, seriously - and then have vapors over a sadly much much calmer comment from Trump. And it taps into white anger over the double standard - blacks still run around yelling "pussy" and "motherfucka" and "nigga", but whites are 1 comment away from losing their job over racism or sexism, such as happened at colleges over #BLM or a Halloween costume. And you can bet most of white America is pissed at the rap dominated airwaves or music scene, when you find driving around a steady 24x7 Christian politicized message and even Christian rock.

So what was our big offering for white America this time? Oh yeah, extend Obamacare to universal coverage. Brilliant - a policy they already hate so much they thrashed us in 3 elections over, and our response? "Make it bigger!!!" Sometimes we are teh stupid. 6 years later, do we even understand *why* white rural America hates Obamacare, and have we done one thing to address the issue, or if a misunderstanding clarify?

What was the message in the last days of the campaign to a people afraid of immigrants and minorities? "We're busing in every Hispanic and black to the polls to carry the election and override racist white voters". And we're surprised that the missing white voter finally put down the TV remote and got out to vote?

Next election we target 40% of these voters, these *people*. If we can't step inside their skin, understand their issues, find something we think we can offer, *TALK TO THEM*, we're lost. What was it Mike Tyson said - that Trump always shakes his hand, asks how the family is, and no one else does that. Okay, Tyson is pretty deplorable, but we have everyone lumped in the same basket.  (Yeah, I praised the use of the term, shaming to split the opposition, though still needs a counterbalance of "why we think you're valuable", not just "oh hey, you're not as deplorable as the rest).

Bill Clinton apparently kept asking for more focus on messaging rather than get-out-the-vote operations, and we see Trump's results in that - he had a shit GOTV operation, but Republicans came out anyway. Why? The "dog whistles" work. Well, we need some dog whistles too - ones that fit our values as well, but that make their ears perk up - in a positive way. More diversity, more government health care, more trade deals... won't cut it. Trump provided an image of the inner city that no longer exists - guess what, sports fans - people don't care. They like their images, and for Baby Boomers and Gen X those are the images they were imprinted with. Deal. With. It.

We spent June to September making Bernie and his fans happy - when we should have spent the time trying to make those missing white voters largely in rural and suburban areas who voted for him happy, or finding out better their discontent. Hillary did a very successful listening tour to become Senator and afterwards, and her Appalachian tour in 2008 was largely successful until she got called on "racism". She likely didn't have the time this time (and a foray into Kentucky/West Virginia got side-railed by a misquote over shutting down coalmines), but someone should have. Michael Moore pegged it - 

"Donald Trump came to the Detroit Economic Club and stood there in front of the Ford Motor executives and said if you close these factories as you're planning to do in Detroit and planning to build them in Mexico, I'm gonna put a 35 percent tariff on those cars when you send them back and nobody's gonna buy them. It was an amazing thing to see, no politician Republican or Democrat had ever said anything like that to these executives and it was music to the ears of people in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the Brexit states.

"Whether Trump means it or not is kind of irrelevant because he's saying the things to people who are hurting. And it's why every beaten-down nameless forgotten working-stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle-class loves Trump. He is the human Molotov-cocktail that they've been waiting for. The human hand-grenade that they can legally throw into the system that stole their lives from them.

"They see that the elites who ruined their lives hate Trump. Corporate America hates Trump. Wall Street hates Trump. The career politicians hate Trump. The media hates Trump after they loved him and created him and now hate him. Thank you media. The enemy of my enemy is who I'm voting for on November 8th. 

"Yes, on November 8th, Joe Blow, Steve Blow, Bob Blow, Billy Blow, Billy-bob Blow, all the Blows get to go and blow up the whole goddamn system because it's your right. Trump's election is going to be the biggest 'f--k you' ever recorded in human history. And it will feel good."

And we just assumed he was kidding, Michael being Michael, over the top. Once again we were wrong. How long till we get it right?

==

PS - coming across this acidic self-congratulatory article from The Guardian, I must respond. 3 points they make in Brexit => 1) left is blaming others (should have chosen Bernie), 2) US was already heavy on racism/misogyny in 2012 but Obama won, 3) US is building surveillance state/war on terror.

First thing: " those of us who tried frantically to warn Democrats that nominating Hillary Clinton was a huge and scary gamble — that all empirical evidence showed that she could lose to anyone and Bernie Sanders would be a much stronger candidate" - I have no proof whether Bernie would have been a more competitive candidate or not - but I can guess.

Bernie would be a gamble too of course, polls or not - or perhaps best said, especially in light of now discredited polls: we simply don't know what mistakes were baked into those polls without some thoughtful analysis. But considering the conservatives have *increased* their share of legislatures & governorships to 2/3, I'd guess there's no pent-up demand for more socialism in the US that Hillary didn't already address - and a conservative-enough foreign policy that brought crossover Republicans that Bernie would have never gotten.

[Edit to add: Bernie's trade message would resonate with the Missing Whites; universal health care not so much; free education doubtful, especially socialist connotations; raising taxes, fuhgettaboutit.

As for outsider status, Bernie's been in Congress for 26 years. Just as Trump used the "why haven't you fixed it in all that time?" card against Hillary, it would have been just as (in)valid in Bernie's case - he's not superman, but Trump's audience doesn't seem to care.]

And Bernie would be the antithesis of the US tilting towards #2 racism/misogyny; however Trump mined that vein successfully along with other conservative issues for an 11 point gain over Romney's take against Obama, and Bernie wouldn't be a salve to complaints about immigrants. And Obama was special in 2008, and still an incumbent in 2012. Sure, Bernie may have done better than Hillary outside of Philly, as he did in the primaries. But he largely had trouble drawing the needed big numbers *inside* the big cities, trailing Hillary's output significantly - so that the rough result would be not enough rural, not enough city. And the sheer joy of the right in overtly reveling in racist & misogynistic tropes is special this year - certainly bolstering Hillary's educated female take if not the highschool & below crowd.

But for #3, wars and the surveillance state? . So how would he triumph over a candidate that spoke to America's growing global antagonism and desire for a safer non-PC surveillance state? Trump played both the anti-Iraq invasion (that he championed at the time) and the "turn it into glass" card while sucking up to our long-term enemy Russia including devastation in Syria while denouncing NATO and international defense agreements. Which of these violent mood swings would Bernie embrace, and which candidate would give the American right their "security Daddy" they always desire, building the bigger wall and keeping all ghosts at bay?

At most, I see a Bernie nominee as a 2nd best choice for the disgruntled and partisan, just like McMullin was in Utah - but ultimately the GOP flocked back to Trump to win the election, principles be damned. This would have happened with Bernie in the race too. Parties matter.

Second - "the mentality of the Democratic Party. Just think about who they nominated: someone who — when she wasn’t dining with Saudi monarchs and being feted in Davos by tyrants who gave million-dollar checks — spent the last several years piggishly running around to Wall Street banks and major corporations cashing in with $250,000 fees for 45-minute secret speeches" - right, but the right's 2/3 grip on power was solidified by A STOCK BROKER LAUNCHING THE TEA PARTY in answer to Obama's trying to get a grip on Wall Street's collapse and subsequent bailout *WHILE KEEPING BONUSES FOR THE RICH*, and now led by a BILLIONAIRE PROPERTY DEVELOPER FAMOUS FOR LEVERAGED BUYOUTS AND BANKRUPTCIES who wouldn't release his tax reports or detail his dealings with Russia. Please excuse Democrats if they don't find the principled lesson that's lurking in there. My guess is it's more about jobs, and not about Wall Street, which has always maintained a Wizard of Oz fascination for the have-nots.

Jobs *is* something Bernie addressed, but Trump still found himself benefiting as the "billionaire businessman", no matter how flimsy and scandalous his business career. Bernie as a poor Vermont commune socialist would still be unlikely to triumph over an actual "successful" businessman given the history of American socialism and the 2 decades-long growth of the conservative Republican juggernaut (masked only by our sometimes hold on the presidency).

As for the female vote, with Trump taking 2/3 the white female high school & under vote, and Trump taking 45% of the white college & plus female vote, Hillary just 51% - an exit poll, so not entirely accurate, but still, roughly half - I'm just not sure I can speak to anything anymore. Help, someone - a reason, a guess, please.... a successful "don't vote your anatomy" campaign? "anyone but her" vs. "I'm with her" vs "I'm groping her"? I give up.

[though note of caution - like exit polls supposedly showing Bernie had a majority of Hispanics in Vegas, the CNN exit polls on white women could be quite flawed]