The World Between the Coasts

Same as it ever was....

What Theda Skocpol said:

Why do these different analytical approaches (aggregate attitudinal vs. organizational) matter? Because they lead to very different prescriptions for what should be done next. Mine says Democrats have to create sustained organizational reach, not just at election time, stretching beyond metropolitan communities and states. Yours, however, is the conventional wisdom: This type of argument is used to argue that Democrats must “message” better and move left on policy issues to attract an imaginary factory-based white working class. How would that have worked in an election where the media never conveyed any policy substance at all? Even next time, if a Trump type does not take over the media, all that approach would do is take the war to imaginary terrain. Failed HRC messaging about trade, etc. was not the reason Trump won. There are few such voters in non-metro America and none would hear trade pact focused messages plausible in the actual lives. In much of non-metro America, families and marriages are fragile, drug deaths are rampant, churches are the only community institutions, men try to piece together service and construction jobs, low paid, while women do the same and try to raise kids. Democrats and their messages hardly penetrate at all, and they seem directed at worlds these people do not live in. Indeed, Dem messages seem directed at blacks and browns – there is a lot of racial anxiety at work. (emphasis mine)

If you noticed, Clinton won the Northeast and the West Coast, and had razor thin margins (by and large) in between.  It was enough to give the electoral college vote to Trump; but Republicans also won the Congress and practically every state house in the country.  The one shining light I can point to in Texas is that Harris County (basically Houston) elected Democrats as Sheriff and District Attorney.  That signals a shift, as well as the fact Clinton came so close to winning in Texas it's a pity they treated Texas as an ATM and not as a place where campaigning might have boosted turnout in the border counties where Democrats are strongest.  But it was metro Texas that went for Clinton (as it did for Obama, twice); it was non-metro Texas that gave the electoral college to the GOP, three times in a row.

And as for those die hards who now say Bernie coulda woulda shoulda if not for the perfidious DNC:

You just have to get out and drive around America and listen and look to know this is the world that went for Trump and against HRC (and would have gone against Bernie even more). I analyzed the polls from the primaries, by the way: Bernie’s support was young, liberal whites. especially men. In most states, he did not attract extra working class support at all, outside of cities and university communities.

And does anybody really think Bernie would have have greater outreach to blacks and browns?  He didn't in the primaries.