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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
This.

The way I see it, landlocked states pretty much cost us the election. I have exactly zero love for red states, or Democrats that choose to live in red states. They should know better. And if they can't figure out that the blue states are where the future is, where the jobs will be, where the growth and investment will be, then they are no smarter than their dumbass trump voting next door neighbor. They all need to be written off.

We need to focus on two things - [b]1) voter turnout in urban areas.[/b] 2) immigration, and bringing new Democrats to America. 3) making sure voter ID laws are struck down in the courts whenever they are passed by racist thug state legislatures.

That is how we will win. Not by courting dumb people who can't figure out they should move [/quote]
NP. Did you even read the article in the OP? It talks about exactly this. Urban communities feeling forgotten and so apathetic about both parties. I'm not sure I fully understand all of their grievances, since Clinton did visit Flint and make specific promises there, but I'm willing to listen.

FWIW, I grew up in a rich and very red suburb of Detroit. Like, I didn't even really think normal people could be Democrats until I was in HS red. I'm not sure I agree with OP's assessment that this is a coastal Dem vs. Midwestern Dem issue, but everything in the article made perfect sense to me. I think it's more elite Dem vs. working class Dem (a rift that's happening in the Republican party as well, BTW). In the Republican primary, Trump ironically talked to the working class, and he won the nomination and Presidency. Sanders played a similar role in the Democratic primary, but Clinton won...though ironically I think she would have governed in a much more progressive, albeit incremental way. Trump is unabashedly governing to benefit the elites.

My observation based on the fact that I think Hillary had by far the most well thought out and implementable platform that would have measurably improved the lives of working class Americans...but it didn't radically shift the status quo, and she is a terrible campaigner. I wanted to like Sanders, but I disagreed fundamentally with some of his policies and I don't think their effect would have matched his rhetoric.

Ultimately, to me, 2016 revealed some very fundamental rifts in America, most of which do split along racial lines. I know that's the canard that supposedly lost Clinton the election, but I don't think papering over the fact that POC experience America so differently than white people will change that reality. It will just kick the can down the road. I'm as elite as can be, and I'm also brown-skinned. I have experienced bigotry, and I have been haunted my whole life by the specter of not being a "real American". I'm not complaining about my lot in life, but it's the reality. The people quoted in the article did not benefit from my parents' wealth and education, and so they have been truly forgotten in America. Trump did not speak for them, and IMHO Hillary did not connect with them. To me, though, those communities are the natural Democratic base that's been left behind by the Democratic party since the 90s. I don't even think this base cares about trade, since right now their issues are fundamental. Government barely recognizes these people at all, except to criminalize them. 
[/quote]

Op here -- Thank you PP for sharing your insights, and sorry for acknowledging your post earlier.  We really grew up on polar ends of the spectrum.  I grew up in a very democratic, mixed race community -- there was lots of antipathy for Oakland county republicans.  The things I hear coming out of some democrats (some self-identified Dems, not necessarily registered) is in opposition to what I had beaten into my head by staunch Dems growing up.  Maybe the person down thread has it right -- that the divide is more traditional/older generation versus the next gen Dems.  It is as if the next gen has forgotten or abandoned its roots, and therefore doesn't care about about former promises, e.g. jobs with pensions.  (There is a divide in the GOP too, but the article is about Dems.)[/quote]

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