2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: White progressive analysis of politics is fundamentally broken. [View all]Garrett78
(10,721 posts)"that the psychological wage is better than the material wage," as FJT put it in the OP. Overall, the working class supported Clinton. A segment of white working class people supported Trump. Ask yourself why that segment has different priorities than the working class as a whole. Ask yourself why no Democratic candidate for POTUS has won the white vote since LBJ. And, no, it's not because Democrats are too focused on "identity politics." Nobody does (white) "identity politics" more than the GOP.
From another thread on right wing radio: "Throughout 2014, the three (Roger Stone, Michael Cohen, and Sam Nunberg) fed Trump strategy memos and political intelligence. I listened to thousands of hours of talk radio, and he (Trump) was getting reports from me, Nunberg recalled. What those reports said was that the GOP base was frothing over a handful of issues including immigration, Obamacare, and Common Core."
They weren't frothing over trade agreements and jobs.
The economic conditions so many decry are enabled by racism. People oppose helpful policies because the dreaded "other" is benefiting. We have to address that, and Reverend Barber of North Carolina is probably on the right track.