General Discussion

And I've gone door to door as a campaign volunteer. I've literally heard people in 2016 say they were either going to vote for Bernie or Trump in the general. They see politics as establishment versus anti-establishment more than left versus right.

If you want to understand the Trump phenomena the best source is the Berkley sociologist Arlie Hochschild and her book Strangers in their Own Land. Literally everything in that book is things I've seen with my own eyes.

Democrats eventually stopped talking about universal health care and making college affordable and things like that (no, I don't care if it's on some party website no one is going to read). Meanwhile, they see Democrats as being more concerned with how diverse the people at the front of the line for the American dream is instead of making it move for everyone. That's the perception of the Democratic party whether we like it or not and we have to push back on it. It's obvious identity politics haven't worked with Trump getting a larger share of the minority vote in each of his 3 elections and the army of angry women Democrats expected to show up in 2024 who didn't.

But even if you're skeptical of what I'm saying, how do you know it won't work? We haven't tried it yet. The polls in 2016 showed Bernie matched up better with Trump than Hillary.