2016 Postmortem

I've been making that point repeatedly ever since the election, and it's been backed up by study after study. The "working class whites/economic messaging" narrative has always been ridiculous, for numerous reasons. 80% of Trump's supporters are Birthers for cryin' out loud. And the number one way (according to another study) to tell if someone is a Trump supporter is by asking if that person thinks Obama is a Muslim.

No Democratic candidate for POTUS has won the white vote since LBJ. Trump is horrifying (and also the most Wall Street friendly candidate ever), but the one thing that made him viable was his overt bigotry. Take that away and he loses badly. The Trump Cult would not exist. Trump could break virtually every campaign promise and not lose much support. But if he were to do a 180 on civil rights, his support would collapse.