I encourage all of you to read the article “The Truth about the white working class” in Salon to get a clear, factual understanding of why Donald Trump is winning white working class voters and Bernie Sanders is not. The key quote:
Another clue comes from the fact that working class Latinos and Blacks all overwhelmingly prefer Democrats, and the non-white working class as a whole prefers Democrats to Republicans 68 percent to 16 percent. The only defectors are the white working class.
Why are they defecting? As much as our economic populists wish it were not so, the fact is these voters are only for government economic intervention as long as the benefits go to them and them only.
Here it is in a basic nutshell: there is no amount of Wall Street bashing, single-payer imposing, unionizing, climate changing, fair trading, oligarchy overthrowing, wealthy taxing, income redistributing economic populist policy that will ever win the white working class voter. They simply do not care enough about any of that as long as anyone who is not white stands to benefit. Those are the facts and Donald Trump is the proof. If ever Democrats want to start winning these voters back, they will have to start talking like Donald Trump about minorities. Pick your poison populists, it’s one or the other.
The other nutshell is this: all the working class votes that Democrats are going to get, they are already getting. Whatever few working class white votes we are going to get from that minority of voters that isn't bigoted, we're getting them already. The real working class opportunity for Democrats is increasing the registration and turnout of Latino voters and solving the problem of the lack of turnout broadly in off-year elections. THAT is the Democrats’ more solvable problem. Not fighting a lost cause for a shrinking, angry, belligerent demographic. And to solve that issue, to even get a hearing about stuff like single payer and whatnot, FIRST we have deal with the more pressing issue of immigration reform, justice system reform, and guns. Because that's what's most important to these voters.
That is why Sanders is losing to Clinton and why Sanders isn't winning the white working class either. He is simply not addressing the issues most important to all segments of the working class. Quite frankly, I can see why he can't. Its a nearly impossible task because of the deep cultural and social divisions within that class. But make no mistake about, it isn't people of color driving that division. Until white working class voters get over it, here we are. Trump.
I'm not making an argument against populism. I am saying those that make it their number one issue are few in number.