Then who do you consider to be your rival ? <| sep |> It ' s the identity politics , period . Your average voter doesn ' t carefully analyze policy statements . They aren ' t reading papers by Beltway wonks . They ' re looking at who addresses their concerns and who mocks their concerns . What the Democrats have been doing for years is mocking the concerns of the white working class . And not in some sort of ' code ' that you need a microscope to figure out . Major politicians explicitly calling them names even when you take their statements in context . Donald Trump may have pointed out that there are criminals amongst illegal immigrants and had his comments twisted into all Hispanics are criminals . But both Clinton and Obama flatout said that those rural whites were horrible people . Why would any of them vote for Democrats ? Hint not many did . When you ' ve got a Democratic Party that ' s pressing utterly meaningless social issues like what bathroom you can use an issue that has a real impact on almost no one ' s lives or deciding that a discussion about law enforcement practices requires ignoring everyone ' s voice except black people , you ' ve got a recipe for defeat . The fact is that the Democratic Party has gone off the rails because it ' s placed allegiance to identity politics ahead of everything else . No one even knows what Democratic Party policies are any more because they ' re buried amidst an avalanche of petty grievances from every selfproclaimed victim class there is . So when a Democrat comes to your door and says I ' ve got a plan to help you , it ' s awfully hard to trust them when they ' ve just spent the past year trying to convince you that you ' re some sort of villain in the grand racial drama .