Tomasky: Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won?

[snot]

43. I couldn't disagree more.

Most people have always voted their pocketbooks above all else. They may care about racism and gender-related issues, abortion, candidate integrity and other issues; but if in the richest nation in the world, they're struggling to feed their families and afford housing and health care, that's what will be decisive – the other issues matter only if the most urgent ones are addressed.

Kamala tried to make the case that she was going to address some of those urgent concerns to some extent, but having been selected by the Dem establishment, she was not a particularly credible bearer of that message, and she was not offering the kinds of structural change that would make a diffence in the long run. In any case, rightly or wrongly, over the last few decades, much of the working class has come to feel abandoned by Dems.

I think a lot of this crystallized after Great Financial Crash of 2008 when Obama put Wall St. in charge of our response to that crisis and no bankers were prosecuted; but the roots go back at least to Pres. Clinton's time, when he supported the repeal of Glass-Steagall and NAFTA and refused to follow Sheila Bair's advice that credit derivatives should be regulated, among other things.

Trump recognized that workers are hurting, and he's been capitalizing on it ever since.