I think this is basically correct. It’s why I thought Clinton ran a bad campaign against Trump.
Until Democrats understand that US politics is about affiliate groups and identity, not policy, and work at delaminating populist identity elements from being strictly Republican, they’re going to keep running into a lot more resistance than their platform naturally lends itself to.
Lee Atwater and Newt Gingrich saw this and built the post-Reagan party on it. It’s a shame they were able to usurp disaffection and class anxiety, because those things naturally fit Democrats anyway. The notion that Republicans were able to paint Democrats as elite is so ironic and a sign of Democratic Party leadership cluelessness. Somehow they let their populism get painted as “socialist” and ran so hard from that that they left Republicans free reign.
They said that John F. Kennedy was the first true media era campaigner and president. Trump is the first true social media president.
I’m not sure but I think maybe Democrats took a wrong turn when the party elite suppressed Sanders. I know they didn’t like the platform that came with him, but that almost doesn’t matter. His appeal was populist. When they went with Clinton over him, they sealed their fate by indicating that they were going to be the party of the establishment.