TRIGGER WARNING, DEMOCRATS: Your Path To Political Revival Is Through Trump Voters.

To win again, the Democrats don’t need to adopt an alien agenda or back away from policies aimed at racial justice. But their leaders would be well advised to change their rhetorical priorities and more directly address the country’s bastions of gloom. The party has been crushed—not just in the recent presidential election, but in countless down-ballot elections—by its failure to develop a message that can resonate with people beyond the core members of the Obama coalition, and by its unwillingness to blare its hostility to crony capitalism.

The makings of a Democratic majority are real. Demographic advantages will continue to accrue to the left. The party needs only to add to its coalition on the margins and in the right patches on the map. Doing that does not require the abandonment of any moral principles; persuasion is a different category of political activity from pandering. A decent liberalism, not to mention a savvy party, shouldn’t struggle to accord dignity and respect to citizens, even if it believes some of them hold abhorrent views.

It may take a generational shift before Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” remark is not longer the Democrats’ brand with the white working class voters who were already fleeing the party.

Meanwhile, younger Americans are trending more conservative than is widely appreciated on economic issues. That gives the GOP an opening to pursue the youth vote — although doing so will probably require a tricky combination of accepting defeat on certain social issues (gay marriage, aspects of the Drug War) while doubling down on others (religious liberty, campus reform, and the like).