TIM CARNEY: Can Democrats Love The Voters Hillary Hated?

The 2018 election furthered this division. Democrats took over the House of Representatives in part by picking up dozens of seats in upper-middle-class suburban districts. The new bragging point for Democrats is that they are the party of the highly educated and the successful. It allows for the self-serving explanation that people who know the real deal vote Democratic, and only the clueless bitter clingers vote Republican.

The choice for 2020 is: Do Democrats prefer the pride of being the party of the elites, or are they willing to sully themselves by trying to win over the “backwards” places full of deplorable bitter clingers?

If they want to win, they need to tune out Hillary and the commentators who insist that Trump’s base was purely racists —the folks who declare “ There’s no such thing as a good Trump voter.”

This will involve accepting that working-class suffering is real — even for white people.

That’s going to be tough for them.