He means that when rural white voters said that they think they're getting the short end of the stick when it comes to globalism, the Democrats blew them off as racists/ignorant/whatever. If the Democrat party was truly diverse this opinion would have been respected enough that it wouldn't be a surprise.
I think Sanders did a much better job of reaching that demographic, so I'd argue it was represented, but the Democrat party decided other priorities were more important by selecting Clinton.
This is exactly what I mean. Clinton really lost a lot of support by only going after social issues that, for all intents and purposes, have already been solved. Sure, there are a lot of racist people who voted for Trump! But there is ample law and policy in place to protect the rights of minorities and LGBT.
Trump went after issues that actually matter. Be careful, I'm not saying LGBT rights and racism don't matter, I'm just saying they aren't really the centerfold of America anymore.
> But there is ample law and policy in place to protect the rights of minorities and LGBT.
The degree to which people believe this is striking. The reality is that these protections are very recent developments and are today easily reversed, particularly by an administration that cares less than usual about the details of how the federal government is run.
How many actual federal legal protections exist now? To me it seems like there hasn't been much change in federal law, some at state levels, but in general it's that people are more accepting because they think Cam on Modern Family is funny.
Quite a lot of rests on the courts. The Supreme Court has a set of case law related to minority rights, which it could reverse--as it did with the Voting Rights Act.
The national legalization of gay marriage happened via the Supreme Court just last year. There is no reason at all it could not be reversed under a new court.
A lot more rests in Department of Justice policy. Look at what Justice has been doing to investigate and clean up racial bias in municipal police forces recently. They have consent decrees with Seattle, Cleveland, and others to try to change the way they do policing.
A new administration could easily abandon every one of those agreements, and the goal of removing racial bias from policing generally. It might even be likely--senior people in the Trump campaign have praised racial profiling as an effective and useful police tactic.
So it sounds like things haven't really been progressing through legislation as much as through judicial and executive action and maybe those things aren't as permanent as hoped?
>The national legalization of gay marriage happened via the Supreme Court just last year. There is no reason at all it could not be reversed under a new court.
Yes, there is; it's "stare decisis". Even Dred Scott has not been reversed because of it.
I think Sanders did a much better job of reaching that demographic, so I'd argue it was represented, but the Democrat party decided other priorities were more important by selecting Clinton.