If we don't seriously confront the fact that many of those millions of voters who switched from Obama to Trump, or to their couches, did so because of the failures of eight years of a Democratic administration, we will learn nothing.
This wasn't a sudden switch, and it wasn't personal. As Nicole Aschoff and Bhaskar Sunkara point out , over the eight years of the Obama administration, "Democrats have lost almost a thousand state-legislature seats, a dozen gubernatorial races, 69 House seats and 13 in the Senate." This year, they lost the presidency and the Senate.
That's an extended slide into disaffection. It would be foolish to think it was because voters took a few years to notice the color of Barack's skin. It would be supremely foolish not to consider that white working-class voters in Rust Belt states switched to Republican--and black and Latino working-class voters stayed home--because eight years of the Obama administration did nothing to stop the ongoing destruction of their lives and communities. It would be foolish not to recognize that Obama did not deliver the change he was promised, the change those voters of all races voted for--in 2008 and in declining numbers in 2012. It would be foolish to refuse to consider that this year's rejection of Hillary was because they knew she was going to continue ignoring them in the same way.
Do we notice what's happened to Detroit and Flint, and to the hundreds of exurban communities surrounding cities like that? Or do we just notice how mellifluously and rhetorically correctly it was done? Do we really think five million people who voted for Obama, some twice, did not vote for Hillary because they all want to go around grabbing p*ssy, rather than because of what's been happening to them for the last eight years?
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