A lot of people on here are coastal types (including me as of 15 months ago), and don't realize that a clear majority of Americans are white (about 73%) and a clear plurality of Americans make under $25,000 a year (about 43%). The existence of those numbers necessitate, repeat, NECESSITATE an appeal to the white working class voter, and the working class voter in general.
The Dayton metro area is just north of my hometown (I'm from Cincinnati) and I have a lot of friends that still live there. I was back there in August and spoke with a lot of people who, while not being politically savvy in any way, have an innate sense of the class dynamics of the population and how neoliberal economic and trade policies have destroyed that segment of the population's livelihoods. Trump spoke to those people and, more importantly, Hillary and the Democratic Party in general made no effort to speak their language. Thus, you get the 16 point swing in voters making under $30,000 (probably around half the population of the country) that we saw on Tuesday.
But we're still talking about identity politics and shunning white working class voters as racists or sexists. Why would the white working class vote for you if you're continually calling them racists when most of them aren't even remotely motivated by racism? Furthermore, why would the single biggest segment of the population (the working class. White, Black, Latino and every race and ethnicity inbetween) vote for Democrats when Democrats have spent two decades destroying everything they've depended on to live? They're supposed to be salved by Democrats and celebrities showing that we have rich women and Black people now? fukk off.
Adolph Reed was right when he called identity politics "the class politics of left-wing neoliberalism." Democrats can either give the working classes of America a real reason to vote for them or be doomed to a generation of irrelevance.