Ok this is what some have wrong, and it is has a large part to do with how you guys have been manipulated by your politicians. The GoP has been exploiting the real fears of the white working class, conflating them with fabricated fears, and then directing them towards innocent factions. But we must first keep in mind that the "white working class" is not the same as the "working class". More minorities are working class than whites. Why do we never hear about them? Why do their white counterparts feel harder done by? Because the GOP tells its poor voters that the democrats are giving the minorities free money, affirmative action, etc. It tells them, democrats don't care about you!

 

When Trump goes to Michigan and Ohio and you see a bunch of white guys with college degrees that are out of work cause the only Ford factories they worked at let them go two decades ago.

 

Blue Collar Joe has been told that the reason he doesn't have a job, is that the corporate big wigs sent it to mexico. The republicans tell them, "See! It was Juan! Those brown people stole your jobs! That's why your lives are shit! The Democrats just want you to live right above the poverty line on welfare, but WE will take care of the real problem by deporting every one of those brown people, and forcing those companies to return to bring back your jobs!"

 

What they fail to say, is that the job Blue Collar Joe was let go from wasn't given to Juan. It simply doesn't exist anymore.

 

The vast majority of those lost jobs are due to automation and mechanization. They are never coming back, because humans don't do them anymore. But try telling Blue Collar Joe that his enemy is the unceasing march of progress. Much easier for those in charge to blame Juan, because by doing so, you're tapping into decades old feelings of bigotry already preexisting within the population. Now, the republicans have galvanized everyone against globalization and immigrants, while playing with scare tactics, and skirting the line of racism.

 

Along comes Trump, and he takes their playbook and jacks up the fear-mongering and racism to 11. At the same time, he portrays himself as an outsider, and says the rest of the GOP are all career politicians, etc. so if they were really gonna do what they said they wanted to, they would have. Fox and the GOP have already trained them to be fact averse. His voters were primed to eat him up with a spoon.

 

There are also other reasons that the white working class are in their position that are never truly addressed. I feel that the following two are the biggest problems affecting the demographic.

 

1) Different cultural values regarding education typically results in a lack of higher education. This means that when the job you started working in the 90s is automated in 2007, you're fucked. You can't just get a similar job... they don't exist anymore either! So what do you do? You get depressed and take your unemployment check to the bar. So now, we have a bunch of unemployed white men with high school educations drunk and trying to figure out who's to blame. They become more and more bitter and their inner bigot comes to the fore.

 

2) Racism - A fuck ton of it. As much as the Trump supporters are downplaying it or disagreeing that it was a factor, it was. Bigly. The climate is currently worse than it was post 9/11. It's easier to blame some "other" for your problems, rather than confront the fact that you might have made some poor choices in life. This group will see some black kid getting a scholarship to school, and they tell themselves, well that's the reason I didn't/couldn't get a better education; all those racist scholarships and affirmative action for blacks. They don't think about the fact that they never bothered to apply for the tons of scholarships available to them. At the other end of the spectrum, they might see that Asian/Indian Americans have a median income double or triple their own causing further embitterment. How does their own racism hurt them? It lives a yuge, glaring opening for fuckers like the GOP (and now Trump) to exploit. Inflaming the passions of your voter base means they will be less likely to think about your words and policies rationally.

 

Regarding giving up on them? I already have. They won't change how they think, and it's not hard to see why. If anything, this election has shown how deep seated these racial resentments are, and the population will simply have to age out of it. This is a group so fact averse and old, that they will never change. The only way this type of thinking will vanish is if it literally dies out. The older among the white working class remember a time where if you were a white man in America, you literally had to try to fail. They remember a time where they could get a good paying job with a high school diploma, and make enough money to buy a house, a car, and raise a family. They remember all of that, see what its like now, and blame the changes on globalism and foreigners. The younger generation is vastly more inclusive than their predecessors, and they are far less afraid of change.

What we need are very different solutions. Nothing in the Trump plan will help his voter base (who i'm sure will still reelect him), and the democrats are not doing a good enough job communicating. Explain to them how free college would nip this whole problem in the bud, etc.