Sometimes the truth is obvious: we're a more racist and sexist country than we thought.

[Dems to Win]

21. Some people remember a time when the factory was humming, everybody had jobs, it was great

I'm willing to grant my fellow Americans the benefit of the doubt that at least some have this in mind when thinking of Making America Great Again.

Many people are opposed to NAFTA, PNTR-China, and illegal immigration, and don't consider themselves to be bigots.
Union workers in Ohio, for instance:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/rust-belt-democrats-saw-trump-wave-coming

These Rust Belt Democrats Saw the Trump Wave Coming
And they tried to warn the Clinton campaign.

PEMA LEVYNOV. 11, 2016 3:32 PM

Like labor unions everywhere, the local Plumbers & Pipefitters union in Ohio's Mahoning Valley—a historically Democratic bastion due to the influence of labor—endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in September 2015 and urged its members to vote for her. But unlike in years past, when Roland "Butch" Taylor briefed about 200 members on the union's support of Clinton and the prospective benefits of a Clinton presidency in May, the meeting didn't go well. "I got a lot of boos," he recalls. "I got a lot of chatter back. And out of the group, only one person came up and asked me for a T-shirt."

"Right then and there, I knew something was wrong," says Taylor, who retired a few months later. "I thought, 'Well, maybe it will change as the campaign moves forward.'"

snip...

Like Betras, Taylor doesn't believe his peers and neighbors who supported Trump are racist. But he understands how Trump's talk about immigration appealed to people in the Rust Belt. A few years ago, his union was working on a billion-dollar natural gas processing plant, and the workers noticed that the bulk of the work was being done by Spanish-speaking laborers who arrived each morning on buses. "It brought a lot of resentment to the area because they'd never seen it before," Taylor says. "People see that and then they go tell everybody else, and social media, the way it is, it just runs wild." He believes Trump benefited when the community saw immigrants "taking jobs that Americans think they should be doing."

snip...


In the aftermath of the election, even as Taylor looks backs and sees the writing on the wall, he sounds shaken by what the country—and specifically white-working class voters in the Rust Belt—allowed to happen. He acknowledges that the Clintons were "wrapped so close to NAFTA" (which Bill Clinton approved as president) and that Hillary Clinton's speaking fees from big banks looked bad. "I see where people would have resentment," he says.