I realize I may get some flack for this, but here goes.

[betsuni]

39. Working class for populists means rural white men in swing states who used to have good union manufacturing jobs

until jobs started going overseas in the '70s and the U.S. economy shifted to a service/technology economy, and automation.

But they decided to blame Democrats for everything, claiming NAFTA trade deals started the whole thing (Bill Clinton's neoliberal plot) and the party became corrupt immoral elites beholden to Wall Street and corporations (dumbing it down to everything's about money (status quo) and everyone except the populist saviors are corrupt) with the same economic policies as Republicans, and despise and ignore the working class. They think Democrats fool voters by pandering with "identity politics" and the nice white Republican working class is mocked and made to suffer economic anxiety. Polarization with establishment vs anti-establishment, demonizing Democrats, usual Us vs Them populist style. They want people to hate Democrats as the true roadblock to progress. Zero evidence for any of these supposed Democratic crimes, of course.

Majority of Trump votes in the general and many for Sanders in the primary were voting against Hillary. Left populists confused this with support for them (why the Democratic-establishment-rigs-primaries conspiracy theories). Americans are not secretly progressives yearning for economic revolution but somehow thwarted by cartoonishly evil Democrats.

Majority of the working class are not white rural men. The working class votes Democratic, lower the income the more likely to vote Democratic. Why would anyone think the Biden administration ignores the working class (examples of policies - what's the evidence both sides are the same?), that Kamala would ignore them, that Democrats aren't from working or middle class backgrounds? Clinton, Obama, Biden, Harris were 1% elites who don't know what inequality is and have no idea what's going on in the U.S.? When they mock Democrats as elites, are they thinking FDR? The one who saved capitalism: "Roosevelt took the status quo in our economic system as much for granted as his family."

Bernie Sanders: "It's not just Kamala. It's a Democratic Party which increasingly has become a party of identity politics, rather than understanding that the vast majority of people in this country are working class."

I've never seen an explanation of this ideology.