Sanchez, I actually can't disagree with most of what you said (and Democrats acknowledge the problem too and they have paid the price for doing so; Obama's "guns and religion" comment eight years ago didn't make good PR, but the substance of his comments wasn't inaccurate). And I've said before I have a great deal more respect for people like Rand Paul or Mike Lee than politicians who quietly vote in lockstep with their party and don't work a day trying to fix anything.
But I'm also skeptical of the idea that it's purely economic anxiety causing this rash behavior. Kentucky elected a man last year who wanted to destroy the exchange program that by all objective measures was successful in the state. Even if you don't agree with Obamacare, it's bewildering to me how dirt poor areas vote more and more consistently for people who insist on halting anything that would lift them from their current state. And these aren't supply-side Kool-Aid drinkers, either. Not when states as conservative as Arkansas vote 65% to raise the state minimum wage.
What I'm getting to is, will an "unrigged" economy or an "unrigged" political system convince people who insist that the President of the United States is Muslim or Kenyan or poisoning the wells or whatever, that they are wrong?
This was one of the reasons Sanders couldn't make inroads with black voters, at least going by what his more vocal skeptics had to say about him: you can't give a kid free college and expect police brutality to dissipate over night. The problem is as cultural as it is economic. Fiscal populism by itself won't get the Tennessee methhead to leave his shed or the Vermont heroin addict to quit shooting up every night.
Gun to the head, plenty of Trump's supporters would vote for Bernie before Hillary. But then they're not interested in voting for any Democrat. In four years, they'll be the backbone of Ted Cruz's next presidential run, because Ted Cruz will tell them it's immigrants and "regulations" taking away their jobs, not the unstoppable forces of automation and an economy that increasingly values college-educated workers (which is a money-making scheme of its own in many respects, and as a contributor to that system, I am by no means happy with it).
Anyway, I know it sounds like I'm making this to be more about Democrats winning elections than why people feel the way they do, but I hope you see the general point I'm trying to make.
Frightening to think these people will be running the country in less than 100 days. But it's reality.
