When exactly did the Democratic Party shift away from its WWC (white working class)-base?
The Democrats (called Democratic-Republicans at first) started off under Jefferson and his successors, and clearly had the best equivalent of WWC-base at the time and were their majority... and they completely took over the party with the election of Jackson. The Democratic presidents between Jackson and Cleveland all seemed to be of the same vein.
Cleveland was an aberration, a more business-friendly, self-disciplined, austere president. He doesn't seem to fit into the "Democrats are based off WWC populism" narrative, but that narrative doesn't seem to have ended with Cleveland.
The Democrats soon roared back to WWC populism with William Jennings Bryan.
Wilson then seemed like another aberration, some technically-progressive policies like an income tax and more happened under him, but he was rather elitist, especially compared to a contemporary like Teddy Roosevelt.
Then Franklin Roosevelt comes in, and while he doesn't come across like a Jackson or Bryan (or even his own cousin on the GOP side), he is still the champion of the WWC, both in the farms and the factories. But the Democrats also became more than that, I think, around this time, or maybe it was the Cleveland/Wilson element (whatever that was).
Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson don't seem to fit into the WWC narrative, at least in my perception but it could be wrong (I'm no historian). Several factors happened in the 60's (Vietnam, Civil Rights, Great Society, to name a few)... but it feels like the WWC had somehow already begun to lose ground as the Democrats' focus, perhaps? But how did that happen? What did Truman, Kennedy do? What took over their focus, the Cold War or something else or a combination? What changed the Democrat's path?
Carter seemed to be a return to old-style WWC outsider populism, but something seems to have derailed him there. What?
Then came the Reagan Democrats, which I think was another name for WWC back then.
Bill Clinton seemed to win them back, although he never won a majority of the country due to Perot... and while Bill Clinton connected with them, it's debateable but some would argue his policies weren't catered to them that much.
Then came the Bush years, and he seemed to win a decent number of them.
Obama won, but his support among this group seemed to decline, and now declined even more to just narrowly give Trump the edge over Hillary Clinton (though Trump does seem to have won the WWC-demographic by itself rather easily, even among white women in a year with potentially the first female President).
List of Democratic Party nominees, for reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Democratic_Party_presidential_ticketsSo what happened? What is the narrative of the Democratic Party's relationship with the WWC? Make sense of these facts to me!
