While the electoral coalitions are shifting, the US is essentially the same as always, rooted in white supremacy. Obama didn't change this. Trump didn't either. Obama partially stemmed the tide. Trump smashed open the seawall.
Clinton won by affirming white supremacist views on welfare, crime ("superpredators") and education (he out-reformed Bush). Any backpedalling on those stances has resulted in a Democratic loss at the national level, including for Hillary.
I'm not the first to say it, but Obama was the anomaly and there was plenty of "respectability politics" in his pitch that even some of your less public white racist types could get behind.
Dems cannot go backwards now in an effort to appeal to those who are comfortable with white supremacy and nationalism being the animating principles for the country. They have to fight it. No more accommodation. I'm not sure they'll win, but they have no choice.
Even though he lost, Beto is a good model. He beat the spread by a huge margin, v. someone like Donnelly who tried to thread the needle as Dem-lite and still lost. Beto ran on principles his supporters could believe in. Same happened where I live in SC-01. It's doable.
One of the reasons I went berserk yesterday over David Brooks' column was that even a so-called "never-Trumper" is invested in a "softer" white supremacy. To whit: 
The only reason a "majority minority" country is meaningful is if you embrace America as properly a "white" country and anything else is a deviation. This is how embedded white supremacy is. Our leading moderate conservative and self-appointed conscience of the USA embraces it.
When David Brooks asks Democrats to come up with something that holds "Us" together, he means a plan that doesn't alienate people like him who aren't down with Trump's outright demagoguery, but also can't imagine a country where white people don't maintain power.
That's the uphill climb, and it's big, but yesterday feels like a step in the right direction, if for no other reason that what's at stake has been clarified.
Maybe I'm a sucker, but I actually believe in that life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for all shit. Problem is, the country was founded on an irony in that it wasn't delivering on those from the get-go. Getting closer should be our national project. End the hypocrisy.
This was me going off on David Brooks yesterday. I don't even remember typing half these tweets I was so mad.
