Illustration of one problem with "we need to listen to voters who back RW populists" type args- President Trump does *nothing but* listen to them & *only* them, but in doing so he's annoyed everyone else & on their own they're not enough for re-election: fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump…
Meanwhile, Trump's relentless mobilisation of this "left behind" voter base has produced a massive counter-mobilisation on the opposite end of the spectrum - well off, well educated voters - resulting in the highest midterm turnout in over a century.
There are obvious parallels here IMO to the 2017 GE, where Team May's whole strategy was to win over UKIP/Brexit leaning voters by talking to them, and pretty much *only* them. Then they got blindsided by unprecedented switching away from Cons by well off, well educated voters.
When a party's electoral coalition spans both sides of these new education/identity/values divides, as is true for GOP and Cons, just as it is for Dems and Lab, then speaking only to one side of that divide means alienating the other. And neither side is big enough for majority.
