Democrats are suffering from PTSD. They were convinced we were going to parlay successes with the first Black president to the first female president, and a Clinton to boot.
Of course, this didn't happen, and Democratic refusal to accept blame leaves many of them depressed, unable to understand how they lost, and worst of all vulnerable to repeat the same mistakes.
So, what mistake did Democrats make in 2016? We ran a person that the median voter didn't like. To be more specific, we ran Hillary Clinton. I like her, but middle-aged, middle-class, white, soccer moms in the midwest didn't. That's all that matters. If you're in an organization with 11 people, and 5 people want one thing, and 5 people want something else, the 11th person gets decide. The other 10 are almost irrelevant. In the US, the 11th person is a soccer Mom in the midwest, and that woman didn't like Hillary. White, middle-class families in the midwest did not flourish under NAFTA and other free trade agreements. The Clintons pushed free trade pretty aggressively. This expanded the economy, but the working, middle-class ended up competing much more directly with workers in China and Mexico. Millions of factory jobs shifted to those countries, and middle class wages stagnated. Middle class women, their husbands, and their sons found themselves working for Uber and Amazon for less than $20/hour instead of for GM and GE for $40. They blamed the Clintons, Democrats need to admit that they aren't necessarily wrong.
I don't mean to say that exciting your base doesn't matter. Trump can overdeliver uneducated, rural whites and shift elections. Similarly, Obama and Biden can overdeliver urban people of color to do the same. This can have huge implications in state and local politics. In national elections, though, it only shifts the swing vote from a soccer Mom in Ohio to to a soccer Mom in Michigan. That's why Joe Biden won. White women like him more than Hillary.
Some might say this perspective is overly focused on inaccurate polls. Poll inaccuracy is a huge issue. A significant portion of the population, has stopped taking polls. They are disproportionately uneducated, conservative, and Trump supporters. Hence, the polls underrepresent Trump's support by as much as 9 points. This doesn't mean that Trump or Republicans are geniuses. The opposite is true. They are representatives of an uneducated, under-polled base. Knowing that, Democrats simply need to take advantage of their gullability and tack a little to the right to adjust for the fact that the polls are a little wrong.
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