"Maybe Liberals Need to Keep Trying"

"Yet one of the lessons of the history I've just recounted is that liberals drove themselves into a dead end that nobody saw coming in 1948. The sense of superior moral standing that liberals derived from defending the rights of the marginalized often blinded them to the effect of their policies on white Americans (and at times on the marginalized themselves). This is hardly a new insight; the neoconservatives built a movement on it. Yet it seems piercingly relevant today. Donald Trump can speak the unfiltered language of George Wallace because so many white Americans feel victimized the way Wallace voters did 50 years ago. The fact that your racism is sincerely felt does not, of course, make you any the less a racist; but Trump voters also may have reason to feel that something precious is being taken from them. Maybe it behooves today's Democrats to take those grievances more seriously than they're inclined to. Maybe, to take one example, our current system of immigration, which delivers a wonderfully diverse world to cosmopolites and cheap workers to employers, is a raw deal for working-class whites."

James S. Traub at The Atlantic uses the career of Hubert Humphrey to trace the post-World War II history of the Democratic Party.

Jamelle Bouie at Slate disagrees with Traub.