Here an opinion piece on how the Democrats can gain ground on the GOP:
Title: "How Democrats Can Beat Trump’s White Identity Politics"
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-patterson-identity-politics_us_5a7391a6e4b01ce33eb12c61Extract: "How do Democrats beat Donald Trump? Start by facing an unpleasant truth: Trump’s racism helped elect him.
Why? The Democratic Party increasingly reflects the affluent and educated ― including donors. Their progressivism focuses less on economic concerns than on equity for women and minorities, and single issues like reproductive rights, gun control and environmental stewardship. All these are important ― indeed, urgent. But many white working-class Americans have different, even opposing worries, including a profound sense of economic and cultural marginalization.
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Given that, Trump is gunning for race-based debates that inflame white nationalism and identity politics. By pushing immigration “reform,” he means to distract blue-collar voters from his broken promise to protect their economic security, while pretending to do just that. Because his immigration program is a blatant attack on diversity and America’s best traditions, Democrats must fight him ― which, of course, is precisely what he wants.
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What he surely dreads is a Democratic party laser-focused on exposing him as the plutocrats’ best friend. To assure his own survival in the Russia investigation and in 2020, Trump means to ride racism all the way.
In the end, as a matter of demographics, white identity politics is a poison pill for Republicans. But not, perhaps, for Trump. Democrats must weave their beliefs into a larger tapestry, fusing social and economic justice in a unifying program that transcends racial identity. To be blunt, where there are white votes to be had, it serves no one for Democrats to leave them on the table.
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Democrats need to say that wage stagnation and income inequality affect individual Americans and America itself, eroding opportunity and economic growth. And that racial, social and economic justice are all tributaries of a true “American exceptionalism” that unleashes the potential of all our citizens to enrich us in every sense of that word.
Among many other things, that means early childhood education; schooling and retraining for the new economy; a program to revitalize our infrastructure and create good jobs. And it means affordable ― or free ― college for worthy kids who otherwise will never go.
Which of them, after all, could be among the scientists who help stem global warming; or the entrepreneurs and innovators who improve our way of life; or the coaches and teachers who inspire our kids; or the many millions of unsung men and women who hold their families together and raise their children to go further yet? In short, the countless people who can make us a better country ― and a richer one.
Thus, Democrats must say that Americans should never live in gated communities of the spirit, defined only by the most crabbed definition of self-identity. In the long run, no race or class can do better in a society that does worse. History’s graveyard is filled with plutocracies that numbed their citizens by scapegoating imagined enemies while serving a privileged few."
