A simpler way to say much the same is that "The Trump Base" used to be the Democratic base. We walked away from the working class in the late 1960's in favor of a "Rainbow Coalition" composed of ethnic minorities that pointedly excluded whites. In a country that is 2/3 white, it's a truly insane political strategy. Social progressivism had long ridden on the coattails of the gigantic economic progressivism movement that had built since before Roosevelt. American workers were always socially conservative, but historically were in fact fairly leftist economically. Civil rights legislation, women's rights, etc. tagged along with the momentum of the stunning economic progress. Unfortunately, the non-white groups making up the supposed Rainbow Coalition were not only a minority, but basically had nothing in common with each other other than not being white. Therefore, demonizing white America became the unifying principle. We drove the largest voting block in the country out of the party, and since then, have had essentially no legislated progress. Economics have been a disaster for working America, driven into the arms of the republicans, and social progress outside of the courts stalled completely after Nixon. A measure of the scale of the identity politics disaster is that the country has moved so far to the right that Nixon is now actually to the left of any major Democrat today, in terms of economics. What he called "European-style socialized medicine" was literally on his desk when he left office in disgrace, and he put in place many fundamental social programs such as OSHA, the EPA, war on Cancer, and Title IX women sports. He lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, eliminated forced assimilation of Indians and made numerous other steps in their favor regarding tribal lands, etc. He introduced Supplemental Security Income for the old, and massive increases to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for the rest. That's what he right-wing boogyman did fifty years ago. How far we have fallen.