To add to the points in my November 13 post - I want to be very clear that I'm not saying that the anti-Trump opposition should not be defending those Trump seeks to scapegoat - very much the opposite. But the fact that it feels like such a black and white issue, and provokes such a visceral response from people revulsed by this Trumpian attitude, is what's got my spider sense tingling. The topsy-turvy, alternate reality feel of this election makes me think that we all need to be examining our basic assumptions, even our most righteous feelings. To be deliberately provocative, why is Trump's scapegoating of immigrants more outrageous than the way both Republicans and Democrats have both, in their own ways, written off the working class over the past generation?

Here's where I'm coming from: the progressive position starting now needs to be, not to write off everyone who voted for Trump as irredeemable, beyond the pale, but to understand how desperate so many people must have been to vote for Trump. Many Trump voters would benefit from a truly progressive economic agenda; many of these people voted from Obama before; they need to be listened to, and convinced by actual policies that would help them.

I know, I know. Hillary Clinton proposed some of those policies. Hillary Clinton got more votes. Hillary Clinton should have won. I get that. I keep saying these things, too (and Joan Walsh has a good reminder here of the fact that, yes, Hillary Clinton did have real, substantial plans to help the working and middle classes). But those economic policies and more need to be at the center of the Democrats' agenda and talking points. Trump was able to steal the Democrats' thunder on the economy because the Democrats didn't even offer thunder, they offered something palliative and helpful but hardly equal to the storm of despair that's hit so much of the country. Stronger stuff is needed.