It was incredibly naive to deny race as the most salient and important issue in America

The allocation of goods and services is the central point of politics in peacetime. Class and caste have competed for centuries for the role of arbitrary disqualifier from the competition. It's actually more efficient in conditions of scarcity for large swaths of the population to accept their lack of access to the goodies. It's not fair, but it is less bloody until it isn't, and, when the pluses and minuses are totaled, natural selection seems to favor arbitrariness over Hobbes's "warre of all against all."

Until the 1960's, the caste issue was settled - blacks were screwed over - and the class issue was being addressed by union activity supported by the Democrats. The Civil Rights movement changed that. The rise of ethnic minorities, like the feminization of the workplace, inevitably suppresses white men's wages. There is no way a party can be for one without being seen as not caring about the other.

I'm skeptical of Prof. Abramowitz's findings. I have no doubt that the data are correct, but as my "bio" says, I don't take what people say about themselves terribly seriously. White workers may not identify the economic consequences of inclusion as their main concern, but those consequences may still be why those other issues bother them so much.

Political parties have brands, and the Democrats' brand used to be pro-labor. Now, the party's brand is Social Justice. Why would white working men find that brand attractive? It says that the party is at best indifferent to their interests, whatever those interests are. And "indifferent" is probably a gross understatement.

Both political parties have been taken over by special interests. As it happens, the idiots and assholes on the right seem to care more about the political interests of white men than the whiners and zealots on the left. Meanwhile, it's 100 degrees in hundreds of places. Who do I see about that?