Democrats had all of network news, Hollywood, fashion, and the publishing industry as platforms they controlled but they lost, says Obama, because of that damned Fox News in bars.
In this election, [white working class voters] turned out in huge numbers for Trump. And I think that part of it has to do with our inability, our failure, to reach those voters effectively. Part of it is Fox News in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country, but part of it is also Democrats not working at a grassroots level, being in there, showing up, making arguments. That part of the critique of the Democratic Party is accurate. We spend a lot of time focused on international policy and national policy and less time being on the ground. And when we’re on the ground, we do well.
Wait—I thought they said that they lost because of James Comey?
It's a quasi-rehash of his “bitter clinger” remark from 2008 in some ways. I wrote about why Democrats could lose this election in my last book, Flyover Nation. Democrats lost because after failing to recapture the working class vote, they turned on them out of anger and impugned their characters by maligining them as racists. Flyover people are experiencing Tiny Tim levels of hardship thanks, thanks to our Obamaconomy, and Democrats's answer to this was to tell them how men dressing as women should be able to use their bathrooms and that not making a cake for someone is tantamount to “mental rape.”
None of this puts food on the table of flyover nation. So they revolted. They were good enough for Democrats in the 90s when they carried Bill Clinton to victory, but because they didn't do the same for Hillary, they're now “racists.” Furthermore, has Obama ever been to a bar or airport? CNN is on every monitor.
This is why Democrats lost and why they will continue to lose.
