Here's the thing... in the last election, the Democrats did have policies that were palatible to the people outside the big urban centers.
The policies were completely negated by the obsession with unfettered immigration...
Except of course the Democrats weren't proposing 'unfettered immigration'. They did want to reform it (and in some ways make it easier to immigrate) but it would not be a free-for-all.
...and a clear to desire to screw over working class Americans by refusing to do anything to stop illegal immigration (e.g. supporting sanctuary cities).
But here's the thing... things like 'sanctuary cities' don't often impact rural voters. And even if there was a reason for them to be impacted by sanctuary cities, they were more likely to
benefit from them (it actually lowers the crime rate, and saves money that can be better used elsewhere.)
You can argue that the blow back against these policies is extreme at times but there would be no blow back if the democrats had taken a reasonable approach.
Actually the Democrats did have a reasonable approach in terms of policy... what they failed to do is adequately educate voters about how/why their policies were better than Trump's "Build the wall" and "Mexicans are rapists" rhetoric, which were foolish policies based on fear and ignorance.
A better explanation is the media did not care about the extreme right. Now it has a Trump that it needs to bash it suddenly starts covering events that used to be ignored.
As I pointed out early, there have been hundreds of murders associated with those on the far right over the past decade (i.e. long before Trump became racist-in-chief.) And the Southern Poverty Law center (a group that tracks various far-right groups) has found that there has been an increase both in the number of right-wing hate groups, and the number of actual cases of violence in the past couple of years.
https://www.thenation.com/article/donald-trumps-rise-has-coincided-with-an-explosion-of-hate-groups/There are lots of ways to address injustices without denigrating people who do not see them as injustices. The tactic for the left has been if you think traditional marriage is important then you are a homophobe.
Probably because there is a strong correlation between being for 'traditional marriage' and homophobia.
If you think police should try to prevent crime you are a racist.
Uhhh.... no. I'm pretty sure that everyone wants the police to prevent crime. (Well, except for maybe the anarchists.) Its
how that crime is prevented that is an issue, and tactics that unfairly target one group (such as stop and frisk) are themselves racist.