The Great Betrayal that paved the road to Trump - A Summary of Thomas Frank's thesis in "Listen, Liberal". the real reason The Democrats lost The 2016 Election.
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Beginning in the 1970s, America's Democratic Party began an about-face from its FDR "party for the people" pro-worker stance, but it fully morphed into the elite party of deregulation and the deserving professional class in the Clinton-Obama era, The new Democratic ideology is a meritocracy-model where the most successful at Ivy League Universities are seen as "the Virtuous ones", "the Righteous". These are the "Financial Innovators" in the Banks, Wall Street, Big Pharma and the Silicon Valley who have been embraced as the deserving Winners in "the new economy".
The new-style Democrats included in their demographic Black Americans who were aspiring "ascendants" reaching for the knowledge industries of Capital.
This ideological transformation culminated in Bill Clinton's NAFTA, a knife in the back to working people and their Organisations, but which was intensely popular among the new focus group of the Democrats - the successful White Collar suburban professionals who mattered.
Other pro-corporate Clinton policies included his 1996 Welfare-reform Act which fulfilled his 1992 promise to "end welfare as we have come to know it". Clinton's 1994 crime-bill created the racist mass incarceration of 1 in 10 young African-American men. Barack Obama shared Clinton's admiration and class-bond with the successful professional class. He continued the Clinton anti-worker policy with the Bailout of Wall Street and the abandonment of "average wealth level" Americans.
There are two political hierarchies today in The USA - "The Hierarchy of Money": still mainly the home of the Republicans; and "The Hierarchy of Status" deriving from their standing and professional achievement. Wall Street feeds both. The traditional Democratic party Americans in Bill Clinton's words "have nowhere else to go".
The Democrats insisted "it had to be Hillary" - her victory was the key to the professional class moving up another notch in income and status. During the Electioneering period Hillary polled as the 2nd least popular candidate for the presidency in US history. This was ignored. The status-quo must remain. Bernie Sanders was sabotaged as someone representing a foreign ideology that had died with Harry Truman. Democrats relied on Trump's unpopularity, incompetence and buffoonery to clinch the race.
But the concentration and centralisation of globalised Capital which Clinton had enthroned with NAFTA and other policies had over two decades gutted the US working-class. 2016 was an angry year in America. And Trump, the most unpopular candidate for the presidency in US history hammered on Trade and the devastation of the working-class. And he won the states.