How Democrats lost the common man.

[andym]

36. The Jacksonian "common man": white working class men

to which you refer were being lost before Atwater. The Republican Party of Nixon was already the party of the Archie Bunkers, biased working-class men, were already Republicans or about to be. That's why "All in the Family" was such a hit in the 70's. Trump is the natural progression of a Republican Party that bases its appeal on "traditional values." That said, Atwater was a political genius and the GOP he created could eventually lead to the end of the United States as a democratic republic. Abortion is a key issue that will divide the US and fuel the GOP for decades to come.

But there is another reason the white working-class male is lost. While lies and mischaracterizations have always been part of American politics (Jefferson was slandered as a Jacobin revolutionary puppet in pamphlets from 1800), the modern alignment of the GOP with baseless propaganda is unprecedented and exceeds that seen in the era of yellow journalism. The power of the communication networks and manipulative techniques is such that it's difficult to see how it can be stopped: the warning bells have rung: Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh may be as significant figures in the loss of the "common man" and possibly the loss of the nation itself to authoritarianism as any.

As a side note:
It is interesting that the Jacksonian common man of the late 1820's-1830's during the "Era of Good Feelings" was when "The ideal of equality among white males became a pervasive theme," and that it still refers to the same group today. https://human.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/History/National_History/Book%3A_United_States_History_to_1877_(Locks_et_al.)/12%3A_Jacksonian_America_(1815-1840)/12.02%3A_The_Age_of_the_Common_Man