If the Montana elections demonstrate anything, it's that white people will not save the Dems

[Tom Rinaldo]

20. A coalition of voters will "save" the Dems

And that coalition will vary from state to state depending on the demographics of each state. Increasingly, in more and more places, whites constitute a minority of a wining Democratic coalition. That however doesn't make white support any less critical, in many instances, for Democrats winning. And in virtually every case, when a Democrat loses, a Republican wins.

I absolutely agree with you on this: "overall if we can focus our efforts on making it possible for POC to vote, to be in communities of color articulating the importance of voting, we would not only win, we would do the moral thing." It is also the moral thing, politics aside, to fight for continued medical benefits for white West Virginia coal miners with black lung disease. And if we stand with them on that crucial front, we might as well ask them for their votes as well, knowing full well that for now at least we will not win most of them. In the case of a West Virginia, I say we should do the right thing, and ask for voter support in return, but not put a lot of resources into it. The tipping point is too far beyond our reach.

Montana, however, may be different. Montana has become a little more competitive for us. Democrats in general face brighter prospects in most most western and mountain states than they do in most southern states. As long as we have a Federal system that equates the power of a state like Montana with the power of a State like California in the U.S. Senate - and to a somewhat lesser extent in the Electoral College where each state starts out getting 2 votes regardless of their actual population - we need to factor in the individual demographics of each specific state into our calculations if we want someone like Chuck Schumer setting the Congressional agenda rather than Mitch McConnell.

Everywhere in the nation at least a portion of white voters are progressive and committed to social justice - we agree about that. And another portion are racist to a significant degree, and barring individual instances of near miraculous conversions, beyond our ability to find common ground with. Then there are a lot of people who harbor destructive prejudices, that are running constantly in their psyches like some background computer program, but who can hit manual override when they consciously focus in on an individual flesh and blood human being, or a vivid close to home experience of some horrific injustice. Martin Luther King Jr. was masterful at finding a way to break through to those people even though most of his organizing energy was directed toward the African American community. Even he never reached most of even them, but sometimes he reached enough of them to make a critical difference in achieving specific victories.

We must NEVER pander, directly or indirectly, to white racism. Nor can we be unrealistic about how many more white votes we can win beyond our reliable white base. Yes, we have to be clear eyed about this, but a clear eyed vision must also recognize when our ability to pick off an additional small sliver of the white vote, without compromising on our core values, may well represent the difference between victory and defeat. We already know that winning the majority of the popular vote in this country does not automatically translate into winning power. We need to retake the Presidency, but we also need 60 seats in the U.S. Senate before we can do more things like the Obama Administration accomplished before losing a veto proof majority. And in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, it's not a matter of having to win over new white voters to regain the margin of victory. If we can win back half of the white voters who we lost who previously voted for a black president prior to 2016, those states again move beyond the reach of Republicans.

It it a waste of good resources to target all white Trump voters. It can be a good use of resources however to micro target small slivers of his previous white support. That is very doable with the type of voter data bases that now exist.