Came across this while putting a post together. Keep in mind, it’s supposed to be Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill’s job to get this right:

As for whether Democrats risked turning off Mr. Sanders’s legion of youthful supporters by assailing his electability, Senator McCaskill said the party would have no trouble healing.

“Six months ago there was a lot of nervousness about keeping the party united and walking gently because we didn’t want to offend millennials and progressives,” she said. “But I think Ted or Trump are going to take care of our need to be united.”

Whoops (boldface mine):

Donald Trump did not win because of a surge of white support. Indeed he got less white support than Romney got in 2012. Nor did Trump win because he got a surge from other race+gender groups. The exit polls show him doing slightly better with black men, black women, and latino women than Romney did, but basically he just hovered around Romney’s numbers with every race+gender group, doing slightly worse than Romney overall.

However, support for Hillary was way below Obama’s 2012 levels, with defectors turning to a third party. Clinton did worse with every single race+gender combo except white women, where she improved Obama’s outcome by a single point. Clinton did not lose all this support to Donald. She lost it into the abyss. Voters didn’t like her but they weren’t wooed by Trump.

McCaskill will be fine (it’s good to be a senator!), but the rest of us will have to live with this political malpractice. Assuming people who have been taken for granted–minorities, labor Democrats, and what used to be called liberal Democrats (and these groups can overlap, intersect if you will)–will continue to show up as they always have done, even after a quarter century of aggressively telling them they have nowhere else to go, might not have been the best strategy.

Something to remember when Blue Dogs and New Dems make political prognostications for 2018 and 2020. And, sorry, but we do need to look back to move forward.