But a lot of those same voters approve of Obama and his policies.
I mean, yes and no. Yes, Obama's policies did good. But at the same time, he was very slow in enacting them. There's also some policies that no-degree whites don't really agree with (depending on views) it's a hard to describe thing but Clinton going "I'm going to continue most of Obama's policies" did factor in for some of those voters.
Liberals loved to talk about Obama and his "11 move chess games" or whatever that nonsense was. But in reality it was the Republicans that played that chess game much more masterfully then Democrats did. At least from a short-term perspective.
Take the ACA.
On the public side they ran hard with any and all fear-mongering they found that audience-tested well and spammed it all over their echo chambers endlessly. Then they go in under the guise of "fiscal responsibility" and tie things like the risk corridors that were helping offset costs in the marketplace to be budget neutral. In reality basically crippling them and guaranteeing a large jump in premiums and a sharper cost growth curve. Which ironically disproportionately harmed those same rural communities that voted Trump in droves. Where Obamacare is struggling is very much concentrated in less densely populated counties and states.
But who are these voters going to blame?
And the Democrats meanwhile did a poor job structuring the bill to make sure that these electorally vulnerable areas would see enough gain to offset the opposition harm that could be reasonably projected to be inflicted through action or rhetoric. And then did an even worse job articulating to the public the harm that was being caused by these underhanded measures Republicans were taking. To this day it pisses me off to no end that Democrats are just letting Republicans operate the moral high ground on the recent rises in premiums. Not even most liberals I come across are aware of how much this has to do with Republicans and are often even similarly pointing fingers int he wrong places.
