The problem with the racist label is that while it's not wrong (no one is gonna deny that Trump heavily played to that prejudice, right ?), it's not super useful at adressing the issues. A significant X% of the country are deplorables. They're still citizens and voters, you can't just exactly shun them out of everyday life, rooting prejudice is long arduous process and to have any hopes of enacting it you do need to have the political means to do so. Forsaking their votes entirely means starting at a disadavantage and in effect abandoning some populations and territories.
That's why "economic anxiety" is not just a dog whistle : in reality it's the main (only ?) avenue to reconnect with those voters (or at least enough of them to be more competitive) without pandering to the prejudice and keeping true to your core values.
I agree. People are going to vote selfishly. For a lot of us, social issues were our main concern. For others, it was the economy/jobs. The latter won out.
In any reasonable psychology study, economy is the foothold to have a good life. When that part is covered you can focus on social issues. Neglecting people's needs just because you can offset your labor to other countries that do not have the worker rights yours has is completely neglecting a big portion of the workforce. It's a form of classism that is born on big cities, as they become apathetic about the other human beings that coexist to make their lives easier. As GAF would like to put it: they're tonedeaf.
While manufacturing jobs are disappearing, essentially forcing everyone to pursue studies while not everyone actually wants that, part of the society is trying to push linguistic law involvement to add "ze" as a gender pronoun (this is in Canada actually, but proves a point). You tell me which is the really important issue to tackle. I always think that when the economy recovers then you can build on social issues. Without the economy getting fixed for a large part of the society, social problems just get bigger as a result either way. So it's important to tackle on the economy side of things. Not to mention that every transaction that happens outside of the borders of the nation is money that actually gets transferred to the other nation instead of re-investing.
Example: manufactured products in China.
To be competitive and keep his investors, a businessman needed to move his manufacturing production to China. That cuts some costs, but the payment for the production goes to the production plant on China, and to their workers (a laughable amount that makes many commit suicide in the workplace). if that product was manufactured in the USA, even though the costs would be larger because employees are better paid, the money itself would remain on the country, and spent on other companies through the purchases from the worker salaries. An economic ecosystem.
Now, one company can't just go rogue and decide to do the right thing, deals have to be made to at least preserve a percentage of the manufacturing on the USA. If you go too much for the cheap labor producing, you get slammed with fees. And that would apply nationwide, so no investor would be able to pose a threat to a certain company.
