I recently posted an article here putting forward the idea that voter suppression, gerrymandering, big money in politics, the Electoral College, etc. have been used to create a crisis in majority rule in the US. I suggested that Trump's ability to get support from a significant section of economically insecure blue collar workers could be a decisive factor in how this situation develops from this point. I talked about how we should try to reach out to these people to join forces on matters of common interest - issues like healthcare, overtime pay eligibility, minimum wage, Social Security, labor rights, etc. These are the family budget issues that it's hard for them to fully embrace the business / conservative agenda - even if they are white males.
To win the resistance fight we need to involve the greatest number of people possible. We can't afford to turn our noses up at people because they were fooled into putting hopes on Trump. So, we need to find which blue collar workers are inclined to push for these kinds of issues and make them part of that movement.
A comment to my earlier article pointed to the fact that most Trump voters were more affluent - which is true. However, the higher income Trump supporters are generally the usual GOP voters. It's the economically insecure blue collar people - which Trump made various campaign promises to - which are significant in a couple of ways. There are people in this group which aren't consistently Republican or conservative. And unlike the higher income white collar Republicans, they're further from the strata which gets some benefits from the business / GOP legislation. They can play an important role when the billionaires’ agenda makes working people even more economically insecure.
But it's not just that as working people who lack status they have more potential to join in struggles for the 99%.
I've started reading Chris Mooney's book The Republican Brain. This book discusses how the human brain tends to use certain kinds of biased reasoning to justify one's beliefs in politics and other emotional areas. The book explains about areas in which there are differences in how people on the political right or left bias their reasoning. It also discusses other factors that seem relevant to my earlier article. Educational level also seems to affect the use of biased reasoning, but not in the way you might guess. Studies show that people with higher education are actually less inclined to change their views when faced with new evidence. This appears to be because these people have a more sophisticated system of explanations / rationalizations in their heads that make it harder for new evidence to be integrated. People whose beliefs are more intuitions rather than elaborate systems may not change their views at the first contact with new evidence, but changing their views is not as difficult.
Considering this understanding, it makes sense that in terms of psychological ability to change beliefs, blue collar people — who generally have less higher education — would generally be better possibilities for changing views. They're in the line of fire of the business / Republican offensive, and more of them will have less mental barriers to learning from the evidence they encounter about who is trying to make them poorer and who is trying to protect their family budgets.
We need to try to involve them. Not by lecturing them about what a dumb mistake they may have made, but by asking them to participate in efforts to protect their family's health, their family's living standard, their children's needs and their parents' retirement. Try to make the groups working on these issues an environment that doesn't feel hostile to anyone working for that one particular goal. That doesn't mean you should never have a civil political chat over a beer or coming home from a rally. It just means maintaining an attitude "we agree to disagree on other issues, but we all are working together on this issue."
Working together on common issues doesn't just mean getting more people involved. It means that some misguided blue collar workers get to act side by side with us and see that we don't have demon's horns growing out of our foreheads. Once they get to know us as individuals, it will be easier for them to openly listen to what we think, and start to consider what we say.