The thing is, both sides are wrong about the reasons. At least in how they go about it on the stump.
Globalization and neoliberalism has killed labor in post industrial societies. Democrats tend to kind of just ignore this while speaking about better welfare so that people who get left behind might actually still be able to eat. The right has typically gone in the direction of pushing harder for market liberalization while spreading the message that everything will reach equilibrium eventually as long as we get the government out of the way.
To say that the working class people who swung right in the last 30 years are "voting against their interests" are missing a key point in that the latter actually /did/ work for the redder states as the cutting of business oriented taxes or outright tax breaks for corporations did bring industry to the smaller, more rural states over this time frame away from the bigger states. As the northest rusted, the mid and south west actually expanded industrial output as the lower cost of living per capita and the aforementioned tax breaks resulted in industrial labor that was vastly cheaper to produce in a rural state and export to a more expensive state. The key change is that the rise of china and other economies like it plus the hyper advancing of the actual logistics of moving things around have resulted in tipping the balance out of the favor of rural industrial output in the us and instead pushed it over to China, Vietnam, etc. What this has resulted in are these states going through essentially the same economic crisis that the northest did in the 70s "rust belt" era within the last 10-20 years, and as more jobs get lost the working class whites have been left holding the bag as labor moved away from them.
As things worse and worse in these states over time (oklahoma and kansas both are completely falling apart right now economically) I think these areas will undergo the same swing left that the northeast did, eventually. Trump's populism is just the birthing pains of it starting on the national stage, really.
At the end of the day what's caused all of this is that neoliberalism in the Milton fashion has just run its course in the us, and as the us moves further and further into post-idustrialism big government is going to have to pick up the slack. Establishment free market republicans have no where else to turn in the us anymore. They're a dying breed and they probably are finally starting to realize that in brutal fashion this time around. Personally, I say good fucking riddance
Damn good post.
Still though, the one aspect you did not touch upon is both parties will inevitably be forced to become anti-immigration (in one way or another). A post industrial society with a surplus of labor, becoming social democracy cannot have a liberal immigration policy. They will either advocate for a non-eligible residency class or to severely limit immigration.
