Deliverance From Hillary Clinton

By Peggy Noonan,

If Democrats want to solve their Hillary Clinton problem, Conor Lamb has some good ideas.

It takes a long time for candidates to get over losing the American presidency. Some never do. It’s not just personal anger—“I will not be denied my destiny!”—it’s something more poignant. It’s that the greatest prize was there, beautiful and within your grasp and then—dust. You’re holding nothing.

A perpetual low-grade mourning ensues. You were rejected by a nation. In time the ego rebels: Stupid nation!

Which is where Hillary Clinton is, still. She can’t get over it and can’t keep it inside. But by articulating the Democrats’ central national weakness this week, she did them a service. She reminded them: It’s real, the weakness, and must be remedied.

In Mumbai, at a conference sponsored by India Today, Mrs. Clinton was interviewed onstage…

Why, he asked, did she lose to the outlandish Donald Trump ?

Why did 52% of white women support Mr. Trump?

So, to recap [her answers]: Trump supporters were racist, narrow and ignorant, and Trump women are not tough and modern but fearful, cowering and easily led. They live in a big mass of red in the middle (like an ugly wound, or an inflammation!) while we have the coasts—better real estate. And better people.

During the campaign Mrs. Clinton was often urged to speak her heart, show us what’s inside. It turns out it is rather dark in there. This is not precisely news—she had famously labeled half of Trump supporters “the basket of deplorables.” Barack Obama in 2008 betrayed a similarly crude, uninformed class bias and snobbery when he said of working-class voters, “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

But it was instructive this week to see some Democrats push back.

Mrs. Clinton’s comments prompt an essential question: To the extent those in the deindustrialized Midwest need help and support, isn’t that what the Democratic Party is for? Doesn’t it exist to help the little guy, the marginalized, the left-behind? That’s what it always said!

This isn’t help, it’s condescension.

It is “Deliverance” politics. The blockbuster movie version of James Dickey’s novel came out in 1972, when the Clintons and I were young, and made a vivid impression on a rising tide of baby boomers. It satisfied all their biases. A group of cool, modern, rational urban professionals journeyed into the backwoods, only to meet the rest of America—the cross-eyed rapist banjo players. That movie did more to shape the preconceptions of a generation of young Democrats than any other …

More From The Wall Street Journal (subscription required):