Aretha Franklin made clear what she needed (as did Otis Redding, who actually wrote the song).

“All I'm askin'," she famously sang, "is for a little respect!" She then spelled it out, in case you weren't sure: "R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”

Put in political terms, you can’t get votes from people you don’t respect. Or more accurately, you can’t get votes from people who believe you don’t respect them.

When people of faith, or gun owners, or those worried about illegal immigration hear Democrats say that such people “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” they don’t feel respected.

More succinctly, assigning people to a “basket of deplorables” does not signal respect. Neither does speaking as if to the Harvard faculty club or failing to put forward candidates who represent a particular segment of the population.........

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