Some liberal experts argue that white-working class voters in places like Castlewood and small cities across the Rust Belt have abandoned the Democratic Party forever. But that viewpoint is losing credence among those that want to win. One of the leading liberal demographic analysts, who literally wrote the book on the issue, dismissed the idea that demography alone is destiny for Democrats.

“I think that’s a minority view at this point of the Democratic Party. I think most people have looked at the data. The real world has talked back, and I think people are now recalibrating,” said Ruy Teixeira, co-author of 2004’s “Emerging Democratic Majority.”…

Without brining those voters back into the fold, Democrats could keep losing in the near term. “I think the question is not whether we should do this, but how exactly to do it, and I say, ‘Let the debate begin,’” Teixeira said.

It starts in places like Schuylkill County in Pennsylvania, southwest of Scranton, where there are just about 60,000 people who vote in presidential elections, a fraction of the more than 600,000 who regularly vote in Philadelphia. In 2012, Republican Mitt Romney won by 13.5 percentage points in Schuylkill, less than 8,000 votes. But four years later Trump won by more than 23,000 votes, getting 70 percent to just 27 percent for Clinton.