My head is spinning with this election.  So much acrimony, worry, infighting, delegate counting, rule tracking, score keeping of endorsements already hurt my brain.  And now we’re watching the Clintons re-stage the 1990s battle to win the angry white man … or … what?

Over the last couple days, HRC has been taken to task for her comments about putting coal miners out of business, apologized to a coal miner, started pursuing Republican donors, started pursuing alienated Republican voters, and asked her husband to ““come out of retirement and be in charge” of creating jobs in places that have been particularly hard hit.”

Despite Rob Reiner’s keen insight into the American electorate, pundits are finally acknowledging that Trump’s economic message is the more durable and, to HRC,  dangerously effective part of his candidacy.  (CVFD, would love to be pointed to Fallows intense and personal looks at Trump supporters.)  He can pull back on the anti-Hispanic stuff, spend less time on beheadings, and focus more on trade agreements, the decimation of the manufacturing sector, and both parties’ neglect of these parts of the economy.

As a result, we’re watching the weird theater of Trump telling the elite, technocratic Clinton of the day:  “it’s the economy, stupid.”  Oh, the irony.

So how is this all going to come together?  I think the Clintons (and now that Bill is out of retirement, I think I may just start saying that more regularly) are seeing a chance to build the biggest, broadest coalition the Democrats have ever had.  The long-awaited, oft-predicted collapse of the Republican party is finally upon us and everything but evangelical voters seem to be up for grabs.  HRC, running on fear of Trump, is looking at a virtual buffet of voting blocs:

Women + New Democrats + Sanders Supporters + Moderate Republicans + Economically anxious Republicans Voting for Trump + People of Color + Businesses of all sorts of sizes + the angry working man

It’s a dizzying possibility.  Racking up the biggest electoral map victory in recent years, quite possibly destroying the Republican’s legislative majority (numerically, or simply by dividing them), an almost impossibly disorganized opposition party, and an optimistic outlook for the 2018 elections.

Can Clinton make this coalition work?  Can Trump moderate himself with credibility or without losing his base?  Those are the bigger questions, but I want to focus on the economic outrage to which Trump and Sanders have given voice.

For Clinton, this picture in The Guardian today highlights the biggest threat:

I have my doubts that WJC can handle this.  For all his personal charm and his legendary ability to explain policy, he doesn’t seem to handle outrage well and he’s been pretty proud of his record on trade.   It’s one thing to explain how a policy will be good for you and gain trust.  WJC feels your pain, explains a complicated policy, promises it will be OK and we wipe tears from our eyes.  It’s an entirely different matter to convince people that their pain is completely unconnected to your policies, or that your really did help them while you were in office, and that your wife didn’t mean anything when she was so glib about miner’s jobs.

(And the subtext of the picture is that HRC’s coalition is decidedly not Bubba.  While HRC has smartly avoided the characterizations of the dumb, uneducated, overweight, incompletely toothed, unwashed, her supporters, in my experience have a hard time hiding their distaste and many just love crowing about their idiocy.)

It gets even trickier for the Clintons as they wade into this territory, because they could very well find themselves in the odd position of really needing active union support, rather than mere non-opposition.  Sanders has already proven that the rank-and-file membership are suspicious of New Democrat policies and are happy to ignore the endorsements of their national leadership (of whom they are also dubious). While I can’t imagine Trump ever earning the endorsement of the UMWA, I doubt we’re gonna see the legendary miners in camos at HRC rallies.

Which, to many Dems is the point:  “we were never going to win them anyway” but what about striking Verizon workers who saw Sanders walking picket?  What about the Teamsters who saw Elizabeth Warren go to bat for their pensions?  What happens when Trump starts beating the drum about HRC saying there was plenty of blame to go around for the recession including the irresponsible homeowners who took those mortgages?  Watching Trump versus WJC battle to be champions of the working man, the working poor, and the struggling middle class will be a great cosmic joke.  But it will also be terrifying, because Trump has a narrative and no record.  And the Clintons have a worn-out narrative and a highly questionable record.

Oi. Oi. Oi.