It's literally the same media talking point as 2016. Within a couple days all the liberal outlets (NPR, MSNBC, Colbert, Bill Maher, etc.) had coalesced around the narrative that large turnout among "uneducated whites" was the reason Trump beat Hillary. I wrote a commentary on it at the time, pointing out that none of those same media pundits ever thought to say Obama got elected because of "uneducated blacks" even though that was a demographic which turned out in historically high numbers for him.
And the thing is, there is absolutely nothing disqualifying about being "uneducated" whether you are black white or chartreuse. You still get to vote and your vote still carries the same weight. My point isn't to say they are wrong about non-college-graduates voting for Trump in higher numbers. It's to point out why they keep saying it. The fact that nobody ever ever ever has gone on national TV and said, "Obama won the uneducated black vote" is because the racial and prejudicial motivation of the person saying it would immediately be obvious to everyone listening. Even though the data is, strictly speaking, true, the only reason someone would want to frame the narrative that way would be to dog-whistle "black people are dumb ignorant lowlifes who don't have the intellect to make good voting choices".
That is exactly the payload of the media pundits and the entertainment actors like Colbert, Maddow, Stewart, etc. The only reason to keep saying "uneducated whites" is to dog-whistle "poor white folk are dumb ignorant lowlifes who don't have the intellect to make good voting choices".
But as others have pointed out this week -- please do keep telling people they are dumb and deplorable. It's how we are well on the way to a SCOTUS that actually follows the US Constitution for the first time in 3 generations.
Please... someone tell me I'm wrong. Someone give me the alternate explanation for why a talking head would have such a strong need to pair "uneducated white" together over and over? What's the charitable, gentle interpretation here? Include your explanation of how, if it is harmless and not entirely intended as a personal epithet, it has never been used to discuss the exact same dispassionate data analysis about "uneducated blacks".