I wish I'd observed in print that Donald Trump was going to win, having received advance notice on the back roads of Middle America. But my psyche was slow to process what my eyes were seeing.

Shortly before the presidential election, my wife and I drove across Pennsylvania, but not on the interstates. We avoid them when the impulse to visit the heartland strikes us, as it regularly does. Four-lane highways run from one city inhabited by urbanites to another where lifestyles mimic ours. Two-lane highways, like Pennsylvania Route 504, run past small towns — like Pleasant Gap and Philipsburg — culturally light-years from Chicago's Old Town neighborhood where we live.

From one end of Pennsylvania to the other, country roads and village streets were lined with yard signs proclaiming allegiance to Trump. There had to be thousands, with scarcely a Clinton sign between them, a sight that left me a sense of deja vu.

Only after Tuesday's election did I realize where I'd seen something similar: On a press bus in 1982 riding through war-torn Lebanon, where a white flag marked every house. It was the villagers' way of signaling passing armies: “Please don't shoot! We are just ordinary people!”

Those Trump signs were, in effect, white flags. Unmistakable signs that rural and small-town folks have had it with culture wars they didn't sign up for. Of course, if you voted for Hillary (as I did), you might ask why those distress signs weren't distributed on a nonpartisan basis, some for each candidate?

Hold that thought, and drive past the suburbs until you come to a perfectly ordinary town. Park in front of the American Legion or high school football stadium and reflect on something Clinton said during the campaign:

“You could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables,” she said, proclaiming them “irredeemable” for being “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.”

Clinton issued that judgment at a ritzy New York fundraiser sponsored by the LGBT community, where contributors paid as much as $10,000 to hear Barbra Streisand sing.

Imagine you live in a small town like the one you are looking at. You attend a church that frowns on gay marriage. Your grandparents were European immigrants, and your paycheck is threatened by job outsourcing.

Wouldn't you think that, in Clinton's eyes, the only white people who count send their kids to private schools and live in gated communities or condos with a doorman — and have enough money left over to support liberal causes and candidates?

The months ahead are going to be filled with endless soul-searching about the Democratic Party's election disaster. There will be university seminars and public forums.

But let me suggest another venue. Folklore is replete with legends of kings who disguised themselves as peasants so they might go forth anonymously and see how their subjects live.

Before anyone drafts a new blueprint for the Democratic Party, he or she should follow the path of the good kings of yore. They need a close-up look at a small town, from the vantage point of the junior high parking lot.

Watch as parents drop off their children and consider what they might have thought when an Obama administration memo required public schools to give transgender students their choice of restrooms. However worthy the objective, that required an instant abandonment of a sense of modesty dating to when Adam and Eve clothed themselves.

Democrats have much to be proud of. Their party stood with African-Americans when Barry Goldwater, a Republican presidential nominee in 1964, opposed civil rights legislation. Democrats fought for equal rights for women and sexual minorities. They put a social safety net under children and the elderly.

But those successes bred a sense of infallibility. Democrats stopped asking workaday folks how they saw their problems. Instead of listening, Democrats pontificated. Corporate lawyers replaced union leaders as the party's cadre, and myopia set in. White-collar party leaders wrote off factory closings as a cost of doing business.

Blue-collar workers, once the party's faithful, were stranded. And into that void, Donald Trump leapt.

If they are going to make a comeback, Democrats need to hit the road. They need to stop talking to each other and reconnect with their former constituency. A good place to find it is in coffee shops — but not the big-city franchised variety. You want to know what folks are thinking? Visit a small-town greasy spoon, where the short-order cook and cashier chat with customers between running the grill and making change.

Last time I was there, a fellow at the next table volunteered his life story, before I could ask: “Wife's gone and the plant where I worked is closed. Not much to keep young people here.”

Listen to enough such stories, and eventually you'll learn how to ask such a man for his vote. How can I be sure? Because that's how Democrats used to win elections.

rgrossman@chicagotribune.com