The Democratic Party is dying in the parts of America where it's needed the most. Seen now as the party of the wealthy and elite, Democrats have lost touch and must win back thousands of working-class Obama-Trump voters without alienating their base of single women, minorities and millennials.

Democrats must bridge a divide between two different Americas, but to do that successfully they must bridge a divide between Sanders and Clinton voters. And the person best positioned to bridge those divides is former Rep. Tom Perriello.

Perriello is running for governor of Virginia on a message of progressive populism, taking a bold stand on economic issues, and if it works, he'll provide the framework for Democrats in 2018 and 2020.

Leading Democrats want to abandon Appalachia and Rural America to focus on suburbs and changing demographics. But Perriello sees them as essential to his party's long-term comeback. "The answer is to do the difficult work of addressing their problems," said Perriello in an interview before a forum in rural Bristol, Virginia.

In western Virginia, the Rust Belt and thousands of towns across the Midwest and rural south, years of stagnation, job loss and despair elected Donald Trump president. "But when the smoke clears, Trump's incompetence and lack of attention to jobs is going to create an opening," says Perriello.

His economic plan includes universal pre-K, equal pay and raising the minimum wage, but he also understands that his party needs bolder ideas and that his election is the first test of the Trump presidency; not whether a Democrat can win an already blue Virginia, but whether a Democrat can appeal to Americans dying from their own despair. "To not acknowledge the pain when three Virginians are dying every day from the opioid crisis is not to live up to our progressive values," says Perriello.

Democrats lost the 2016 election because they ignored years of deindustrialization, wage stagnation and income inequality, and they've got work to do. "But first we have to acknowledge what the problem is," says Perriello. "The disappearance of work is real, but jobs lost to globalization was the challenge of the last generation, now it's automation and corporate monopoly."

Out on the campaign trail, Perriello talks regularly about antitrust enforcement to spur small-business growth and local food and energy production that would revitalize rural areas.

The question is whether it's a winning message for Democrats in the Age of Trump?

As a former special envoy to the Great Lakes Region of Africa during the Obama administration and a former president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Perriello is wonkish, soft-spoken and an unlikely fit to be the next Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt.

But the mood of the country is anti-establishment, economic concentration is the greatest threat to freedom in modern America and Perriello's "populism with a brain" has won the endorsement of Obama staffers, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

"They say I sound like a think-tank, and that people out here won't get it," says Perriello about criticism that his focus on economic consolidation is too complicated to find appeal. "But voters are the ones losing the jobs. They understand exactly what's happening to the economy and they're the ones bringing it up to me."

To unite white working-class voters with working-class minorities who stayed home last November, Perriello is proposing two-years of free community college, trade school and apprenticeship training. "Trump wants to divide communities of color and rural communities," says Perriello. "But when you look at the biggest consumers of trade school and community college, they're first and second generation immigrants and kids from rural communities."

Perriello won a congressional race in southern Virginia by making progressive politics relatable to rural and conservative voters. His self-deprecation and underdog persona are reminiscent of former Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone who was also popular in the heartland.

He used his mailing list to direct supporters to make calls opposing the Republican Affordable Health Care Act and was prompt with an ad crushing an ambulance to symbolize the stakes.