But there is not a long distance from there to “fuck the poor: it’s their own damned fault”. The historical role of the Democrats has been to counter this impulse. Within my own world, there is room for give and take, and the historical Democrats are people I could find some common ground with, even if I could never agree with the extent of their pandering.
The modern Democrat party, though, has gone full Socialist, full self loathing, full ideological detachment from the cares and struggles of actual human beings.
So where does this leave working class Americans? With nothing. Nobody talks about or cares about them, except to the extent they patronize them with lies and/or platitudes.
I was reading this nasty article from National Review, which has most of the classic stereotypes Democrats, with some justice, threw at conservatives, with none of the palliating deeper humanitarianism that motivated people like Barry Goldwater or Calvin Coolidge. Consider this finale to what purports to be serious analysis, by someone who wonders how so much of the world has missed his unique insights, rare genius, and goshdarned tough ability to “tell it like it is”. He is speaking about small towns around America:
The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.
On the one side you have Hillary and everyone but Trump wanting to add 15 million job-seekers to a discouraged existing pool of people who have worked too little, for too little, for many years now; and on the other you have this asshole.
Why not Trump? He’s used to seeing men in hard hats at work. It’s what he’s always done.