DONALD TRUMP’S COALITION OF THE DESCENDING:

If the goal in Washington really were to elevate Trump’s blue-collar white males and make them feel more secure, then “stupid” would be an apt description because the opposite effect has been achieved. Average hourly wages in the U.S. have been stagnant for half a century. Median household income has only risen for those toward the top of the income distribution. Earnings for male high school graduates have plummeted since 1970.

But who in the American power grid is actively pursuing the goal of elevating such people?

Neither Democratic nor Republican elites seem overly concerned with Trump’s crowd. Bernie Sanders would surely make a play for their support if he could get a hearing. But the Democrats are otherwise dreaming of dominance with their coalition of the ascendant. That coalition, the product of decades of politically costly investments that have only begun to pay a return, is female, black, Hispanic and Asian, with highly educated whites pitching in. It relies less and less on the votes of white males without college educations, and the coalition’s new members, many of whom have suffered discrimination, aren’t much saddened by the relative decline of white male status.

The Republicans, on the other hand, have seemed to heartily endorse white male working-class rage, wearing their constituents’ class grudges on their rolled-up sleeves. But they have shown scant interest in the efforts of so-called reform conservatives, for example, to address the economic plight of the working class.

It’s lucky that Trump’s supporters — despite media efforts to suggest otherwise — are so nonviolent. In most countries, a class of people this large, this vilified, and suffering this degree of reversal, would be rioting or worse.