Saturday, December 26, 2015

WHY TRUMP IS SO POPULAR WITH THE MIDDLE CLASS

12/26/15

12/26/15

I sent the following letter to the Chicago Tribune on 12/20 and the paper published it this (Saturday, 12/26) morning in the “Voice of the People” section more or less intact.   I appreciate that because it’s been awhile since the Trib has published anything I’ve sent, though I have to admit I haven’t sent much for a while.  I have reproduced the letter below for my readers’ convenience.

I sent a very similar letter to the Wall Street Journal a few days earlier.    The Journal has yet to run the letter but, if it does, I’ll also post it on this blog after publication.

Thanks; I hope you had a great Christmas and that the arrival of our Savior will continue in your hearts.



12/20/15

Donald Trump has been characterized as demagogue on the Perspective pages of the Tribune and as a bigot, or worse, in other organs of the media.  The sachems of the press and of the political world clearly see Mr. Trump in this light and are scratching their heads at the very notion of Mr. Trump’s popularity.  Why do so many middle class voters support Mr. Trump?   Are Trump supporters, as much of the press is doubtlessly concluding, a pack of benighted morons who don’t know what’s good for them? 

As usual, the media and political sages have it wrong.  People support Mr. Trump because they are fed up.  They are sick and tired of terrorism, street violence, and a society seemingly coming apart at the seams.  They are appalled by a feckless foreign policy that has gotten us nowhere but deeper in debt and further into the cauldron of Middle Eastern intrigue at the cost of trillions of dollars and thousands of the lives of their sons and daughters.  They have had it with paying ever higher taxes so that the government can seemingly remain at the beck and call of every stratum of society but theirs.   Most of all, they are fed up with the fealty to political correctness and the blind allegiance to Republican and Democratic doctrine that creates and exacerbates the problems that are permeating our once great nation.  Finally, middle class voters know that any “solution” that comes from the Democratic or Republican establishments will involve spending lots of their money to sink us more deeply into the morass that the career politician mindset has largely created.

People aren’t, as media mavens and political pros suppose, stupid; they realize that Donald Trump is far from the perfect vessel for addressing the problems that politics as usual have created for them.   But they know that a vote for the same old Washington nabobs is pointless…or worse.


Mark M. Quinn
Naperville



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