The Political Class Versus Mainstream America

Mark Tapscott notes the widening gulf between the two:

Judging by the latest survey data on American public opinion, Rudyard Kipling might as well have been talking about us when he said "never the twain shall meet" between the East of Britain's privileged ruling elite and the West of native subjects of her empire.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen regularly documents the yawning gulf between what he calls America's "Political Class" and the rest of us, whom he dubs "Mainstream America."

The Political Class dominates government, the mainstream media, corporate boardrooms, academia, nonprofit activism, and the faculty lounge. Theirs is a world of conceptual analyses, bureaucratic edicts and organization charts, elevated sensibilities, and the conventional wisdoms of political correctness.

The rest of us live and work in the real world, in Rasmussen's Mainstream America. That's the world of what if I lose my job; hurry, Mommy, I'm late for my soccer game; taxes keep going up and buying power is headed down; honey, your mother needs you to come over and fix her stove; the car won't start; and the thousand other challenges of daily life.

Not surprisingly, these two Americas agree on next to nothing. Take the most basic question about whether the country is headed in the right direction. Rasmussen found that 67 percent of the Political Class think America is headed the right way, but 84 percent of Mainstream America thinks things are horribly off track.

Read the rest of it here. There's no question that most of those who make up the political or ruling class are extremely out-of-touch with real America, and real America is going to need to rise up and smack them in the head to remind them where their power comes from.