CAMPAIGN/JOBS: “Donald J. Trump can be brilliant. On the campaign trail, his diagnosis of the raw anger and disillusionment among white working-class Americans bested the most sophisticated analyses from the professional political class.
His description of ‘American carnage’ in his Inaugural Address — complete with ‘rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape,’ impoverished mothers and children, crime, drugs that ‘robbed our country of so much unrealized potential’ — struck a nerve with millions of voters who feel left behind by a country buffeted by demographic, technological and social change.
But something must have happened between then and now…
Indeed, his initial forays into social and economic policy making raise an uncomfortably raw question: Was his appeal to the troubled working class a con? If anything, his proposals look like a scheme to make the carnage worse.”
-Eduardo Porter, “‘Carnage’ Indeed, but Trump’s Policies Would Make It Worse,” The New York Times online, March 28, 2017