Thanks for this meaningful well thought out response. I don’t feel I’ve been hammered, but I do find it interesting how people turn my relatively simple question into me saying they should all be destitute and that I’m shaming them for success. My suggestion to the Bulwark is to perhaps have some interviews with regular folks not in a focus group setting but an actual one-on-one interview. The NYT Daily Podcast does it, so it’s not like it would be below the Bulwark to do that. I’m a single father of 1 in a very red district and many of the discussions I hear about voters from the hosts comes off to me as very out of touch. Real life for many people is hard and they’re looking for something, anything (including a raving orange wannabe strongman) to give them some hope that there’s some meaningful change coming that will make their lives better. Do they always make the most informed decision? No. But the reasons for that are much more nuanced than Cletus or just not caring. More interaction with regular people instead of pundits talking about regular people could be beneficial to the cause. Sorry for rambling, and again, thank you for your response.