WHY ARE THE VOTERS ANGRY

After winning several states’ primaries on Tuesday March 15, Donald Trump trumpeted, “The people are angry!” Virtually every commentary trying to explain the recent primaries and polls favoring Donald Trump mention that “Voters are angry.” Aren’t you a little sick of hearing about the angry voters? Most of the commentaries on television and in the papers explain that the reason for Trump’s electoral success is that the voters are angry. Do the voters have legitimate reasons for their anger or are Americans simply a bunch of pampered, coddled, spoiled brats who love to whine about their government no matter who’s in charge and no matter how things are going?
If the economy were in distress the voters would have something to be angry about. But when we look at the facts, there is no cause to whine. When elected, President Obama inherited one of the worst recessions in American history. Since 2009 the economy has recovered to the point where unemployment is down from 10% to 5.5%. The federal deficit has shrunk from 12.1% of GDP in 2009 to just 2.4% in 2014. And the US economy grew at 2.4% last year, (including 5% in Q3 of 2014) the highest growth rate since the beginning of The Great Recession. The United States now has the strongest economy in the world.
It is true that not all blue collar workers have fully recovered from the recession. Many are angry because of the damage done to them by that period of lost jobs and lower income. They know that although the economy has rebounded, the real profits are going to the top 1%. But that is not the Democrats’ fault. Yet they seem to blame the Democrats and look to a man who is a personification of the top 1%, Donald Trump.
Are they angry about world affairs?  Now that the economy is so good, Republicans have difficulty slamming President Obama over his domestic achievements, so they attack him on foreign policy claiming that he is weak with and obsequious to radical jihadists. Tell it to Osama bin Laden! It is interesting to hear how Republicans waffle about how to handle ISIS. One never hears them say explicitly that we should send an army of “boots on the ground” to the Middle East. Yet despite the president’s campaign of heavy bombing, and despite the fact that ISIS is now administering their shrinking “Islamic State” from the smithereens of their remaining headquarters, the Republicans whine that Obama is doing too little.
The President has many important accomplishments, including a deal that will delay and even cancel Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons, a worldwide pact that will significantly reduce global warming, the Affordable Care Act that has provided health insurance for tens of millions of previously uninsured people, and others. So why are the voters angry?
I attribute this anger to the eternal war between blue collar and white collar voters. It is nothing new. By blue collar voters I mean all of those millions of people with low education, low wages or no jobs, small houses or trailers, rough manners, and lower class tastes. Even though white collar liberals have always supported unions, better pay, better hours, and other improvements for blue collar workers, such love has never been reciprocated. Blue collar workers have always resented and envied the better educated, better paid, white collar workers who seem to patronize them. They have always been angry. In the past they supported George Wallace, Lyndon LaRouche, Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, and others. So what’s new?