What confounds me is that it's so obviously a fake populism. Thomas Frank wrote a fantastic book about it; "What's the Matter With Kansas?" You have these working class people spouting what sounds like populist rhetoric but is in actuality almost completely divorced from the populist tradition. They're, if anything, anti-union, against social spending, pro-corporate, anti-regulation., etc., etc. It's so absurd.
It's disturbing how transparent it is. We just had this special election here in Massachusetts, and it's really amazing, first, a republican senator cleaning up in Massachusetts, but that he took over Ted Kennedy's seat, it's just bizarre. (Hopefully, we'll get rid of him when the term is over.) The first line in this asshole's campaign ad was; "I'm Scott Brown, and this is my truck." What's really sad is a disturbing percentage of the electorate were like; "You had me at 'truck.'" Like that's all they need to know. Case closed. These people are living in a different reality.