A new report in the NY Post takes a look at how some lifelong working class Democrats are rethinking their opposition to President-Elect Donald Trump. Of course Trump won the election by breaking down the Blue Wall -- a corridor of states whose large union-member and working class demographics reliably voted Democrat for decades -- but that didn't mean Trump made a convert out of everyone in the Rust Belt. Though he still just might. 

Robert James, an African-American United Steelworkers member, was interviewed outside the Carrier plant just prior to Trump addressing the workers there. The union member and lifelong Democrat is beginning to see that Democrats never did a thing to preserve his job, and that a Republican just did:  

“I feel a great swing of emotions that go from disbelief to satisfaction that this is happening in our community. An area like this can go from a stable middle-class area to foreclosures and urban blight in the blink of an eye,” he said.

James would never dream of voting Republican: “For all of my life the Democrats have been the party of the working guy, had my back. But if I am being really honest, and this is tough to admit, but I can’t remember the last time they did anything to improve the dignity and value of my job” — a point that didn’t really crystallize for him until it became personal: until his job was saved. By a Republican.

James, wearing a United Steelworkers jacket on a brisk afternoon, was in no way saying he’s found political religion in the Republicans. But the 57-year-old, African-American longtime Carrier employee did share the sentiment of many of his co-workers, Democrats who didn’t vote for Trump but felt their party was disconnected from their lives.

"The Democratic Party has become a coastal elitist club and if there is any decision or discussion made to broaden that within the ranks, it is squashed," said well-known Democratic strategist Dane Strother in an interview with the Post. 

“We have completely lost touch with Middle America ... How did we go from the party of the little man to the party of the elite?" 

He said that while Democrats "should protect the rights of minorities, African-Americans, Hispanics, the LBGTQ communities" they shouldn't be forgetting "the rest of the country along the way":

Back in 2002, Strother recalls, Texas Democrats thought they’d figured out the perfect slate to break the Republican stranglehold on statewide elected offices. “The ticket had a former black mayor of Dallas, a wealthy Hispanic businessman and a moderate white politician. We called it the Texas ‘dream team,’ and they were recruited to appeal to liberals, progressives and the state’s growing minority population.”

Oops: “We got our asses kicked.” The GOP carried every statewide office by even bigger margins. [...] “We kept waiting for the white working class to just show up, but we didn’t give them any reason to,” he said, adding that Democrats can’t just be the party that simply waits for minorities to become the majority.

Citing a Politico/Morning Consult poll, the report notes that the President and Vice President-elects groundbreaking deal with Carrier "is wildly popular" with just about everyone, Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike, and that its given then a "favorable" view of Trump. 

Strother told the Post that Trump's Carrier deal "was magnificent, brilliant theater" no matter what the incoming president does or doesn't achieve in the future. 

"The fact that my fellow Democrats don’t get that has more to do with denial problems or the fact that they weren’t up there doing it themselves." 

Indeed. Because the Left talks a good game, but in trademark hypocritical fashion, never actually elevates the people they claim to champion.