Trump claims, nonetheless, to be the “voice” of the marginalized, and media portraits of working class people who support him have bolstered that claim. The conservative intellectual Francis Fukuyama gave a pure distillation of the common wisdom in an interview with The Ezra Klein Show recently: “The Trump candidacy represents the forgotten white working class that has been underrepresented in American democracy over the past generation,” he said. “So they’re getting a voice.”
That's wrong on two levels. It isn’t primarily the white working class that has propelled Trump’s rise. And his supporters are far from forgotten or ignored.