Where my family lives, factories are closing. Schools don’t have enough money for teachers, and all of Barack Obama’s hope and change hasn’t done much trickling down in the last eight years. And just because the moderate voters living in these areas aren’t showing up at Trump rallies or plastering your Facebook wall with tirades about Muslims doesn’t mean they’re planning to support Obama’s heir apparent come November.

That’s a hard truth for a lot of liberals with white-collar jobs and HBO subscriptions to process, but it’s a truth nonetheless. It’s a truth that is driving Trump fans who really do want to build a wall and “punish” women who have illegal abortions, but it’s a truth for millions of other middle America (yes, mostly white) voters who are overlooked once the primary race bunting comes down and the bandshells empty back out…

Some of the people I grew up with are racist. Plenty more are sexist. And a lot of these mainly white midwesterners ventured no farther than the state college. But those are descriptors that also work on plenty of the liberals I’ve met in Boston, Chicago, New York – they just keep those views to themselves while living in much more diverse places. And that lets them off the hook. It sets up that insidious dismissal of anyone who doesn’t live like them, who doesn’t think like them.