Jonathan Aronson, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, examines what he refers to as a "hollowing out" of the working class and our elected officials.
While the former has seen its jobs shipped overseas, the latter has grown increasingly beholden to multinationals, many of which now underwrite its campaigns. This, in turn, "pushes people left, it pushes people right. And at the same time you have an economic dearth in the middle.The people who were in the middle in politics are also gone."
"If we don’t get our act together and improve things for everybody—including your workers, your middle class, your poor, and not just the one percent—we could really descend into chaos," he argues. "But there is an opportunity, if we can get things right, which can only be done through bringing diverse groups with different interests together, and sort of finding ways to build a coalition among them, not against them—that there is still some hope."