Working-Class Whites Watch: Day 105

Anyone who is tuned in to the state of American politics knows that the most important demographic supporting The Stain are so-called 'working-class whites'.  And if you know that, then you probably also know that this demographic is suffering a great deal from 'deaths of despair', caused in part by opioid addiction:

“Much of the relationship between mortality and Trump’s performance is explained by economic factors; counties with higher economic distress and larger working-class presence also have higher mortality rates and came out strongly for Trump,” Monnat wrote. “In many of the counties where Trump did the best, economic precarity has been building and social and family networks have been breaking down for several decades.”

The Bloomberg article quoted above cites a study by Princeton University's Anne Case and Angus Deaton, which among other things states that "Controlling opioids is an obvious priority" in addressing the problem.

So you will probably be unsurprised to learn that The Stain is doing the exact opposite, proposing a 95 percent reduction in funding for the office leading the fight against opioid addiction:

 It's the latest item in the Trump agenda that addiction advocates fear would erode the government's ability to fight an epidemic killing more than 47,000 Americans per year. Since taking office, the Trump administration has fought to pass an Obamacare repeal bill that would result in millions more without coverage; fired a surgeon general who led an unprecedented study of the opioid crisis; proposed billions of dollars of cuts to public health funding; and signaled a return to the tough-on-drugs approach to fighting addiction.

This move seems to be motivated by The Stain's fundamental belief that it Obama did something, it must be reversed.  And if that's really the driving force behind his presidency, it's going to be a long 4 years --- not least for the working-class whites who helped put him there in the first place.