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The Republican party will die if it doesn't visibly offer a path to wealth and success to everyone. Today, the top 10% of earners own 87% of the securities outstanding: historically that kind of wealth imbalance has ALWAYS led to revolution. People want to be independent and hold their heads up, but the crushing costs of city rent/real estate, education, and healthcare are killing that hope for tens of millions of Americans. The Democrats tried to make those things affordable, and failed so spectacularly that no almost no-one can afford them. The Republicans, instead of offering real solutions to those problems, are adamant that everything is fine when it clearly is not.

The party of Lincoln, the party of opportunity and freedom, the party that ended the Korean War and the Vietnam War, the party that won the Cold War with dollars instead of nukes and lives has become the party of preserving the status quo at all costs. The increasingly leftward swing of the Democrats reflects a huge number of young people who cannot see a pathway out of poverty and cannot imagine anything beyond government handouts. The US isn't what it was in the 1970s or 1980s: you can't give the registrar at a land grant college $100, the book store another $100, and then keep the rest of the cash from your job for rent, food and beer. It's worse for folks who didn't go to college. We exported stunning numbers of jobs to China, and if there is one reason why Trump won, it's that he promised the people of the Midwest that he'd bring them back while Obama pointe-blanc told them to pound sand.

Ms. Klacik is addressing that with her words and her example, and for a group of people that the Republican party has ignored for a long time. If the Republican party wants to remain a viable political entity (instead of the Socialists and Communists vying for control of American politics in 2050), then it has to offer something to people who aren't retired millionaires. When AOC pointed out that giving Amazon billions in tax write offs to come to NYC, she should've been drowned out amidst the angry chorus of Republicans deriding government handouts picking winners. When Bernie Sanders elicits frenzied cheers from students who cannot afford tuition, the Republicans need to be able to point to exactly why college has become so insanely expensive and how they intend to fix that (I'd suggest allowing bankruptcy to discharge student loans). I can't tackle the cost of healthcare in one post, but it's right up there.

Unless the Democrats suddenly become pro-gun, this matters for all of us.