E.J. Dionne, Jr., today, WaPo and elsewhere, not behind firewall

My comment in response at WaPo's website (one of 549 as I write):

Interesting column, E.J.  My comments are in response to two passages.  

You wrote: "But these 'welfare nationalists' often blame foreigners for diluting their social services, when the reductions are typically the result of austerity or privatization policies pursued by the moderate right — responding, it should be said, to impatience with old welfare-state structures among more conservative middle-class voters."

Could you elaborate on what you mean by this "impatience with old-welfare-state structures among more conservative middle-class voters?"

You also wrote: "The European experience underscores why the debate inside the Democratic Party is so vexing. The party’s left has a point in arguing that working-class voters (of all races) feel shortchanged by the new economy and the failure of government to offer them adequate relief."

Use of the term "adequate relief" conjures images of welfare.  I don't think there is any clamoring for welfare from those who've been harmed by this economy.  There is, it seems to me, a desire for living-wage job options with decent benefits and working conditions, and there are not enough of these in this economy.   Along with a sense that priority attention should be given to those in this country without having broken any of the rules to get here.

Even more broadly I get the sense that much larger proportions of citizens who at other times in our history might have looked to the government to offer them some type of support--including the public jobs made available during the New Deal--are not looking to the government for any sort of support today.  

I attribute this in part to the long-term "success" of the right-wing project to demonize government and foster the sense among as many citizens as possible that it is both consistently and inevitably incompetent and holds alien, even evil, aims.   Nancy MacLean's Democracy in Chains is must reading for understanding the back story of this quite deliberate, long-term effort.