thanks for this; the original NYT piece in which a reporter on the ground talked to attendees at TP rallies backs you up completely, that it is distressed boomers and laid off 50 yr olds staring into the abyss of 40 years of homeless old age. this is what i call Real Facts as opposed to actual facts.

this is not a long winded answer at all. i suspect you are right, and that the people interested in the handicapping horse race aspect of politics -- its least interesting and most "newsworthy" in terms of face time on telly or A1 bylines -- are performing the buzzkill moves on the larger story for base reasons of their own. and also because their sources, the party regulars, are dismissing and/or co-opting, in a condescending way, the real distress.