PEGGY NOONAN BURIES THE LEDE.

She's long understood the situation. "The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it. The unprotected are starting to push back, powerfully."  That was before she went Never Trump.  At the time, she was advocating for Nikki Haley; I don't know if she's now endorsing the ditzy alternative.  She has doubts.  "Kamala Harris Is an Artless Dodger."

Well, yeah, Democrats are good at concealing their candidates' true selves.  They hid Dementia Joe's dementia while suggesting he would make the lives of the unprotected less parlous than they were during the 2020 corona tyranny and urban riots.  How has that turned out?

Now, they're attempting, simultaneously, to offer continuity (Kamala Harris effectively the president) and turning the page (Kamala Harris has nothing to do with the Biden presidency) and the simplest way to do that is to suggest nothing.

Kamala Harris has made quite an impression. That walk is a stride, and she has appetite—she loves this thing, running for high office. She has sentiments—she loves to say what divides us isn’t as big as what unites us, which, though a dreadful cliché, is true.

But in terms of policy she is coming across as wholly without substance.

Joe Biden stepped aside, and Ms. Harris was elevated, two months ago. That is enough time at least to start making clear what she believes, wants and means to do. She hasn’t.

This week she couldn’t or wouldn’t answer a single question straight, and people could see it. She is an artless dodger.

Ms Noonan offers a number of hypotheses for the dodging, which may or may not be correct, but ultimately that doesn't matter.

Failing to speak plainly and deeply now about illegal immigration is political malpractice on a grand scale. There are other large questions. What philosophical predilection does she bring to taxing, spending, regulation, to the national debt?

She owes us these answers. It is wrong that she can’t or won’t address them. It is disrespectful to the electorate.

If voters don’t get a sense of her deeper beliefs they will think of her as a construct, something other people built so they can run the country as she does photo-ops. Half of America wonders who’s really running things as the Biden years ebb. They won’t want to wonder for another four years.

Which gets us back to Awful vs. Empty. When Americans feel that’s the choice and neither side gives them reason to believe otherwise, they’ll likely start to think in ways they believe practical. Empty means trouble, a blur when we need a rudder, a national gamble based on insufficient information. It means a policy regime that would be unpredictable, perhaps extreme. You don’t want that.

Awful is—well, awful. But he was president for four years, we didn’t all explode, institutions held, the threatened Constitution maintained. So—maybe that’s their vote. “Close your eyes and think of England.”

Gridlock is good. Simpler government is better.  Republican governance might be more sensible.

Over the weekend, Douglas MacKinnon posted an update on the case for continued push-back from the Unprotected.

I grew up in abject poverty as a child, and most of my contacts to this day are those in the working class or lower. While the entrenched elites from politics, academia, the C-suites, Hollywood and the media who live in bubbles of luxury and protection won’t notice, those Americans have never been more scared in their lives. Not only about their future, but about their present.

Those I speak with on a regular basis tell me they have never been so frightened about circumstances out of their control. Circumstances they believe were deliberately and politically exacerbated by the Democrats and most especially by the Biden-Harris administration.

There is something going on. These times do not feel like the others for the working class. They feel much more foreboding.

Resetting the saecular order is messy, and Peggy Noonan saw that eight years ago.  It's the Democrats, Mr MacKinnon argues, that are making the conditions of the Unprotected worse.

The “majority of the country” is not stupid. In fact, to survive as a working-class and disenfranchised voter, you actually have to be quite smart. Tens of millions of these Americans not only do understand the political games being played but realize that it is they who are paying the highest price.

Moreover, he suggests, the Unprotected, the Militant Normals if you will, have had enough of being condescended to and deplorable-shamed.

The fear is building. During that segment, voters expressed a fear of the failing economy, fear of crime, fear of out-of-control illegal immigration and fear of a world on fire. “Fear” is the dominant emotion.

Speaking of immigration, we have this bit of insulting double-speak from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell blaming the massive influx of illegal immigrants for the rising unemployment rate. Said Powell: “If you’re having millions of people come into the labor force, then — and you’re creating 100,000 jobs — you’re going to see unemployment go up.”

I’ve got news for Chairman Powell: The tens of millions of “scared” voters are more than smart enough to realize those “millions of people” coming into the labor force did not let themselves into our nation. These working-class American citizens know those illegal immigrants were released into the country by the Biden-Harris administration.

Fear is real. Fear does motivate. Working-class Americans do fear that elite-enabling liberal policies beyond their control are robbing them of their quality of life now and well into their futures.

But many of these Americans have also realized that there is one way to combat that fear and regain some of that control by voting.

I predict that there is a reckoning coming in November from those tens of millions of scared voters. And I suspect that reckoning is going to produce a landslide victory for Trump.

We'll see. And Donald Trump has this tendency to step all over his message.  But Tupperware might have entered receivership just before living frugally will become our new reality.