The “unmanly” Tom Nichols article has inspired a thread about MARRIED ... WITH CHILDREN. Bear with me.

Al Bundy was MAGA more than 30 years ago. He was also very much Donald Trump -- though what’s funny is that he might not have liked 1980s Donald Trump.

Bundy was a sexist, know-nothing bigot (though not a racist, the show took pains to show that). If you don’t think Trump’s working-class “joe” misogyny, homophobia, anti-elitism doesn’t have cross-racial appeal, consider that Al Bundy’s very much did.

Al’s longstanding enemy was his neighbor, Marcy (and to an extent her first husband, Steve). Although she was presented as a modern feminist originally, it wasn’t long before her more prominent traits defined her as Republican (and she self-identified as such).

So, yes, yuppies Marcy and Steve were NeverTrumpers and they *hated* Al -- ostensibly because of his crude bigotry but also because they considered him “beneath them.” This is why audiences preferred Al to Marcy/Steve and enjoyed seeing him insult them regularly.

There’s a line when Steve, who works in a bank, is on the phone with Marcy and is boasting about a loan he’s just given to a guy dressed in overalls, etc. “Yeah, the hick’s signing the papers now,” he says.

When the guy hears him, he quickly says, “Uh, not you, I meant some other hick.”

That is how most Trump voters believe the GOP establishment views them. Nichols or Rick Wilson don’t go out of their way to prove them wrong

“I’ll make money off you but I don’t respect you."

Working-class guys of ALL races loved Al Bundy when I was growing up. Nichols is way off base when he points out that, gee whiz, Trump isn’t actually “manly” (according to BS cultural standards). Neither was Al Bundy! He wasn’t Rambo. That was the point.

He was the guy who worked the crappy job. He had the wife who “didn’t respect him.” He had peaked at 17. He was a failure in the modern world. And he spoke for the people who felt the same way. Imagine now this guy as president who is proudly ignorant and “one of them."

Tom Nichols is basically Steve Rhoades writing a dissertation about how it makes no sense that other working class joes like Al Bundy and not him.