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Conservative fantasies they are neglected is not the problem Republicans face. Thomas Frank (a liberal)writing in today's WSJ states:

"...It's not a mistake anyone can make any longer, whether they are pondering the voting patterns of working-class Hoosiers or the driest statistics in the record book. Median "nonelderly" household income, we find, fell consistently through the first half of this decade, despite the solid economic growth enjoyed by the country as a whole.
"...Some nonmedian folks did just fine, of course: The top 20% of households earned more, after taxes, than the rest of the country combined in 2005, while the topmost 1% of the population took home more than the bottom 40%. The top-earning hedge fund manager of 2007, in fact, made about as much last year in nominal dollars ($3.7 billion) as J. Paul Getty, one of the richest men in the world, was worth in the mid-1970s.
"Real hourly wages for most workers, on the other hand, have risen only 1% since 1979, even as those workers' productivity has increased by 60%. What's more, American workers now clock more hours per year than their counterparts in virtually every other advanced economy, even Japan. And unless you haven't read a newspaper for 15 years, you already know what's happened to workers' health insurance and pension plans.
I confess that I am fascinated by the mechanics of this huge social reconfiguration – in the same sense that I am fascinated by the industrial procedures of a slaughterhouse, or by the strategies that enabled small Confederate armies to win victories for slavery over much larger Union forces. How the big change was brought off is the subject of Steven Greenhouse's important new book, "The Big Squeeze," which is also my source for many of the statistics in the preceding paragraphs. Aside from the outsourcing, offshoring, and firing-at-will that make up the best-known weapons in the corporate arsenal, Mr. Greenhouse reveals how managers extract unpaid work through an array of ingenious tricks, from eliminating bathroom breaks to electronically erasing hours from workers' records.

I hope these statistics are wrong, but suspect they are true. I do note that he has not included the catastrophic increase in employer health care costs as part of worker's pay.

In any case with 11 cents of every consumer dollar going for gasoline vs. the 10 year average of 4%, the electorate is angry, upset and in a blaming mood. It will take a while for them to figure out that the Democrats are not going to return this country to its traditions of cheap energy, cheap food and cheap housing.

Median "nonelderly" household income, we find, fell consistently through the first half of this decade, despite the solid economic growth enjoyed by the country as a whole.

Don't you think that has anything to do with the massive number of illegal immigrants that arrived in the last 10 years? There is no question that illegal immigrants drove down the wages of the average non-union construction worker - my father was a contractor, and I've seen what's happened in the construction industry since he's been gone. What about landscaping services? Also driven down by a huge number of people willing to work for much lower wages than their predecessors. Decreasing supply of labor should have increased the value of laborers and increased their wages; instead we allowed our borders to be violated by tens of millions who would increase the supply of labor and DECREASE their value. Both parties joined forces to allow this, but the democrats are better at pinning the blame on the republicans...

I think the author has the conditions in this country today exactly right. I do not believe Ronald Reagan could be elected today in this climate. The majority of the working class as long as they believed if they just worked hard enough one day they could get rich or even well off were not turned off to Republicans or the Conservative message. They didn't fall for the democrat mantra of tax the rich and they'd be better off. They voted on issues like abortion gun rights low taxes for everyone. They preferred the government to stay out of their lives and still believed in rugged individualism. I remember the days when sons followed there fathers into the factories after high school and earned enough to buy a home raise kids educate them and still have enough left to buy that boat the family enjoyed or even buy that little cottage by the lake. Todays working class are forced to lower living standards due to energy prices health insurance premiums property taxes ect... They cannot afford to educate their children in good private schools and most are forced to send their kids to the cesspools we call public school. They are scared and are looking to hear from someone who acknowledges their plight and at least pretends they will help them. They will be sorely disappointed by the democrats in the end but right now they hear very little from Republicans that addresses their concerns.