When last heard from Republican House Leader Eric Cantor was being ignominiously routed by a virtual unknown in his 2014 primary race for reelection. Unsurprisingly, given his record as a Wall Street yo-yo, he has moved on to bigger and better things with Moelis & Company, an investment firm at which his annual salary is $400,000, with stock options adding up to a $3.4 million payout.

All of which was revealed in a June 16 feature on Cantor in the Washington Post Style section, one paragraph of which, standing alone, reveals the Washington mindset that led to his defeat.

The telltale paragraph:

“Cantor earned $193,400 as majority leader; his wife, a lawyer and investment banker, was the real moneymaker. One of the reasons he took the Moelis job, he says, was because it was his turn to support the family. ‘Life is about balance. For 14 years, she had been basically the breadwinner,’ he says. ‘I felt that I needed to do this for her.’”

Let’s see now: He made $193,400 a year as a congressman but his wife was “the breadwinner.” Where do the Cantors buy their bread — at Tiffany’s? It was his turn “to support the family.” Right. How, after all, can an American family in this day and age hope to subsist on an income just short of $200,000 a year?

Any wonder why a Marxist demagogue like Bernie Sanders and a Foxist demagogue like Donald Trump have gone far this year with the message that our national leaders have fallen out of touch with workaday Americans?

Sound Bite to Remember

“There once was a very poor family. The mother was poor, the father was poor,  the children were poor, the maid was poor, and the butler was poor.”

Frank Mankiewicz, circa 1950, presciently anticipating the plight of families like the struggling Cantors.