This fascinating chart from Ezra Klein explains a lot of the skew of the economic policy debate:
There are more Americans with only a high school diploma than Americans with a college degree. But in the 2010 electorate, the latter outnumbered the former by more than 3-to-1. The unemployment rate among college graduates, meanwhile, is a small nuisance, while the unemployment rate among workers with no college education is catastrophic. That explains a lot about the state of the political debate.