My second daughter was born the morning of Oct. 1, 2008. Holding her in the hospital room, my husband and I watched the stock market plummet faster than my post-C-section morphine drip.

In the coming weeks, home with a new baby and subject to a 24-hour news cycle, my mind began to conjure a true economic collapse – bank runs, hyper-inflation, grapes and wrath – a zombie apocalypse without the zombies. I told my husband, "If the U.S. economy completely collapses and our society ceases to function – we're going to live with my family in Michigan."

After quickly surveying the room for empty wine bottles and painkillers, he replied, "Absolutely not. Michigan is way too cold."

"These people live off the land!" I exclaimed. "They hunt, they fish. They chop wood! The only thing we can do with an ax is poetically grind it. What good will that do when the electrical grid goes down?"

Despite his extreme dislike of all things northern – he could see the practicality of what I was saying. Our skills, while impressive in some circles, weren't all that useful outside of Washington, D.C.

Unfortunately, it's a fact that's routinely lost on today's politicians. And the result is a fundamental divide between rural and urban America, and it's playing a crucial role in this year's election. It's one of the main reasons why Hillary Clinton hasn't been able to connect with white middle-class voters.

Editorial Cartoons on Hillary Clinton View All 258 Images

Her urban-elitism was on full display last week when she made her now famous "basket of deplorables" speech. While most of the attention has been on the first basket – the basket full of "ists" and "phobes" – the real issue is the second basket – the voters with whom she was trying to "empathize."

Clinton's view of the rest of the basket isn't that they're racist – they just aren't smart enough to know that they're racist. The government hasn't really let them down – they just aren't educated enough to know that the government hasn't let them down. We just need to explain that to them – slowly.

Both rural and urban areas face similar problems – poverty, drug addiction, lack of access to quality education programs. But the news and most of what we hear about today from politicians is focused almost exclusively on the plight of inner cities. Police brutality and gun violence – all things worth talking about – dominate our news cycle. But we aren't talking about meth addiction in middle America or the significant doctor shortage that many small towns face. To add to the woes, not only are rural problems dismissed, the people living in those areas are routinely denigrated.

Far too often they are portrayed by leaders as uneducated and small-minded – clinging to their guns and religion. And our policies have reflected that prejudice. We have transformed our high school curricula to push liberal arts degrees over trade programs – eliminating real-skill classes in auto-mechanics and cosmetology. Because everyone knows a mechanic is inferior to the recently graduated and unemployed millennial with a degree in art history and $100,000 in student loans. (At least she went to college.) Violent crime and even terrorist attacks are blamed broadly on "guns" – putting all gun owners into a basket of criminals. The left has marginalized this class of voters and we are all paying for that mistake.

The one thing Clinton said that was accurate was this: "Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well." The problem is that she doesn't and she can't. Feeling sorry for someone isn't understanding. Sympathy isn't empathy. Clinton's failure to respect the voters in that basket shatters her ability to empathize – and any hope to win them over.

It's been eight years since the economic collapse of 2008, and my plan for an apocalypse hasn't changed. As the Type-A Washingtonians around me look for summer camps to teach their kids Mandarin and rocket surgery – my kids will go to Michigan. Where people don't recycle plastic bags – they reuse them. And not so they can pat themselves on the back for helping save the planet; they do it because it makes good sense.