Why is Herman Cain still standing? After all of the verbal and cognitive missteps, ridiculous obliviousness to the most basic knowledge about political affairs (exceeding even Palin and Bachmann's famous ignorance and distortions), violations of campaign financing laws, groping and sexual harassment (with four women known to have been involved, with two of them now named) - with his campaign and the candidate himself adopting conflicting responses to the allegations - his standing in the polls continues to stay high and he shows no signs of disappearing.

The answer to this puzzle I think lies in the fact that Mr. Cain represents for his supporters an anti-politician politician. His simple answers to complex questions and his folksy and even mistake-prone manner are precisely what's appealing to his fans. He is uncultivated, unmodulated, unabashed and "speaks from the heart" and that's what they like about him. 

This says something very important about the times we are in now. The wrenching and deeply disturbing seismic changes underway in American life - the fracturing of the American Dream's underlying material basis - is having profound repercussions on everyone except the 1%. The Tea Party and the Occupy Movement are also responses to this crisis. This crisis is deep and it's not going away. It's getting worse and people are increasingly aware of this. America as people have known it historically, and America as people have dreamed it to be, are over - forever.

Here comes one of those 1%'ers in the person of the impolitic Mr. Cain, a kind of black version of "shoot from the hip" malapropist Mr. Bush, a member of the financial elite who seems to be "one of us" to those who like him, and who feels people's pain and deep anxieties (a la Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) but reassures his listeners that we are not in the twilight of our empire (echoes of Ronald Reagan). Everythin's goin' be alrigh'. 

Of course, everythin's not goin' to be alrigh'. But right-wing radio show hosts (which is where Mr. Cain got his policy training and nearly everything he "knows" about politics) don't ever tire of telling their listeners that it will all be fine and we can go back to what we were if we can just electrify a fence between us and those damn immigrants down South... 

Conventional wisdom says that the impolitic Mr. Cain can't succeed in the GOP race. It awaits to be seen. He's already weathered what would have felled any other candidate. If a few of the women he sexually harassed get together as is planned and share their stories in a press conference, perhaps he won't survive that. But if anyone can, he can. Because his candidacy is not animated by the normal factors and these are not normal times. 

The fracturing of the electorate and of the populace mirrors the fracturing of the historic American social compact where hard work and sufficient desire will be rewarded, even if only modestly in the form of a small home and picket fence. 

The American Dream is dead. Long live the American Dream.