Trying to get a handle on who-the-heck people are referring to when they use the word "elite" is like trying to fish for a salmon with your bare hand in an Alaskan river in March.
For a while I figured that this decade of Americans used the word to describe a group of hateful people, a group to which they don't belong. Now it looks as though the word means a group of hateful people in which they would like to be members.
That is precisely what stands in the way of genuine populist rage in this country. Most people who deserve to feel rage don't. Instead, they yearn to be the people they most ardently detest and resent. We don't really have an "aux barricades" movement in this country. Our admiration for the worst among us makes us strive to be like them.
(A "real person" like Sarah Palin, given the opportunity, wore the overpriced clothes, joined the system she loves/hates, courted and then became part of the media which she believed had betrayed her.)
If I could delete two words from our vocabulary, "elites" and "robust" would top the list. We might also want to reconsider what we mean by "real."