Interest in the topic is what drove the popularity around books like Hillbilly Elegy and tons to articles in NYT and WaPo after the 2016 election about poor white people and what were the challenges that they were facing and motivations.

You mean the ones which explained that the poor whites are actually privileged racists, who are too lazy to learn to code?

Ah yes, this is the level of insight in comments that I come to Hacker News for. Excellent work.

maybe the problem here is "american left" vs "other countries left".

In "other countries left" the left tag is defined by this topic (and this topic alone).

So, for someone not from america, your statement is a bit weird...