The development of public perception of the actual state of the union in the USA is likely to best be described by the rules for chaotic systems in that the trigger will turn out not to have been predictable. In the UK one such trigger was the hacking of the phones of the family of a dead girl. In the USA it could turn out to involve public reaction to the capricious coverage of healthcare.

At New Economic Perspectives Joe Firestone cites the reaction to an Arizona town hall meeting held by John McCain as covered on MCNBC's Up With Steve Kornacke:

Woman: "It kills me every time i hear senators, especially republicans, talk about those takers. they're just taken. the takers. i paid taxes for over 30 years and i have a rare illness and now i'm disabled. the state of arizona raised the eligibility for a program that was paying $100 a month for my medicaid to 3.4%. consequently, i was cut off. $100 a month, which meant (breaks down) i could no longer go to physical therapy. do it intentionally to cut as many people as they can for as long as they can from benefits that are desperately needed and it's just not right. we're the takers."

McCain tried to console her by assuring her she was not a taker. He did not acknowledge the different sense in which she used 'taker'. For Romney  a 'taker' is one who is contrasted with a 'maker' - a taker of other peoples wealth. For her a 'taker' was one who was taking abuse from an uncaring system. Krystal Ball, a guest commentator on the show noted:

"And it's easy to talk about the numbers and put it in this big context, where you're not seeing the those human faces. and i think that interaction that you just played is the republican party problem in the nutshell. when people actually hear the rhetoric and it occurs to them, they're not talking about some faceless other. they're talking about me. they are never going to vote for a party that sees them as a bunch of mooching takers."

Joe Firestone took it to another level:

"This, of course, was a very direct point. But I wondered what happened to the other side of the makers/takers issue? Namely, that the people who call the rest of us takers, delight in all the largesse they bestow on the FIRE sector, the pharmaceutical industry, the private health ensurers, the big energy companies, the telecommunications industry, the hedge funders, the corporate leverage buy-out raiders, and the most wealthy among us, in general. Even when their actions are illegal, as they are with the mortgage fraudsters, they are allowed to take with impunity, and they take far, far more than any of the people they so callously call "takers."

They take Trillions that they do not earn in an honest day's work. They crash the world economy and destroy the savings of many hundreds of millions. They take jobs, and dreams, and health, and education, and human happiness, and a sustainable environment from people. And they are helped by our politicians and officeholders who serve as their handmaidens and take great rewards from their financially more well-off masters. So, these are the real takers, the ones who despoil society and create a desolation in the name of order and neoliberal profit-taking."

Firestone goes on to conclude:

That's the point the DC/New York "villagers" don't want to talk about very much. They'll credit people with not being likely to vote for people who label them "moochers," but they won't credit people with understanding that the real "takers" are not themselves, but the very people who are projecting that insult onto them.

Maybe that's because the villagers don't intend to talk about who the real takers are. But I think that people are smart enough to come to understand that anyway. And when they do, there will be hell to pay for those who guilt-tripped them in order to distract them from the reality of the real takers and their outrageous takings.

It will be when that realization dawns on the majority of the cultural descendents of the Scots-Irish diaspora in the USA that fundamental change might be possible. The challenge will be insuring that the change is in a beneficial direction.  

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."