"This highly educated and affluent person prioritized stability for her own children. But refused to publicly endorse this value so that less fortunate children could also benefit from family stability."
As someone both from a somewhat conservative immigrant background who is basically a coastal elite type myself, I think that statement is not particularly accurate or insightful. My main point of contention is that low-income whites tend not to care for what the highly-educated and affluent think anyways. Absurd to blame the "educated and affluent" for lower-class abandonment of their own cultural values.
"Social change has swept through America so thoroughly that the head of the “conservative” party is a three-times-divorced man of little character. But that illustrates my point."
I think that has more to do with hypocrisy and is symptomatic of deeper cultural and moral problems erupting among "conservatives" both rich and poor.
"It’s the rest of America that most needs a supportive culture that tells men that by getting a job, any job, and supporting their family, they can attain a measure of that same dignity."
These cultural groups can have that with or without the help of "elites". Again, they don't like elites. The article cites some anecdote about a UN meeting--these people tend to not even want the UN to exist. They don't know about the UN does, nor do they really care. No outcome of that meeting would sway their behavior.
Ultimately, the issue isn't that somehow the culture of "[t]hose who sit at or near the apex of the social ladder" is failing these people. These people have failed themselves, some might argue in part precisely because they would rather NOT mimic what the people are the apex of the social ladder do. These people of course love to place the blame elsewhere, particularly on immigrants, but ultimately their culture has become degraded and their moral fabric destroyed from the inside.