In a previous piece, I discussed how the left, especially among the Hollywood community and others of the same ilk, live in another world and don’t care to understand the issues facing middle America. They’re under the impression Donald Trump’s win in the presidential election was driven only by bigotry and “white privilege.” When reminded so many Trump voters supported Obama in 2008 and 2012, they’re reduced to muttering under their breath, “Whatever.”

The cultural chasm between the left and middle America extends beyond that to the left and their total lack of understanding of what it means to run a business — particularly a small business — in this country. The video exchange below between Bernie Sanders and a small business owner is eye opening. It’s only about 2-1/2 minutes long so watch it all.

The man begins by saying he’s a small business owner and says Obama’s regulations and taxes are like “getting kicked in the teeth.” He asks why Obama is so against the business owner. What happens the next minute is remarkable. Watch:

Sanders starts off by talking about billionaires and multi-millionaires needing to pay more in taxes. The man says he is neither of those and says, “You haven’t lived until you put a payroll on a credit card.”

Chris Cuomo stepped in to ask if there was a way to work with small business and Bernie went off on something about a large company being “able” to pollute water and air or food. The man says he doesn’t make any of those things and attempts to bring the conversation back to regulations and how burdensome they are and Bernie goes right back to accusing companies of “wanting freedom” to “pollute the air and sky.”

Unfortunately, this is how many on the left see business. To them, businesses are entities run by greedy people with no concern for anything other than making money — the environment and employees be damned! Again, it proves the left are ones living in a bubble. They hear “business owner, ” and they immediately have a vision of Leonard DiCaprio in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street,’ flinging $100 bills from the deck of his yacht.

The reality is most small business owners are everyday people who may drive a nicer car and live in a bigger home than some of their employees, but it also means it took time and hard work to get to that place in life. The left likes to believe business regulation doesn’t affect the small business owner, but it does. I know this from personal experience.

When Sarbanes-Oxley passed in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals, the company I worked for had to open ourselves up to yearly audits from clients who had to be Sarbanes-Oxley certified. The number of customers requiring these reviews grew to the point that we’d be giving up 8-10 weeks a year for these audits and decided it would be better for us to get SOX certification. We went that route and it cost a pretty penny for these audits to be conducted. It’s amazing. We would pay an accounting firm five figures to crawl up our a**es with a magnifying glass for a week, requiring some of the most idiotic information. Still, we did it, or it would impact our business.

Sure, large corporations can absorb the costs of such regulations more quickly than the small business owner, but people like Bernie Sanders cannot distinguish between the two despite the rhetoric.

The reality is, Bernie Sanders has never started a business. He’s never had to files taxes for a business. He’s never had to comply with regulations for business. He’s never had to meet a payroll. He’s never had to undergo a SOX business audit or an IRS audit for his business. He has no clue at all what it takes to run a business. Most of them don’t.

This is why Bernie can stand there on the stage, attacking straw men instead of answering the man’s question.