Afew weeks before Election Day, US Representative Jim McGovern was at a neighborhood bar in Worcester. He bumped into an old pal.

The guy, a friend since grammar school, is struggling to get by. He works two jobs, including one as an auto mechanic.

At one point, he pulled his buddy the congressman aside and delivered a message that proved prophetic: “I’m going to vote for Trump. People in Washington need to get a message and this is the only way. And you’re going to be surprised how many people there are like me who are going to vote for Trump.’’

Yes, McGovern was surprised. Me, too. Amid the smoldering wreckage from Tuesday’s election, it was difficult to find a more startling statistic than Donald Trump’s margin of victory over Hillary Clinton among white voters without a college degree. He won that slice of the electorate by 39 percentage points, 67 percent to 28 percent. No one’s had numbers like that in 36 years.

“He’s a good guy. I like him,’’ McGovern said of his old friend. “And I understood where he’s coming from. I tried to persuade him that night. I probably wasn’t successful. I think this was a big middle finger to the establishment and to Washington.’’

Precisely right. People are angry. They’re fed up. Trump offered fool’s gold. Voters bought it.

Let me get this straight: A billionaire who uses accounting tricks to escape a huge tax burden is going to be the champion of the middle class? He’s going to raise the minimum wage? He’s going to find a way to make college more affordable? No, he isn’t.

But, let’s face it, Clinton was an imperfect messenger. Too many Democrats found it difficult to warm up to a woman who wrote books for seven-figure advances, gave speeches for $200,000 a pop, sealed herself off in the back of a sleek SUV, and then presented herself — inauthentically — as the champion of the little guy.

“People are angry and frustrated and they don’t feel the economy is getting any better, and Trump was able to tap into that better than we were,’’ McGovern, a Democrat, told me this week. “When have Republicans ever given a [crap] about the middle class? I’m sick to my stomach.’’

So is his 15-year-old daughter. Molly McGovern has questions that sometimes her father now struggles to answer. Profound questions. How could voters have done this? What are we going to do now? I have a daughter like that. She’s asking those questions, too.

Along with economic fears that Trump exploited, he cleverly tapped unmistakable veins of racism and sexism.

McGovern was at Logan Airport recently when he was approached by a man who opened his sports coat to gleefully display a T-shirt with a photo of Hillary Clinton behind bars. “Jail the B----h,’’ the shirt read.

McGovern, whose district stretches from Worcester to Northampton, told the guy: “I’m embarrassed for you. I’d be embarrassed for you if you were a teenager. You’re a grown man.’’

I have some sense of ugliness like that.

There has been much anger — actually that’s too benign a word for it – directed at people like me who believed this country could never elect someone like Trump as its president. A bigot, a misogynist, a xenophobe, a sexist, and a liar as our president? No way.

For staking out that position, we’ve been called out-of-touch nitwits, elitists who live in a bubble that Trump, his supporters, and his message could never penetrate.

But that’s wrong. Essentially half of our country voted for this man. I know what Jim McGovern knows: Trump supporters are our relatives, our friends, and our neighbors. I passionately disagree with them. But I know them.

I have stood next to them at backyard cookouts after high school graduations. I have sat with them over well-worn Formica-topped tables inside blue-collar barrooms.

I grew up with some of them in a small central Massachusetts mill town with a long and proud Democratic tradition. Like Jim McGovern’s old friend, they are not haters. Some are the most decent, kind, unselfish people I know. They’re juggling blue-collar jobs to support families, put kids through college, and hold on to their place in the middle class.

They believe – they know — Washington is broken. They feel crippled by an unfair tax burden. They’ve heard word of a freshening economic wind, but have never felt it on their sails. Throw the bums out, they said on Tuesday. Roll the dice. Shake things up.

Flip the finger.

Hours after Trump was declared the winner on Wednesday morning, I was on my therapeutic morning run through the small South Shore town where I now live, trying unsuccessfully to clear my head.

My next-door neighbor, a great guy cut from the same cloth as some of my hometown buddies, drove by. He’s had it with Washington, too. He runs a small business and drives a white panel truck with his name emblazoned in green on its side.

As I ran past the local library, his truck slowed, and he rolled down his window.

“We still friends?’’ he asked, smiling.

Of course, I told him. How about a beer at the neighborhood bar?

The country is hurting. It’s going to take lots of time to heal. Lots of frosted mugs.

Drain the swamp? Let’s start with this: Drain the beer.

Thomas Farragher is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at thomas.farragher@globe.com.