"The vocabulary of class warfare may have begun on the left—a very socialist left..."

"... but in mainstream American politics it didn’t gain much traction until the Republicans took it up."

Framing the struggle as cultural and tribal rather than as economic, they proved to be more effective class warriors than the Democrats. Richard Nixon won over the “silent majority” by casting intellectuals, student radicals, and the media as enemies of those he awkwardly termed “the so-called unimportant people.” Ronald Reagan called out “welfare queens” for bilking the government. The Bushes brought down their opponents by igniting incipient racial and cultural resentments. Michael Dukakis fell to the vicious Willie Horton ad. The infamous Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry impugned his war heroism; an ad showing him windsurfing off Nantucket became an emblem of unseemly privilege.

 So what's Obama supposed to do?