Pulling Up The Ladder After You

Soccer Moms and NASCAR Dads, meet the next super-important voter group in US politics:  the New Rich.

Fully 20 percent of U.S. adults become rich for parts of their lives, wielding outsize influence on America's economy and politics. This little-known group may pose the biggest barrier to reducing the nation's income inequality. 

The growing numbers of the U.S. poor have been well documented, but survey data provided to The Associated Press detail the flip side of the record income gap — the rise of the "new rich." 

Made up largely of older professionals, working married couples and more educated singles, the new rich are those with household income of $250,000 or more at some point during their working lives. That puts them, if sometimes temporarily, in the top 2 percent of earners. 

Even outside periods of unusual wealth, members of this group generally hover in the $100,000-plus income range, keeping them in the top 20 percent of earners.

What does the AP know about this group?

1) They don't believe they are rich.  Going from $250k down to $100k is a major pay cut in life no matter how you slice it, and they've taken some damage in the midst of the financial crisis, but for the most part they think they are solidly middle class and pinch pennies even though they are the top 20% of earners.

2)  Socially very liberal, fiscally, very conservative.   They are very friendly towards civil rights, women's issues, LGBTQ issues, and the environment, but they definitely resent any solution that raises taxes on them (see #1 above).  They are split between socially liberal Democrats, and fiscally conservative Republicans when voting.  Obama tied this group 49-49 with McCain in 2008, and lost it 54-45 to Romney in 2012.

3)  They are much more likely to vote.  They are 20% of the country's voting age population, and 25% of the total vote.  That right there makes them the new Voters To Get in 2014 and 2016.

4)  They are less white than they were 30 years ago, but still more than 75% white.  This group overwhelmingly believes that all Americans have equal opportunity to get ahead by hard work, too.

The last several years have been very good to this group, and they remain politically active in order to keep it that way.  In a very real sense, they are the new American middle class, not the new rich.  The other 80% of us, well, we just need to work harder, apparently.

And they definitely don't believe that government is any part of the solution.  They paid their dues, and they call the shots.  The ladder?  Well, that gets pulled up after them.  You gotta take care of your own, you know.

Of course the real point of the article is this:

Some Democratic analysts have urged the party to tread more lightly on issues of income inequality, even after the recent election of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who made the issue his top campaign priority. 

In recent weeks, media attention has focused on growing liberal enthusiasm for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., whose push to hold banks and Wall Street accountable could stoke Occupy Wall Street-style populist anger against the rich. 

"For the Democrats' part, traditional economic populism is poorly suited for affluent professionals," says Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University professor who specializes in political polarization.

At no point in the article do we see Republicans chided for their social bigotry.  Of course, that would make it easier to equate economic populism with social bigotry, too.  I'm sure that's coming as well.