Here’s an oped in the LA Times from Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel that I agree with 100%. I’ve talked about ‘skybox liberalism‘; they call it ‘The Gentry Liberals‘.
Since the 1960s, the intellectual class epitomized by Schlesinger has grown many times over. Academic liberals have become something of a political power in their own right. College campuses constituted the largest single base of contributors to the 2004 presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry. Professors are among the highly compensated and pampered professional cadres of the knowledge economy — which also includes lawyers, engineers, doctors, wealth managers, investors and other educated professionals — that make up the ranks of gentry liberalism and flatter the politicians who advocate its positions.
I disagree with Kotkin that the Republican Party is failing to address middle class concerns.
Illegal Immigration (forced on the Party establishment by the base) is the one big area where the middle class loses and the gentry wins (with cheap gardeners and housemaids). Republicans have been forced (by their base) to come out against it, and very likely the winning candidate will have to advocate some sort of border fence.
Given the huge pro-Dem Gentry tilt in the media, populism of the sort of economic protectionism, cultural preservation, and anti-illegal immigration consistently expressed is the one electoral counter Republicans have.
I expect that card to be played.