Class is both very real and very touchy in the United States. But people use the term in a really broken way, typically trying to map arbitrary income groups wi

Class is both very real and very touchy in the United States. But people use the term in a really broken way, typically trying to map arbitrary income groups with classes. Which is convenient for everyone: Democratic-aligned classes can try to maintain their privileged position using class rhetoric to bludgeon Republican-aligned classes, and Republican-aligned classes can deny class altogether and take advantage of real but ignored class rifts within the Democratic coalition. Of course, the classes at the bottom of the respective coalitions get screwed in the process. Which isn't to say that there's any grand lower-class coalition waiting to be made: disempowered classes align themselves in the partisan coalitions out of genuine self-interest, not out of false consciousness. They're just getting a disproportionately small serving of the winnings.