By the time he published his classic book Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics in 1960, the political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset was no longer a socialist. Even so, Lipset’s work often bore the unmistakable stamp of his youthful membership in the Young People’s Socialist League during the Great Depression. In Political Man, Lipset developed an influential theory of elections as a “democratic translation of the class struggle.” “On a world scale,” Lipset argued, “the principle generalization that can be made is that parties are primarily based on either the lower classes or the middle and upper classes.”

Such a pattern, Lipset insisted, also prevailed in the United States despite widespread pretensions to the contrary. “The Democrats from the beginning of their history have drawn more support from the lower strata of society, while the Federalist, Whig, and Republican parties have held the loyalties of the more privileged groups.”

If we believe a chorus of politicians and pundits, this historic pattern is being reversed. As the results rolled in on election night 2020, Republican senator and Potemkin populist Josh Hawley tweeted, “We are a working class party now. That’s the future.” A representative item from Axios breathlessly reported, “We’re seeing a political realignment in real time. Democrats are becoming the party of upscale voters concerned more about issues like gun control and abortion rights. Republicans are quietly building a multiracial coalition of working-class voters, with inflation as an accelerant.”