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It used to be clearer, and the American flattening of class structure makes it more difficult: everyone is middle-class now, from the plumbers to the President; see the difference between Bush Senior's patrician aura and Bush Junior's "aw shucks" persona, even though Barbara Bush had to do the traditional "what's your favourite recipe?" bit, as though she herself stood at the kitchen counter making biscuits with her own hands (a generation or two earlier it would have been "we have servants to do that") - Hillary was honest but like most things she does, did it in a brusque, impatient and dismissive way.
The Obamas were able to get away, without comment, that they got the White House chef (and not Michelle) to make Barack's favourites if he felt like a snack. But that's the idea - they may be rich and high-status but they're just folks. This fits in with the myth that America is a 'classless' society and Jack is as good as his master. Americans (so it is said) don't envy the rich or want to overthrow them because they believe they too can become 'one of those guys' with some luck/hard work/talent - America is the land of opportunity, after all, and doesn't have the same suppressive structures of class and hierarchy as the Old Countries that keep you locked into a rut.
Plumbers and skilled tradesmen would be lower middle-class (if they run their own business). You're right that it's not about money and that it is about education, but there's also the subtle Blue Tribe/Red Tribe division (not politics, but the way Scott originally defined it - you can have Democrat voters who are blue collar union workers). It's about culture and tastes and heritage, in other words; smart and talented members of the lower classes can climb the ladder and be accepted into the class above, but that generally means going to college and getting initiated into the customs of the upper-middle and upper classes. Learning how to fit in and be a 'good fit for the company culture'. That's what is behind a lot of the laments about "my kid went off to college and came back completely changed", and it's not just about political attitudes - you adapt and change now that you're on the path to the middle class, and if you don't, you'll never get the same opportunities even if you get the degree in the end, because you'll always stick out as 'not one of us'.
EDIT: See, for example, all the to-do about Trump not being a real billionaire, and this criticism wasn't confined to the simple charge of "he doesn't have that amount of money". All the nice Blue Tribe types who would claim to be against class on the grounds of it being systemic oppression, and that everyone is equal, and ordinary people are as good as anyone, and so forth to tedious length, wrote snobby little pieces about "ugh, he eats his steak well-done, that's not the proper way to eat steak, and goodness gracious me he wants ketchup? Ketchup? Could he be any more low-class?"
That kind of attitude then makes it harder to take you seriously that you love, adore, and want to represent and fight for the rights of the class of people who have a bottle of ketchup on the table as a condiment. That's a class judgement, and has nothing to do with "did you go to college, how much money have you?"
I think you’re conflating a whole bunch of different things here.
There isn’t really a flattened structure here. It’s more in flux than before, and it’s more possible for someone on the bottom with the right idea at the right time can move up quintiles of wealth rather quickly. However the differences in lifestyle and life expectations at different levels are widely different. On the bottom, people cannot afford regular medical care and can struggle to afford medications. They attend public schools and stay close to home. On the top, there’s concierge medical care, exclusive private schools, and international travel.
Second, there’s a distinction between social class and wealth. Just being rich doesn’t make you upper class, there are lots of unspoken rules of behavior, proper and improper interests, and proper and improper beliefs. Food especially is a big deal. You’re supposed to like to the subtle tastes of properly cooked food, preferably exotic and from places most people don’t go often (so not Mexican food or Chinese or Japanese), and strong sauces are to be avoided. You’re supposed to like international tv and movies. You’re supposed to be woke (more or less), liberal, and environmentalist. In fact you’re supposed to be highly anxious about those things.
This! But more!
Even what you describe is only one part, one subclass among many. The upper classes are as heterogenous as the middle and lower classes.
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This is an aside, but I find that I really don't understand what a "McMansion" is supposed to be. I understand the general definition ("new money" house that is huge and expensive, but using a gaudy mis-match of different, usually faux-classical, styles and often cheap materials), and have a coherent image that pops into my head when I hear people use the term, but at least half the examples of "McMansions" I see people use just look like big houses to me. I don't see anything in that picture of Trump's childhood home that screams "McMansion." Is it literally any suburban mansion built after the Warren G. Harding administration? Or are my low-class tastes showing and the fact that I think it looks like a nice house is exactly what makes it a McMansion?
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It has always been my thesis that the outsized reaction to Trump was class-based, not political or even ideological. Ideologically, Trump is the least consistent, least principled person to hold the office in quite some time. Politically, he wasn't even really on the right. Was there ever a less convincing* religious panderer than Trump? But he was a poor person's idea of a rich person. Plate everything gold, make up catchphrases, put your name on everything, marry a series of models, talk shit to everyone. Even the constant lying is no different from the more polished misinformation normal politicians use, it's just cruder. It's "Thirty-point buck" lying, not "Well, if you account for depreciation" lying.
*https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/the-time-trump-got-a-biblical-citation-very-wrong.html
I think this is true but inaccurate. Yes, Trump trying to sell the line "Hello, fellow Christians" would be ludicrous, for all the obvious reasons, but that wasn't what he was selling, or what the Christian base of the Republican Party was buying. He was selling "I will represent your interests," and the much-publicized examples of Trump's sometimes-awkward association with Christian ideas and symbology are better understood as costly signaling. Both Trump and his Christian supporters are aware that the Left hates them; Trump signaling support for Christianity makes it less likely that he'd be politically able to mend fences with the Left and betray his Christian supporters on the Right.
This isn't the usual dynamic. Most of the time, politicians actually are selling the argument "I won't betray our shared interests, because I am one of you, and your interests are my interests." Sometimes this argument is even honest! But most of the time, it's got some level of pandering to it. I'm saying that Trump didn't realisticly have this option at all, recognized the fact, made a different pitch to his Christian Republican audience, and was successful in doing so.
I'm not saying it didn't work, my family are hyper-christian and they knew he was bullshitting from the first word. It was a deal, and they took it. You know what my dad says? "Two Supreme Court Justices". They think the trade was more than fair, and they never bought a syllable of his "favorite bible verse".
Religious voters can be strategic too.
Isn't it practicality? The selection isn't amongst the best of all possible candidates, it's always one of a selection of very flawed candidates.
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