Thinking about populism brought to mind something I've been meaning to write up. Hearing the discussions on Frank's book and being fairly plugged into Democratic talk, I get the feeling that most progressives have the impression that the electorate is primarily poor, that there's a massive number of downtrodden, low-income folk who, if we could just get them to start voting for us, would swing all elections our way.
To some degree that's true, if for no other reason than elections are being decided by 3% of the vote. But on a long-term majority level, it's not. In 2004, only 23% of voters had incomes under $30,000. Now, 23% is nothing to scoff at, but that means over 75% of the electorate is making more than $30,000, and the majority of them are pulling in significantly above that.
