… Led by Obama’s chief pollster, Joel Benenson, the campaign had spent 2011 examining Americans’ views on economic security and the American Dream. They concluded that something fundamental had changed. It used to be political gospel that a candidate couldn’t risk talking about inequality because such a stance was so easily caricatured as an attack on the rich and because even working-class Americans believed they had an opportunity to be rich someday. But as Benenson explained in a recent interview, “There has been a recalibration of the American mind-set when it comes to economic change.”
What his polling found is that middle-class Americans are much more concerned about holding onto what they’ve got than in pursuing more. …
But if the American Dream, and the understanding of what it means to be middle class, is changing, the reverberations will go far beyond a single election. [cont.]
Amy Sullivan, National Journal