With poll numbers like that who would you appeal to in your speeches? Even claiming to want to help the poor is dumb because a huge chunk of them don't consider themselves poor. Americans delude themselves. Politicians take advantage of the delusions and perpetuate them. And we continue down the spiral.
Couldn't have put it more succinctly. It's like the way Americans give themselves high-fallutin' job titles like Underwater Ceramic Utilities Sanitiser when they mean dishwasher. Many of them in humour, but yes, it is a uniquely American pretense, this calling oneself middle class when you've got a home maybe health insurance and little else. And the politicians have to use that to win.
Meanwhile, in Britain the 'working class' label is worn with pride. My mother will scold me for referring to myself as middle class since I was raised for the first six months of my life in a flat in Wallsend and she grew up sharing a bed with her siblings and one TV in the 70s. People will shirk the middle class label if anything.
