MICKEY KAUS: “When even crusading opinion journalists who work for The New Republic have to deny their interest in actually equalizing incomes for its own sake then it kind of proves Andrew Kohut’s point that Americans reject that point of view, no? … P.S.: I suspect polls will show Americans do care about social equality (that we are ‘equal in the eyes of each other,’ as Ronald Reagan put it). The popular desire for social equality is why Mitt Romney ate at McDonald’s today. In any case, I’ve argued, instead of focusing on rising income inequality (about which they can do little) liberals would be better advised to focus on ensuring social equality even in the face of disparate incomes.”

But most liberals don’t believe in social equality, because they think they’re much better than those slope-forehead yahoos in flyoverland. if you could get rid of the oikophobia that might be a strategy, but oikophobia is the unifying principle of most of the left these days.