On the strange fate and destiny of middle-class "liberalism"

Comment published on New York Times online blog, in response to op-ed essay by Emily Badger, Quoctrung Bui, and Josh Katz, “The suburbs are changing, but not in all the ways liberals hope,” November 27, 2018:

That many middle-class people are culturally liberal and economically conservative may be less news than the fact that poorer Americans are starting to get more attention politically. (Witness how for so long almost every politician of any stripe would complain about the difficulties facing the "middle class," while the poor only count as behaving badly).

American "liberalism" was always a curious phenomenon, which represented a portion of the middle class that was educated and favored inclusive and permissive policies.
These are gains tied to modernization that will not easily be negated.  

What I always thought funny was how so many middle class people think that a politics based on lifestyle freedoms and a good manners that will speak no evil of officially oppressed minorities, -- since so much of this is hypocritical, why it had such staying power.  

It was a funny thing what people considered to be "leff," since for the affluent the recognition of social injustice is a moral problem and not a practical one, calling for entrepreneurial commitment and right attitudes. Yet revolutions are made by the wretched of the earth and not the aristocrats who pity them. By those who can form ties of solidarity, generating a "we" and activities of re-making the social world based on a recognition of "me too."  

We may be seeing the beginning of a political realignment. Inequality matters. Oppression is how it is enforced. The move to lessen coercions is ineluctable.