The economy isn’t just bad for people who can’t afford it; it’s bad for people who can. As it becomes harder to keep up with the Joneses, affluent coastal elites could begin to question their loyalty.

The media loves to classify Trump supporters as backwater hillbillies — just look at the new book “White Rural Rage” currently making the media rounds, which amounts to little more than a hateful diatribe against working class America. They’re “bitter clingers” or a “basket of deplorables” and are just too low class to realize how low class they are. Meanwhile, voting for Democrats is a status symbol: it means you’re educated, sophisticated, and can probably afford a beautiful suburban sprawl to place your woke lawn signs. At least that’s how the narrative goes. Of course, it’s easy to dismiss this as morally bankrupt and hypocritical; the left claims to champion the poor but what they really care about is dependency. However, there’s a bigger issue: it’s just wrong, as a matter of fact.

In the last two elections, affluent voters narrowly preferred Donald Trump. Trump won every income bracket over $50,000 a year by one or two points, according to exit polls. With voters making over $250,000 a year, he narrowly edged out Hillary Clinton 48% to 46%. In 2020, exit polls show he expanded the margin significantly, winning 54% of voters making over $100,000 a year compared to Joe Biden’s 42%. Now, we’re certainly not Marxists here at The Daily Caller, but the class-based implications here are unavoidable.

If you’re a white-collared, coastal elite, you might not be worried about putting food on the table or gas in the tank. If you purchased a couple of years ago, you probably have no problem affording the mortgage payment on a nice 4 bed/4 bath home on an acre of land in a great school district, or payment for the two luxury cars in the garage. But you are likely getting very worried about maintaining the lifestyle you’ve grown accustomed to and feel entitled to after years of jumping through many hoops of America’s credentialing system.

As an infamous analysis from Financial Samurai shows, it’s very easy for a well-off, New York City family of four making $500,000 a year to “still feel average.” It’s not an “average” in the sense of typical, middle-class America, but an average compared to the lifestyle of their colleagues and neighbors from which their status derives. After taxes and 401k contributions, mortgage and luxury car payments, groceries and dining, insurance and upkeep, three vacations, clothing, and extracurriculars for the kids, this hypothetical couple ends the year with “only” $7,300 left over. They’re in no danger of going hungry, but things are tight if the goal is to keep up with the Joneses.

The kicker: these numbers come from the halcyon days of the Trump administration. As The Daily Caller’s Patriots subscribers well know, things have only gotten far worse since then. With inflation up around 20% since Biden first took office, things have only gotten tighter for America’s affluent, coastal elite.

Contrary to showy Instagram culture, rich people don’t get rich by flaunting wealth and ignoring how much things cost. You notice the price of groceries skyrocket, even if someone else is doing the shopping for you. You notice how it’s routine to tip 25% on every iPad-based takeout order — and you have a lot of them. Your monthly restaurant spending could easily shoot from three figures to four. The difference between premium and regular gas keeps getting wider. Sure, you can afford it, but a creeping anxiety is starting to build.

Maybe that second vacation isn’t in the budget this year, or maybe you’ll opt for Naples, Florida over Naples, Italy. Maybe it makes more sense to not renew the lease on the second BMW, and go for a Toyota instead. Maybe the kids will look fine in outfits from Marshall’s instead of Nordstrom; they’re growing so fast anyway. Maybe you’ll just quietly give a little less to charity this year. The perks of getting into the right schools and kissing the right asses to climb the corporate ladder all start to winnow away.  Then you start to think: what am I doing this all for?

This might all sound like the world’s tiniest violin, but that’s missing the point. These are the voters with the strongest social incentives to vote for Democrats. The entire world they inhabit — from their corporate jobs to their alumni groups, their mommy yoga classes and their local $9 vegan latte shop — is all geared toward telling them they’re better than those low-class MAGA hicks. This is where their social solidarity lies, and in good times, they have the luxury to prioritize these loyalties. But their material lifestyle interests are now on the line. High earners went for Trump marginally in previous elections, but those numbers are averages buoyed by well-off voters in deep red areas. But class anxiety can help cut into the very demographic he needs the most: suburban swing voters.

Whether your concern is putting food on the table or booking a second trip to Italy, you’re sick of worrying whether you can afford it. With this, Biden has actually accomplished something quite historic. His economic stewardship has been so terrible, that he’s inadvertently sown class solidarity between Marx’s two great adversaries of history: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. That’s a political alliance that just can’t be beaten.