Democrats have done very well politically by convincing voters that they are, in a very broad sense, on the side of the little guy. “Republicans,” they say, “take care of the rich, but we Democrats are the party that brought you Social Security, Medicare, Head Start, the Civil Rights Act, free school lunches, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and Obamacare. We are the party that will tax rich Republicans to fund government programs that help poor and middle-class Democrats.” Like mothers, Democrats are nurturing and supportive.

There are a few little problems with this narrative. Most of those programs, for good or ill, had bipartisan support. Further, Head Start has been a colossal failure; the school lunch program is overly broad and encourages waste (with 64 percent of children getting free or reduced-price lunches); civil rights laws (in direct contravention of the promises of their original backers) have been interpreted to permit quotas and “reverse discrimination”; AFDC wound up encouraging unwed childbearing and arguably contributing to poverty; and Obamacare is causing the middle class to pay higher premiums for more limited medical care while still covering only a fraction of the uninsured.