What Bernie Sanders has cunningly realized, is that if you imbue a platform of economic justice — one that is heavily informed by class struggle — with your campaign, and let issues of identity take a backseat, the GOP’s impulsive contrarianism will cease to be effective.

Cunning? There’s nothing cunning about it. Class is what Bernie has always been about. He has not made class his centerpiece because it is now relevant. Rather he has become relevant because class has become relevant.

If Bernie were more cynical, then choosing class over identity would be cunning, because identity politics to the exclusion of class politics — particularly labor class politics — cost Hillary the election. But America isn’t really into class politics, because class politics is inherently defeatist. Americans still value mobility. Many have reason to find dissatisfaction with the degree of mobility actually available to them and their children, but they do not feel consigned by their birth to a caste that must be defended as such.

A good Democrat fights for workers, what used to be called “the working man,” not “the working class.” A good Democrat attacks “fat cats” and “plutocrats,” in “the 1%,” not the “billionaire class.” (Sounds like the best seats on Emirates Airlines.) A good Democrat supports many of the same things Bernie supports, but not out of rage or resentment. We are not on a zero-sum see-saw. We are in a plus-sum row boat. The problem is that neither the Trump-backing rich nor the Bernie-backing poor understand that.