The Financial Times writes that the Democrats "wake up to being the party of the rich":

A legislative proposal that was once on the fast track is suddenly dead. The Senate will not consider a plan to extract billions in extra taxes from megamillionaire hedge fund managers.

The decision by Senate majority leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat, surprised many Washington insiders, who saw the plan as appealing to the spirit of class warfare that infuses the Democratic party. Liberal disappointment in Mr Reid was palpable at media outlets such as USA Today, where an editorial chastised: "The Democrats, who control Congress and claim to represent the middle and lower classes, ought to be embarrassed."

Far from embarrassing, this episode may reflect a dawning Democratic awareness of whom they really represent. For the demographic reality is that, in America, the Democratic party is the new "party of the rich". More and more Democrats represent areas with a high concentration of wealthy households. Using Internal Revenue Service data, the Heritage Foundation identified two categories of taxpayers - single filers with incomes of more than $100,000 and married filers with incomes of more than $200,000 - and combined them to discern where the wealthiest Americans live and who represents them.

Democrats now control the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional jurisdictions. More than half of the wealthiest households are concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats control both Senate seats.

We wrote about this trend and some of its implications over three years ago, during the 2004 presidential election:

In many TV sit-coms and comedy movies from the 1960s through the early 1980s, you'll see the cliché of the wealthy country club Republican, ala Nelson Rockefeller. Jim Backus' blue double-breasted blazer-wearing Thurston Howell III character was an example of this; David Ogden Stiers' Major Charles Emerson Winchester on M*A*S*H (ironically, Winchester was a Boston Brahmin, like Senator Kerry) was another.

George H.W. Bush's image was very much in that mold. But he interrupted a flip-over that began with President Reagan's self-made aw-shucks folksy style and continued with George W. Bush's cowboy boots-wearing, BBQ-loving manner and the Texas twang of his voice.

It highlights an interesting trend in politics over the last 25 years:

The shift of the Republican party as now being associated with "the little guy", the average man--who might be a blue collar guy, or he might be a self-employed high tech entrepreneur. But either case, he's working hard to get by and better himself. In contrast, the Democrats are now very much the party of the elite: ambulance chasing trial lawyers (including John Edwards himself), often big business, foreign interests, the media, academia, and most dramatically, Hollywood.

Writing in the L.A. Times, Thomas Frank, himself a self-professed liberal, bemoans the Democrats' close association with Hollywood and fears (quite rightly so) that it's hurting the Democrats' image.

In a way, it's irresistible: most people wouldn't resist a chance to meet a larger-than-life celebrity, particularly when he's gushing about your political party. But the attendees at Democrats' convention last week also dropped by "lavish soirees thrown by regional telecom giants, consumed the free lunch proffered by other regional telecom giants and gotten word of '60s heroes feted by weapons manufacturers". This is an image far removed indeed from the FDR through LBJ-era Democrats, who tried to project an image of being the scrappy party of the underdog.

Of course, it also highlights the elites' love of stasis: if you're on top of the world, who wants radical change? Why bother reforming the Middle East? Why clean up Social Security or education?

As Ace writes:

It's nice to be rich enough to not care much about taxes and the economy. But it's not nice for the plutocrats to pull up the ladder of opportunity and thus protect their privileged positions.

One of many ways Blue States do just that is by city governments making it virtually impossible to build on or otherwise develop property, dramatically ratcheting up existing property values. That's a topic Virginia Postrel has been exploring in depth recently on her pioneering Dynamist blog. Start here, then just keep scrolling.