What I look at with each vote is that priority of whether it's good for the middle class or not.

One of the things I really learned from my first term is the importance of focusing. In that sense, it is a deliberate effort. What I look at with each vote is that priority of whether it's good for the middle class or not.

I'm painfully middle class.

Americans, whether armed or not, were still looking everywhere but at social class when parsing the texture of their lives. It wasn’t so much that stressed-out blue-collar folks were clinging bitterly to their guns and religion, as Barack Obama had posited while running for president. It was more that guns and religion were keeping them from feeling bitter about the indignities inflicted on the middle class.

Our best hope for political change in China is a growing middle class that is tuned in and economically independent.

It is the middle class which takes the country forward.