Demos has lent his campaign $2 million and could give a few million more before the Republican primary in June, which will determine the opponent for the incumbent Democrat, Tim Bishop. Demos says that he has no qualms about spending his “resources” and that he is “absolutely committed to doing what it takes to win.” He might be a rich-to-riches story, but he is sticking to his narrative: He’s just standing on the shoulders of others. “My parents worked very hard and were fortunate enough to give me a wonderful upbringing,” Demos told me.

Candidates have been spinning Horatio Alger stories since the days of Horatio himself, or probably even the days of Great-Great-Grandpa Alger, who for all we know worked his nails to the nub scrubbing the decks of the Mayflower­. But politicians of the 20th century were far more likely to have actually struggled than today’s crop — they might have fought wars, grown up during the Depression or at least worked in a family store or on a farm. They were also less likely to have attended college or, if they did, were more likely to have helped pay for it themselves. Harry Truman, who graduated from only high school and fought in World War I, rode a compelling “story” of an Everyman “give ’em hell Harry” who transcended a run of failed business ventures. John Kennedy’s war-hero status mitigated his privileged family background.

Absent real hardships, modern politicians have simply gotten creative, or at least what passes for creative in the anesthetizing cosmos of cookie-cutter campaign hell. They especially love tales of dishwashing. Senator Ted Cruz could finance his own presidential campaign if he had a penny for every time he mentioned his penniless father who “washed dishes for 50 cents an hour” after fleeing Cuba for Texas. Hillary Clinton checked the dishwashing box during a summer stint, in 1969, working in an Alaskan lodge. Leon Panetta washed dishes in his father’s restaurant, John Boehner (the second-youngest of 12 kids!) in his father’s bar, and Ronald Reagan in the girls’ dormitory at Eureka College in Illinois. Rod Blagojevich, the incarcerated former governor of Illinois, reportedly worked six days a week washing dishes in the kitchen of a federal prison in Colorado. Once Blago makes his inevitable comeback, you can count on hearing more about those dishes.

Paul Ryan touted his dishwashing background at the Republican convention in 2012 and then reinforced it a few weeks later by washing dishes with his family at an Ohio soup kitchen. Sure, this was criticized as a cheap photo op — the dishes were suspected to be clean to begin with — but the shutters clicked regardless. In the end, Ryan’s point was made and his narrative was driven home: This son of a prominent Wisconsin attorney knows how to wash dishes!

Candidates of both parties cling to their underdog narratives for distinct and not-so-subtle reasons: Democrats try to appeal to their working-class base, while Republicans try to counter their party’s stigma of elitism, says David Yepsen, the director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Channeling a line from Bill Clinton’s speech at the 2012 Democratic convention, he noted, “Every politician these days seems to be trotting out the story of the log cabin they built themselves.”

The broader imperative, obviously, is to come off as “one of us,” and not like those suited, out-of-touch pols who wouldn’t know a scrub brush from a hairbrush. Politicians also brandish humble origins as a shield against suspicions of arrogance. But sometimes this can backfire. Representative Bruce Braley, an Iowa Democrat running for the Senate, was recently caught on tape having a candor spasm in front of a group of trial lawyers at a fund-raiser in Texas. Far from Iowa, he felt safe comparing his own legal credentials with those of his state’s longtime Republican senator, Chuck Grassley. But in doing so, Braley appeared to denigrate Grassley, calling him “a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law” and yet could somehow be the next chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.