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When I ask people why they think Justin Trudeau’s Liberals target the middle class so relentlessly with their messaging, I invariably get the same reply: It’s because “everyone” thinks of themselves as middle class.

In other words, it’s like those cheesy 3D movies in which a character points a finger at the audience, giving each of us the illusion of being singled out.

The Liberals’ middle class message actually conceals as much as it conveys. In part that’s because it is so unclear what we mean when we talk about the middle class.

An economist’s definition of the middle class may be a more or less arbitrary statistical construction.

So, for example, one way of expressing the idea that the middle class is being “hollowed out” — something often repeated by the Liberals — is to say that the 60 per cent of Canadians in the middle of the income distribution are getting a smaller share of the total Canadians earn than they were 30 or 40 years ago.

But most of us aren’t economists; when we think about social class, we don’t limit ourselves to income. We think also about background, culture, security, expectations, aspirations and lifestyle. How we see ourselves is as important as how much we make.

It has never been the case that (as one blogger remarked) 99 per cent of Canadians considered themselves middle class. But in the second half of the 20th century, wages rose for most working people, enabling them to have the house, the car and perhaps a boat in the driveway — the markers of middle class life. This also meant that many of the better-off had to make do without domestic help, transforming their lifestyles too.

The notion of a vast middle class took root. According to EKOS, just over a decade ago two-thirds of us considered ourselves middle class.

But for a lot of people, the last few years have been tough. We might expect Canadians’ perceptions of their class position to change as a result. And that’s precisely what has happened.

Fewer than half of Canadians — just 47 per cent — now consider themselves middle class. The number of us calling ourselves ‘poor’ or ‘working class’ is on the rise.

Trudeau’s tone seems designed to appeal to the more prosperous end of the middle class — whose concerns are more about aspirations and less about security

Of course, some of those who perceive themselves to have fallen out of the middle class may find Trudeau’s message resonating with them all the more.

But the very breadth of the middle class category to which Trudeau hopes to appeal means that it won’t be easy devising policies that speak to everyone within it.

A doctor married to a lawyer may consider herself middle class — just like the guy on the assembly line at GM, whose wife works in retail and who has seen his wages and benefits cut. They may both feel squeezed these days, but their preoccupations are likely to be quite different.

To take a more particular example, the enhanced public pension plan now being brewed up by Kathleen Wynne’s Ontario Liberals would most benefit those at the bottom end of the middle class, along with many who consider themselves working class.

The doctor married to the lawyer may be less concerned with security in her own retirement than with passing along the opportunities she has had to her children, through education and future high-income jobs, for example.

There’s a debate going on among senior Liberals about how quickly Trudeau needs to translate his rhetoric into actual policy prescriptions, with those closest to him apparently preferring a slow strip tease to a quick reveal. In part this is driven by a narrow tactical concern about not giving the other parties too much to shoot at too long before the 2015 election.

But the more clearly the Liberals define their middle class pitch, the easier it will be for all of us to figure out who among us will benefit from their policies and who won’t.

To the limited extent that Trudeau has shown his hand, his emphasis has been on education, foreign investment and productivity. You can’t really make too much of something that vague, but the tone seems designed to appeal to the more prosperous end of the middle class — whose concerns are more about aspirations and less about security.

One final point. Not all social divisions are about class. There may be a cultural and political divide between people with similar incomes — the schoolteacher and the insurance agent, or the farmer and the graphic designer.

In the United States the divisions within the middle class have achieved the status of cultural stereotype. Prius v. pick-up. NPR v. Fox News. Blue State and Red State. Something similar may be happening here.

In most places at most times, income, education and social class broadly go hand-in-hand, and collectively they often can be a good predictor of political leanings. Not always.

Right now, the Liberals trail the Conservatives among the self-described “upper class” — but paradoxically have a large lead among the university educated.

Inversely, the Conservatives don’t do well among those who call themselves poor or working-class, but they are essentially level-pegging with the Liberals among those whose highest education is high school or community college.

That hints at a complex reality that lurks beneath the Liberals’ amorphous middle-class messaging. But for the moment, amorphous seems to be working.

Follow Paul Adams on Twitter @padams29

Paul Adams is a veteran of the CBC, the Globe and Mail and EKOS Research. He has taught political science at the University of Manitoba and journalism at Carleton. His book Power Trap explores the dilemma of Canada’s opposition parties.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.