"Class warfare may make for really good politics, but it makes for rotten economics. We don't need a system that seeks to divide people. We don't need a system that seeks to prey on people's fear, envy and anxiety."

— Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), responding to President Obama's call to increase taxes on millionaires

This is the official Republican line, and it’s enough to make your head explode when you look at the facts about wealth and income in America.

The bottom line: Yes, we are engaged in class warfare. But the target is the middle class, not the rich.

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Shake the numbers any way you want and the answer is the same: Millionaires are getting richer fast, and their tax burden has been cut in half since World War II. The middle class is slowly sinking, despite working longer hours with greater productivity. And the army of the poor is flooded with new recruits, most of them with a long history of working in lousy, low-wage jobs.

Okay, you may be thinking that America is a rough place, but more than anywhere on Earth, an ambitious person can break into the top ranks with hard work, right?

Wrong, as it turns out. You have a better shot in Canada, or Europe.

"That flies in the face of what Americans believe," says Erin Currier, project manager of the Economic Mobility Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts. "But we have a higher likelihood that kids who start at the bottom will remain at the bottom, and kids at the top will remain at the top."

America wasn’t always like this. After World War II, the country made big gains that were widely shared. The result was the most prosperous middle class the world has ever known. Play by the rules and you could make out fine, and expect that your kids would do even better.

Now that social contract has been broken. In the past 20 years, all of the economic gains we’ve made were captured by the top 10 percent of earners. The bottom 90 percent lost ground.

So here’s the real mystery: Why has the Democratic Party failed to stop this? Why has it taken so long for President Obama to even dip his toes in these waters?

And is that about to change?

* * *

The biggest roadblock for Democrats is revealed in a recent poll done by Pew’s mobility project.

It showed that 83 percent of Americans want the government to help the poor and middle class get ahead, or at least hold their ground. But it also found that 80 percent don’t believe government can do so effectively.

Thirty years after Ronald Reagan swore his oath, his central idea still has currency: "Government is not a solution to our problems. It is the problem."

The irony is that robust government programs on a scale we need today are very popular. The GI Bill helped create the middle class by sending a generation of veterans to college. Social Security ended widespread poverty among the elderly. Medicare made sure they would not die without a doctor.

No serious person can argue that private charity would have matched this government effort. But still, anti-government rhetoric sells, as the rise of the tea party shows.

A more sinister explanation is that Democrats have become as dependent as Republicans on wealthy campaign donors.

"I probably never would have said this while I was in office, but despite the best intentions, the philosophy of a political party comes to reflect its donor base," says former Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.).

"It’s not bribery. It’s how you spend your time. They are hearing only one side," he adds.

And most Americans don't even realize how skewed the distribution of wealth has become. They see America as far more egalitarian than it is, and when asked for the ideal distribution of wealth, they describe a country that looks a lot like Sweden.

* * *

So can the party of Franklin Roosevelt recapture its mojo? Can the party that fought to create the middle class find its old voice?

The best hope, ironically, may be the tea party. Because like the Vietnam War protesters who pushed the Democrats to the left during George McGovern’s 1972 campaign, the tea party is pushing Republicans to the far right today.

Look at the Republican budget, drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and passed by the House, with support of all of New Jersey’s Republican members.

It has the sensibilities of Marie Antoinette. It gives the rich lavish new tax breaks to pile on top of the Bush cuts. And most of its spending cuts land on programs aimed at low-income families, such as food stamps and Pell grants. It would end the guarantee of Medicare coverage and cut spending on everything from scientific research to bridge-building.

Ask people who run political campaigns about this and they see an opening for Democrats.

"Republicans have been waging war on the middle class for some time," says Steve DeMicco of Message & Media, the state’s premier Democratic consulting firm. "Obama shouldn’t be afraid to call them unpatriotic."

Does Obama have it in him to fight this fight? Probably not. He will look for small moves in the right direction, but it’s unlikely he’ll reach for major changes, as he did with health reform. He’s been humbled.

Watch Gov. Chris Christie at a town hall meeting and you can see what’s needed: He breaks down complex issues so that everyone can understand, and hammers his villains with no apologies.

He’s not trying to find the middling consensus — he’s pressuring his opponents and trying to move the debate in his direction.

And he does it over and over, to pound his message home.

If Obama has that inner warrior, it’s well-hidden.

"He ascribes to the American people an understanding of policy and government they really don’t have," says Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University. "He’s lecturing to a law class at Harvard."

So it might not be Obama who guides the party back, and it might not happen during the election of 2012.

But if this divide keeps growing, and it will if people like Ryan and his cohorts get their way, a breaking point will come.

And when Democrats make their move, you can count on one thing: Republicans will call it class warfare.