Frank’s book is a bit of a cartoon, and this is a bit of a cartoon summary. But the Frank Thesis seems basically right. Or at least it seemed right until this year. Times have changed. It’s unlikely that the fall campaign in 2016 will be dominated by social issues. Why? A few possible reasons.

First, people have finally come to understand that many of these issues were phony distractions from what’s really important and what a president can do something about, which is primarily the economy. In other words, the Frank Thesis no longer applies.

Second, although objectively the next four years look better economically than the four years after 2004 turned out to be, people sense correctly, as they did not back then, that something more dramatic than the business cycle is going on—that those midwestern middle-class jobs that went away probably are not coming back.

Third is the presence of Rand Paul in the Republican primaries. Paul is a libertarian who has no time for laws imposing one person’s idea of appropriate behavior on another person who disagrees. Paul and Mephistopheles meet once a week to discuss how far Paul will have to go in compromising his libertarian values in order to have a shot at the nomination. But even though Paul has been compromising like mad lately, his very presence onstage will drive opponents toward the libertarian side of the Republican spectrum.

Fourth, and finally, there is gay marriage (or “marriage equality,” as its advocates prefer to say). It used to be something Republicans deployed in order to taunt Democrats. Now it’s the reverse. In terms of “hot button” issues—ones that work for fund-raising and getting out the vote—marriage equality is off the list. In fact, it’s on the other list: the list that can get you (and your business) ostracized if you don’t support it.

If wedge issues are blunted, what will take their place? My guess is it will be class warfare of the most pathetic kind.

Since at least 1988, with George Bush the Elder’s impressively demagogic campaign against a stunned Michael Dukakis—that was the year of the infamous “Willie Horton” ad—and arguably back to 1968 and Nixon’s “southern strategy,” an attempt at class war has been a part of the Republican playbook. It wasn’t always easy to persuade people that white males in business suits and other Republican-looking types were the oppressed of our society and that black single mothers and pointy-headed professors were the oppressors. But the Republicans managed to do it—at least in 1988, when they repositioned George Herbert Walker Bush as a pork-rind-chewing cowboy Everyman and Michael Dukakis, a barely-off-the-boat ethnic, as his Establishment overlord.

Since then, absurd class arguments have been a feature of every presidential campaign. The Clintons, for example, have been attacked from both directions. At first they were portrayed as hillbillies from a small and backward state, trying to rise above their station. Now they’re portrayed as globe-hopping elitists, observing the real America from 30,000 feet. (Both views have some validity. Both are tremendous exaggerations.) To me, this sounds like the American Dream—from hillbilly to world leader in one generation! Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Republican opponent in the race for senator from New York, Rick Lazio, charged that she rode around in limousines, whereas he, a normal guy, took the subway. Then, unfortunately, someone asked him how much a subway card cost. He wasn’t sure.

This year, an early lead in populist demagoguery has been taken by Scott Walker, who declared in April that Hillary Clinton “probably” has never shopped at Kohl’s. That may be true, although I’m sure she’s been to China, which is “probably” much the same thing. I have shopped at Kohl’s many times—in the sense of examining the merchandise, if not in the sense of actually buying something. (“Darling,” says Arianna, “I love Kohl’s. I always go there for anything I can’t find at Costco, Target, J. C. Penney, Sears, or Kmart.”) Expecting accusations of elitism, Hillary was ready when the accusations arrived. She did what any American would do: she hopped in her van and headed for Iowa. Road trip! She stopped for lunch at a Chipotle restaurant in Ohio, a state famous for its Mexican food. So there! Your move, Governor.

It’s obviously more important that our next president shop at Kohl’s than that she or he have any notion of what’s going on in, say, the Middle East. And Walker is no neophyte at this game of competitive normality. What will he do now? He might invite the media to watch him washing his car on Sunday (after church, of course). In response, Hillary might bake some cookies, which she once, long ago, back in 1992, said she would not do. Hey, it’s a flip-flop! How will Hillary overcome this setback?

After consulting half a dozen advisers, she may decide to do a load of laundry in public. This raises the troublesome issue: should we separate the lights from the darks? “I personally oppose a ‘separate but equal’ or ‘two load’ solution, but I will leave that sensitive matter to be decided by the states,” Hillary will say. “That’s what normal people do, isn’t it?”