1 Changing Economic Conditions, Coalition Politics, and the Evolving Role of Class in Presidential Campaign Rhetoric, 1952‐2012 Jesse H. Rhodes and Kaylee T. Johnson, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Prepared for the 2014 Midwest Political Science Association Conference, Chicago, IL 1. Introduction Over the past four decades, a convergence of economic and political forces – increasing returns to education, the globalization of production and distribution, the decline of organized labor, and the erosion of the social safety net – have combined to transform the American economic landscape. The United States has entered an age of high and rising economic inequality, in which the well‐to‐do have prospered, while many less‐fortunate Americans have faced stagnating wages, declining access to health care, reduced retirement benefits, and higher costs of “middle class” goods such as housing and higher education. How have these dynamics altered the politics of class in the United States? Have political elites responded to these changing conditions by politicizing class identities and issues, or have they sought to obscure class considerations? How have the parties’ class coalitions shaped the prospects for discussion of class issues in political campaigns? While the transformation of the American economy has indisputably sharpened class differences, few political scientists have sought to investigate how changing economic conditions have affected the politics of class in the United States, especially in the context of political campaigns. The conventional wisdom is that – due to profound changes in patterns of elite conflict – class has declined dramatically as an axis of political struggle since the 1960s, supplanted by