Joel Kotkin, who is the very definition of a “New Democrat,” explains recent GOP success in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Virginia as a suburban revolt against Washington:

For the first time in memory, the suburbs are under a conscious and sustained attack from Washington. Little that the adminstration has pushed—from the Wall Street bailouts to the proposed “cap and trade” policies—offers much to predominately middle-income oriented suburbanites and instead appears to have worked to alienate them.
And then there are the policies that seem targeted against suburbs. In everything from land use and transportation to “green” energy policy, the Obama administration has been pushing an agenda that seeks to move Americans out of their preferred suburban locales and into the dense, transit-dependent locales they have eschewed for generations.

In 2010, the “forgotten man” of William Graham Sumner, channelled by Amity Schlaes, lives in a single-family home outside the borders of a big city.