What if they threw a class war and no generals came?

President Obama has been talking a lot these days about "middle class economics," and his poll numbers have been rising, so this time he must be doing something right. You don't really need a Ph.D. in running focus groups to see that the average American worker still isn't happen with the current state of our economy -- with real incomes soaring for the top 1 Percent and stagnant or even falling for the 99 Percent, and with a job market that's still kind of dodgy, especially for under-employed mid-career workers.

But there's only so much that lame duck Obama can accomplish, especially with a Republican Congress, so any hope for real change seems pinned to the 2016 election.

Good luck with that.

So far, incredibly, it's the Republicans who've been talking the talk about helping the middle class in 2016 -- none more so than Jeb Bush, perceived by the pundit class as an early frontrunner. "Today, Americans across the country are frustrated," the ex-Florida governor said recently in Detroit, Ground Zero of the blue-collar implosion. "They see only a small portion of the population riding the economy's 'up' escalator."

But Bush 3 has yet to offer any policies ideas beyond more of the same stuff from the GOP blueprint that actually built this escalator, back in the era of the Reagan Revolution. And there's nothing in Bush's background -- which includes stints with Lehmann Brothers and Barclays Capital -- that suggests he will truly betray his class. The most intriguing Republican rival to Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, started out by alienating a huge swath of the working class; now he thinks he can get blue-collar votes by trashing his state's great public university and seeking to reduce it to a trade school..not what the actual middle class actually wants.

What an opportunity for the Democrats...who are totally blowing it (shocking, I know :-) ) That's because the party is on a Titanic-like irreversible course to nominate the She-Wolf of Wall Street, Hillary Clinton. Ever since her husband lifted the last remaining chains on the financial sector during the dot-com bubble of the 1990s (a move that blew up in the 2008 crisis, with no repercussions for the Clintons or anyone else involved), Hillary has basked in both adulation and campaign cash -- mainly the cash -- from the towers of lower Manhattan.

No wonder that Wall Streeters were crowing to the New York Post today that they can't lose in 2016. But now that Clinton and her aides can see the crowd with pitchforks gathering underneath her windows, she needs an escape plan. She does not have one.

The New York Times reported her quandry today: "With advice from more than 200 policy experts, Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to answer what has emerged as a central question of her early presidential campaign strategy: how to address the anger about income inequality without overly vilifying the wealthy."

In typical fashion, this is all about framing the issue, rather than attacking it. But while improving the economy isn't completely a zero-sum game, it is, at heart, an omelet that requires breaking a few eggs, and maybe hurting some billionaire feelings in the process. Most average voters have a sense of what progress would look like: A return to somewhat higher taxes on the wealthy -- closer to the 50 percent top marginal rate when they thrived in the mid-1980s under Reagan -- as well as an end to the ridiculous low-tax loophole for hedge-fund millionaires and billionaires, and real penalties for firms that move jobs overseas. The revenues could implement Obama's plan for free community college, build new roads and a more efficient electric grid, and fund early childhood education. That would benefit not just the working class but ultimately corporations and their wealthy CEOs, because it would mean folks could actually afford to buy their products.

Of course, common sense policies like that might hurt some rich dude's ego, amid the usual squeals of "class warfare." News flash: There's been a class war in America for 35 years, and it was launched by one class, the upper one, which bought its favored politicians and rigged the tax codes while distracting you with a trumped-up "culture war." Now, the people's side doesn't have a general, not a Washington general (heh) anyway -- but there is much that can be done in statehouses and City Halls, to raise the minimum wage and expand health care and sick leave. That's a good thing.

Because if you're looking to the White House for help in the class war, that's going to require 2020 vision, I'm afraid.