While the McCain campaign?s embrace of ?Joe the Plumber? was in full swing, progressives sensed more than a little irony. How could a candidate with such a dubious plan to help struggling Americans boast of such a populist image?

Republicans ran a campaign supported by millions of middle class and poor citizens. Though they would have rarely benefited from their candidate?s cuts on social spending, they solved this dilemma by focusing on moral issues. They also focused on something they called ?socialism.?

Yet the erroneous usage of ?socialism? as a mere epithet did not help Republicans win the election ? a feat that would have needed the support of undecided voters and independents. They merely energized their party?s base.

However, those who showed up at Republican rallies attacked the supposedly socialist aspects of the Democratic campaign without the required foresight. In the claims of the Republicans, socialism became ? at least to my ears ? interchangeable with American social progressivism. This brand of mainstream leftism is hardly as radical as Marxist-Leninist doctrine or even post-World War II European social democracy.

It is true that economic downturns have traditionally been accompanied by a rise in left-wing radicalism. Some forget, however, that these strains of political thought never gained enough force in the Western world to win a national election. The same will likely be true for this recession.

In any case, contrary to the accusations of socialism and, less often, communism, Barack Obama is staunchly center-left, as was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Yet conservative Republicans continue to rely on gross exaggerations.

Moreover, those dismissing the very ideas that helped their parents and grandparents survive in the aftermath of numerous 20th century crises as ?far left? should be called by their rightful ideological name: reactionaries.

While their families struggle financially primarily because of failed economic policies, they single out moral and religious policies as the root cause of social problems. Though not too distant from poverty, middle class reactionaries take pains to see themselves as different ? even wholly superior to ? those with an annual income of a few thousand less than theirs.

Perhaps by voting for a candidate unable to pinpoint the number of houses he owns, they will not only send a message to others ? they will send a message to themselves. Those members of the middle class did not vote in the belief that the American Dream is real. They voted in the hope that it is real, in the hope that somehow, at some point in their lives, they just might become rich. When they do, they will not want to be ?penalized? (in the words of Joe the Plumber) for their hard-won success.

These dreams, so unlikely to materialize, have been the driving force behind poor and middle class support for the Republican coalition. Conservatives have for too long convinced ordinary citizens that anything left of center is extreme and out of place in this ?center-right nation,? and therefore detrimental to our economic wellbeing, to our society and to democracy itself.

For far too long, the modern American Right has convinced the nation?s poor and middle class that it is their only voice. Now that this reactionary illusion is disappearing, perhaps it is time to reconsider that ?socialism.?