The conventional wisdom going into tonight’s presidential debate is that Harris has the Upper Middle sewn up while Trump has built a coalition of aggrieved working class voters and tax-averse billionaires. But that’s not exactly the case. The “petit bourgeoisie,” the richest people not-so-rich towns – many of them entrepreneurs or business owners – swing hard Trump, a fact documented in Arlie Hochschild’s new book Stolen Pride. This goes a long way to explaining Harris’s proposed 10x increase in startup deductions announced last week. Apparently, her staff is paying attention to layoffs, business starts, and entrepreneurship through acquisition.

According to a New Edge Wealth study conducted earlier this year, roughly 51% of the privately held businesses (3M+/-) are owned by Boomers. That group is retiring en masse, which is why MBA programs at Yale University, Michigan, UChicago, Wharton, and Stanford have added new Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition courses. The Upper Middle is about to go head-to-head with private equity for $10T (give or take a T) worth of main street businesses.

Harris has set a goal of 25M business starts within her first term, building on Biden’s 19 million, which was less of a turnaround than a lingering symptom of the pandemic. Trump has promised help to entrepreneurs in the form of tax cuts (specifically for S-Corps), but his platform, which changes daily, includes tariffs that could balloon costs.

This is all to say that Harris is working overtime to attract support not just from the college-educate, urban Upper Middle – the much-maligned “Elite” – but from the “Petit Bourgeoisie,” which is critical for her and her alliance not only because of the Electoral College, but because it’s about to get harder to delineate those two groups.