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The "War on Poverty" defeated the middle class.

LBJ had two slogans - “Great Society” and “War on Poverty.”
The first thing to know is what Thomas Paine pointed out, in Common Sense about “society,”:
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one . . .
It follows that for a candidate for head of government to promise a great society is not a promise but a threat. Even a democratic republic will not even be as good as the society it exists to protect; any government which, notwithstanding that fact, undertakes to improve society (which is actually its better) will be even worse.
A WWI French general critiqued his fellow general by saying, “One does not battle materiel with men, but with materiel.” The historical fact of the “War on Poverty” is that poverty is not a mere matter of materiel but also of spirit, what a Frenchman would call élan. A negative spirit cannot be defeated with materiel, it has to be defeated with hope and love. Hope and love will well up in society if not hindered by government, but government is a blunt instrument and cannot itself produce hope and love in one place without inhibiting it somewhere else.
The spirit nature of poverty can be easily understood by anyone who knows that today’s “poor” in America are, in general, not any more worried about their daily bread than the “middle class” of fifty years ago was. And also by the fact that the statistics “show” that pro rata there is as much poverty now as before the W.O.P. - because the government subsidies to the “poor” are systematically excluded from the statistics showing how “poor” people are. What could be clearer, than that the government cannot “defeat poverty” if it fraternizes with the enemy in this way? No matter how much might be added to government subsidies the poor will still be “poor” according to statistics which do not count that government money.
Another way to see it is to realize the scope of material progress over the generations. An American secretary in 2000 was as well off, by realistic measures, as Queen Victoria had been. In relative terms Victoria (1819-1901) was unable to travel and had primitive health care for herself and her family.
Thus we see that American society has reduced poverty of materiel dramatically - and that in its “War on Poverty” government has a tended actually to promote the spirit of poverty.
The Democrat Party is funded from above the middle class, and derives a majority of its vote from below it. This can be seen in the red-blue map, where the bluest counties are the inner cities, and the tony suburbs are not far behind. The middle class thus has a critical need for its own party to defend its interests against the Democrats. The Republican Party predominantly gets its vote from the middle class - but, if we are to judge by their Speaker of the House, seems to be a bit too enamored of upper-class money to be fully committed to the middle class.