Back in July, Tom Frank (author of What's the Matter with Kansas?) wrote an L.A. Times op-ed in which he suggested that the Democrats' inability to persuade voters that they're the party of ordinary Americans is their own damn fault because they occasionally throw parties that include (gasp!) celebrities and rich people:

The Democrats are today a party that has trouble rallying its historical working-class constituency, losing more and more of its base every four years to some novel culture-war issue invented by the wily Republicans: blasphemous art, Ten Commandments monuments in courthouses, the dire threat of gay marriage. Behind their success stands a stereotype, a vision of liberals as an elite, a collection of snobs alternately permissive and moralistic, an upper class that believes it is more sophisticated and tasteful than average people.

It is a pernicious doctrine, and yet there is a grain of truth to it. A grain of truth that get- togethers like this one — where minor stars swap righteousness with lobbyists, politicians and local venture capitalists — magnify into life-sized lessons in liberal elitism.

Cut to Bush's second inaugural:

AFTER the Constitution Ball and the Commander in Chief Ball, after all the official black-tie parties wound down around midnight on Inauguration Day, members of a young Republican crowd scarcely old enough to remember the Reagan years were still looking for excitement. Naturally, they headed to a basement bar in Georgetown that has become an unofficial clubhouse for the Jenna and Barbara Bush generation.

At that bar, Smith Point, these refugees in cummerbunds and gowns shimmied to a D.J. playing the Beastie Boys and slurped vodka shots poured down an ice-sculpture luge....

The president's 23-year-old daughters have been frequent visitors to Smith Point since moving to Washington after the election.... The twins have been known to show up with a posse of up to 30, including old Texas friends, Yale buddies of Barbara's and other children-of-the-prominent like Krystal Shanahan, the daughter of Mike Shanahan, the Denver Broncos coach.

Part of the allure of Smith Point is that the president's daughters are treated just like everyone else, regulars say. "They feel like they can be Jenna Jones, as opposed to Jenna Bush," said Winston Lord, 37, who works in public relations for an investor group seeking ownership of the Washington Nationals baseball club....

Hmmm ... do you suppose that Winston Lord is in some way related to this Winston Lord?

Winston Lord served as the United States Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China from November 1985 through last April 1989....

The president of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations from 1977 to 1985, Ambassador Lord has considerable experience in public service with the U.S. government. He served as senior counselor for the President’s National Bipartisan Commission on Central America from 1983 to 1984 and as Director of Department of State’s Policy Planning Staff from 1973 to 1977. Prior to holding that position, he was a member of the National Security Council Staff and Special Assistant to the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs from 1969 to 1973....

Ambassador Lord is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission ...

Er, you get the picture. (That Winston Lord was also in Skull & Bones.)

"Everybody knows everybody here," explained Mr. Blair, a 32-year-old Georgetown native who has managed an unlikely feat in a city not known for sizzling night life: a genuine velvet-rope hot spot. It has become especially identified as a haven for a hip young Republican elite, including alumni of the Ivy Leagues and private Southern schools like Washington and Lee and Duke....

Catherine Forbes, a daughter of Steve Forbes, the one-time Republican presidential candidate, said on Thursday night: "I moved here in 1994, right after the Republican Revolution and Newt Gingrich, and there was nothing. Basically, Bo has created for young conservatives a Pamela Harriman. It's the salon. You feel safe; you can let your hair down."...

Tom Frank is right that Republicans win because they're able to portray Democrats as elitists and themselves as jes' folks, but why is that? Here's a gathering spot for young Republicans, and virtually everyone seems to be the descendant of someone -- this isn't just status, it's inherited status. Why is this virtually invisible (and thus not damaging to the GOP's ever-expanding reputation as the Party of Regular Americans), while Democrats are fatally damaged by the appearance with a Democratic candidate of, say, Whoopi Goldberg or Bruce Springsteen (both of whom are, by the way, self-made successes)?

Frank's op-ed railed against the Democrats' "glitzy world of risque dresses, pseudo-transgressive stylings and velvet ropes." Hmmm -- Smith Point has velvet ropes. And as for "risque dresses," well, go here and scroll down to see the designs for the Bush twins' inaugural gowns. (To quote Barbara at the Mahablog, "The drawing in the Post suggests not-Jenna's gown has less than three square inches of fabric above the waist. If Chelsea Clinton .... never mind. Iokiyar.")