it's all about lifting the working classes into the affluent middle class, so they can turn right around and vote conservative

That's exactly what the Spanish socialists did in Spain in the 1930's when they gave women the vote, and they knew full well it would cost them the next election, as it did.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman