Income inequality has been increasing, according to standard statistics, yet most Americans do not seem perturbed by it.

Here’s the problem: The president never defines what he means by “fair.” And this is for a simple reason: his definition is simply not recognizable to most Americans.

Without a robust recovery to trumpet, the president is betting his reelection on class warfare — focusing on “income inequality” and “fairness.” Class warfare is not a winning strategy, but it is the only card Obama has to play. That’s the good news for Republicans. The bad news is: Right now, the GOP is blowing it.

Marc Thiessen explains why Republicans are losing the class warfare fight by not going on the offensive against President Obama and his attacks.

The rise in income inequality since 1993 has been small.

The upward trend in income inequality prior to 1993 significantly slowed thereafter once researchers controlled for top coding in the public use data and censoring in the internal data.

Supercommittee Republicans offered a plan to eliminate tax preferences and reduce tax rates, as in the 1986 bipartisan tax reform. They argued that high tax rates would squelch economic growth.  They didn't make the case that their proposals would also address income inequality. But Paul Ryan, in a paper based largely on a CBO analysis of income trends between 1979 and 2007, has done so.

When it comes to poverty and income inequality, the cycle of optimistic promises and zero results will repeat itself because politicians ignore causes that don't fit the way they want the world to be.