One of the biggest successes of the current wealthy (maybe not quite the 1%... let's say the 2% or even 3%) is that barring the usual deranged celebrity whores, they don't
seem to have lifestyles vastly in excess of the middle class.
They DO have vastly different lifestyles, but you have to get up close to see a lot of the differences. Both groups have houses, cars, vacations, pensions, kids, health care, (probably) no servants, etc. But the
quality of those things for the two groups is vastly different. Like say if you compare the furniture owned by a middle manager versus a C[letter]O or a specialist doctor. The kinds of guys with mid-to-high six-figure incomes.
The middle-manager will have used credit to buy a serviceable couch and a glass-topped coffee-table. The executive will have paid cash for a fifteen grand couch that outwardly looks just a little nicer and has done a dozen lines of coke on his coffee table. Both people will be sending their kids to school, but while the middle manager can get his kids into State U by cutting back elsewhere, the rich guy bankrolls his kid to go to Cornell or Princeton wherever. The house of the rich guy will be a fair bit nicer and in a nicer neighbourhood, but not dramatically so. But the richer dude's house will be better-built, better decorated and probably all paid off. He may also own vacation property.
The real difference when you get down to it is that the rich guy is so much more
secure than the middle class guy. If the middle class guy is fired, he falls off the debt-payment treadmill and quickly spirals down the crapper. If the rich guy is laid off, he's got reserves, he's got better connections, and his shit's paid off so he's got way fewer fixed costs dragging him down. And the rich guy is way more likely to have an ace pension and a non-zero amount of cash in the bank.
Now the super-super-rich is another story. They clearly live in ludicrous mansions with servants and all the rest. They're smart as well, having purchased the most valuable commodity of all in the modern world: privacy. But that is a small number of people. Though they have a disproportionate impact on the political system through their wealth, it's the "regular" rich guys who are having a larger effect on politics and a way larger social footprint in most communities.
Anyway, it doesn't surprise me that what's left of the middle class identifies more with the rich. The poor have sweet fuck all, whereas the middle class manages to use credit, cheap goods, and denial to get about 80% of what the average rich guy has. Superficially anyway.