...people are treated equally fair, and that 'fair' precludes misery. Substrata of concerns fall beneath that rubric imo, and sometimes there are disagreements over those things, but they are part and parcel of any organization of multiple entities.

I'm pretty certain at this point I'm one of the few who still believes in these, though.

Who was a populist racist in the Trump mode and ran against the bourgeios-patrician establishment. It stayed this way until after the Civil War, when it started to pick up northern workers. It only became a party for all classes with FDR, wbo win with Northern liberals and southern racist conservatives. These hung together until LBJ who kicked the southern racists out of the party, creating our current system, Reupublicans for conservatives and racists, Democrats for everyone else.

however, the way some demean less educated people and disregard the poor leads me to have doubts. Poor people were abandoned with policies that produced mass incarceration and welfare "reform." Working class and middle class got burned with bankruptcy limits enacted in the 90s.
So, it has a history of politicians and agendas that shift with the wind like any other political party.

The suffrage movement was initially supported by republican women and Democrats weren't too excited about it. The republican party gained power in the 60s and 70s by adopting southern Democrats who did not like the advances of marginalized groups.

So, it's a pretty complicated question.