Habermas, democratic discourse, and class

Jürgen Habermas has died, at the age of 96, and traditional and social media are full of obituaries and memories. For outsiders, it is maybe hard to gauge the omnipresence of his name in West Germany,* but his influence on democratic theory more broadly speaking is well-known. When I entered university, people would mention it in the same in way in which Kant or Hegel were mentioned (full disclosure: I saw him a few times in person, but with no chance to have a conversation beyond small talk)...