What is holton debate "the struggle over the constitution…can best be understood as a social one. whatever the particular constituency of the antagonists may have been, men in 1787–1788 talked as if they were representing distinct and opposing social elements. both the proponents and opponents of the constitution focused throughout the debates on an essential point of political sociology that ultimately must be used to distinguish a federalist from an antifederalist. the quarrel was fundamentally one between aristocracy and democracy.