The US Needs To Talk About Class, But Politicians Don’t Have The Vocabulary
The 90-minute drive from Pittsburgh to Uniontown winds and dips through rural western Pennsylvania, flanked by bare trees waiting to be clothed by a late spring, and drops you at the Appalachians. Historically at least, Uniontown (population 12,500) is an all-American town. Like the country, it was founded on July 4 1776. Thanks to its mills and coal mines it boasted more millionaires per capita than any other town in the US at the opening of the last century. The town centre is littered with tributes to its favourite son - George Marshall, the architect of the Marshall Plan that distributed American aid after the second world war to rebuild the European economy and stem the advance of communism. The Big Mac was invented and test-marketed here.
The imposing stone architecture and grand theatre in its small downtown are testament to the town’s former grandeur. But the down-at-heel stores and empty streets lay bare its current desperate state. Uniontown could do with a Marshall Plan of its own. More than one in five families here live below the poverty line; the household median income is less than half the national level; over the past 70 years the town’s population has shrunk by almost half. The food banks in Fayette county, the poorest county in the state outside of Philadelphia and home to Uniontown, keep adding new clients and opening new pantries.
“Back in the 50s and 60s there were people, people, people all over town,” explains mayor Ed Fike. “We had stores like Sears, Roebuck, Murphy’s, Kaufman’s. Now all of those stores have gone and so have the mines and mills. If you can find work it’s in Kmart, Wal-Mart, Target - minimum wage jobs in retail. People are struggling.”
With little more than a week to go before the Pennsylvania primaries, the economy is the biggest priority for voters and, barring a deterioration in Iraq, that is where it will stay until the presidential elections in November. The issue for the Democrats is not whether Hillary Clinton will win here, but by how much.
The race is tightening. Barack Obama stemmed his decline over comments of his pastor with a landmark speech on race, sparking a national conversation. But America doesn’t need another national conversation on race - it already has too many and most of them are asinine. It needs a dialogue that could lead to a better conversation. Obama’s speech contributed to that.
But as repossessions rise, jobs are shed and the price of fuel and basic foodstuffs rocket, one waits in vain for the candidates to deliver a keynote speech on class of a similar standard.
White working-class Americans are justified in their resentment about the way in which their needs and concerns are airbrushed from the national conversation or discussed in ways that bear little relevance to the root of their plight. Politicians too often cast the issue in populist terms of rich and poor, explains Michael Zweig, the director of the centre for study of working-class life at the State University of New York’s Stonybrook campus. “Most people want to be rich and most of them don’t know what rich is. A poll in 2000 showed that 19% of Americans thought they were in the richest 1% and a further 21% said they expected to be in the richest 1% in the next 10 years.”
Couch the conversation in more meaningful ways, and people might engage, argues Zweig, enabling them to make better sense of other core issues such as immigration, the outsourcing of jobs, healthcare and, indeed, race itself. “If you put class in terms of power you can start to get to the source of the problem,” Zweig suggests. “Is it workers who are taking our jobs in Thailand? Who is running public policy of the country? Who’s got power over whom? What do we have to do to challenge them?”
For the time being enlightened conversation on the issue seems unlikely. Obama, who unlike Clinton does not have an office in Uniontown, has proved himself to have a tin ear when it comes to addressing these voters, which is why he has struggled to win them over.
Their scepticism towards him is not primarily racial but cultural. Last week at a private fundraiser in San Francisco, Obama was asked why he wasn’t doing better among working-class voters in places such as Uniontown, which is 84% white. “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them,” he said. “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Clinton immediately seized on his remarks, handing out “I’m not bitter” stickers in North Carolina and casting Obama as a cultural elitist. “As I travel around Pennsylvania,” she said. “I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive …” The Republican nominee John McCain branded him “out of touch”. But their capacity to feel these people’s pain is matched only by their ability to inflict it. Clinton supported the North American Free Trade Agreement that led to outsourcing to Mexico; McCain offers nothing but more of the same market fundamentalism.
That does not make such a conversation about class any less vital. It would carry the dual benefit of being both timely and strategically savvy. Timely, because the economic problems of many Americans are particularly acute right now. One in 10 of those with mortgages is in negative equity; one in 16 is behind on their payments. Consumer confidence is at the lowest level on record; unemployment is climbing at a steady pace. All of this will get worse before it gets better.
Moreover, most people are heading into this bust without having enjoyed any of the benefits of a boom. Since the last recession the median wage has declined slightly. A Pew survey to be released on Wednesday reveals that most people feel they have been stuck in place or fallen backward over the past five years - the most gloomy short-term appraisal of personal advancement in almost 50 years. Thanks to the credit crunch, the days when people softened the blow by borrowing massively on their homes and credit cards are over. Americans are heading for a huge slump in their standard of living.
Savvy, because the biggest increases in unemployment or slumps in house prices (and in some instances both) are occurring in many of the swing states - namely Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada and Michigan.
Walk around Uniontown for a day and you will find little in the way of bitterness or optimism. But you will find many who are despondent and even more who are desperate. “They can put a man on the moon but all they can do for poor people is give out blocks of cheese?” asked Cindy Digga, resources consultant at the Fayette county community action agency. “Don’t you think America should be able to do better than that? The American dream’s still possible. It just depends in what part of America. Here in Fayette county, it feels like we’ve been forgotten.”
© 2008 The Guardian
This morning, on the radio, I heard that consumer sales — about 2/3 of the US economy, expanded by 0.2 percent in March, compared to shrinking 0.6 percent in February. It was phrased as good (well, moderating) news, but then came the details. Clothing sales — down. Furniture sales — down. Appliance sales — down. Department and discount store sales — down. The only sales that were up were gasoline and grocery sales, and neither one of those showed an increase in volume, only a “surge” in prices.
Don’t know how much more of this kind of good news we can stand. But then, I neither think I’m in the top 1% of Americans by income, nor believe I have any real chance of ever making it there.
If you’re not bitter, you’re in denial.
rjmart01; you hit that nail on the head; as I read this article I couldn’t help but think that the story of Uniontown is the story of the U.S. future. Then I love, “White working-class Americans are justified in their resentment about the way in which their needs and concerns are airbrushed from the national conversation or discussed in ways that bear little relevance to the root of their plight.” White working class Americans’ children staff the U.S. military, get killed in the line of duty or wounded or maimed and the average White working class American can’t figure out why they’ve been air brushed from the national conversation? Not only have they been air brushed out of the conversation, they and their kids have been air brushed out of the future of the U.S. altogether and the future will seek to air brush them out of the U.S. past just as so many lament the evil White “Founding Fathers”, (not to mention sexist).
White working class Americans should wake up to the reality that it’s truly past time for them to do what their ancestors did, up and leave and move on to some other country where they won’t be air brushed out of welcome citizenship because of the color of their skin.
“…the poorest county in the state outside of Philadelphia”
Not entirely true. In terms of median income, Fayette is poorer. The percentage of people below the poverty line is greater in Philly, but, as in a lot of big cities, their numbers are offset by a lot of rich people too.
In Appalacian Fayette County, poverty is more equally distributed and democratic. But considering that many of those poor people must spend huge sums on gasoline to get to the nearest living-wage jobs on Pittsburgh 50 to 80 miles away, the people in Philadelphia are in some ways a better position in days to come.
It’s not a new phenomenon really. Most of those folks working in the coal mines at the turn of the last century had just enough material wealth to eat, work, and reproduce the next generation of miners. Today’s McWorkers got the same deal, and global corporatization won’t change that.
It’s not a new phenomenon really. Most of those folks working in the coal mines at the turn of the last century had just enough material wealth to eat, work, and reproduce the next generation of miners. Today’s McWorkers got the same deal, and global corporatization won’t change that.
Wow, glide625, you just verified the accuracy of Obamas remarks the other day. You also failed to read the rest of mr Younge’s (a black man BTW) piece.
As a race white people are still far batter off - but that doesn’t nean ther are planty of poor white - especially here in SW Pennsylvania. The problem is that unlike poor blacks, most poor white people refuse accept that they are poor and start recognizing where their class-interests lie.
Notice how nobody is denying the bitterness - except politicians. We are ALL bitter.
Obama’s crime was to point the attitudes of America’s Potemkin villages in direct contradiction to the message his paymasters want him to pass along.
John R. wrote:
“Most of those folks working in the coal mines at the turn of the last century had just enough material wealth to eat, work, and reproduce the next generation of miners.”
That was certainly true at the turn of the last century, but it certainly wasn’t true from 1950 until the Reagan catastrophe of 1981 to 1985. Thanks to the UMWA and USWA, coal miners and steelworkers of those days enjoyed solidly middle class, even upper middle class incomes. But nearly all the steel mills are now closed, the remaining mines (now mostly non-union) are mechanized and employ relatively few miners.
Politicians can’t have the vocabulary when 95% of their money comes from corporations and banks of the elite.
Though he’s trying to not piss anyone off to get elected, Obama is not taking their bribes.
I can’t make ends meet; food prices have skyrocketed but I have the same amount of money to pay for food. Obama isn’t going to help me with his stale policies. Only REAL progressives would help. Bitter? I’m beyond bitter! If I could leave the U.S., I certainly would!!
I’ve referred to this site before, but look at it if you haven’t:
http://www.inequality.org/
Click on “By the Numbers” and move down to the pie charts. In 2004, 10% of the people in this country had over 70% of the wealth; 90% of the people (that’s us) had less than 30%. It’s even worse for the chart on stock ownership. That was 2004. It’s probably more skewed now.
Am I bitter? Yes. I started poor, worked hard, saved money, and did all of the “right” things. I paid into social security for 46 years. (The reason it’s only 46 years is that I worked a year or so for a temporary agency that didn’t take out SS.)
As of tomorrow, I’m 72. I look after for older sister who’s had a stroke. The house is paid off. My car is old but paid for. I owe nothing. I also recycle and conserve what I can. I believe that everything on earth is connected and we must try to conserve it all. So I’m doing well?
My problem is that I no longer believe in much of anything. Religion has become more politics than religion. “Entreprenours” who come up with ideas to make money, often at the expense of the earth itself, are praised. Government is so far away from me that it might as well be on another planet. So, where do a find a view of the world now?
The thought of someone, saying that poor white people, are so Stupid they don’t realize the are poor, makes me very angry. We who grew up in 50’s and 60’s where taught, you play by the rules and you will be rewarded. Now we realize that the world only rewards those who take what they want. But hopefully those who voted for Republicans last Time will have learned there lesson.
“As I travel around Pennsylvania,” she said. “I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive …”
Yep, that’s right, Hillary, we Americans must keep smiling positively as we march our children into the slaughterhouse of Iraq and ourselves into the poorhouse of the modern U.S. economy. Don’t admit to any failings in the system, everything’s hunky dory. . . did I really need another reason NOT to vote for her? We’re never going to solve the problems this nation faces unless we’re willing to honestly discuss them, but that’s never going to happen with the politicians and media we have now. God help us all.
Rich, those of us with families are really feeling the pinch. I’d say if you qualify for foods stamps, don’t be too proud to get them. Other things that might help is to make a list and just buy the essentials. You’d be surprised how many processed goodies that you want, but can do without. Eat less meat, if possible, and go to your local farmers market. I fear that many more will soon be in your position. Neighbors will have to work together to get through it. Oh, and if you have land, grow something!
The reactions of both the Clinton and McCain campaigns to Obama’s comments were as predictable as they were swift: to suggest that working-class people might be understandably bitter about government’s failures–irrespective of party–over the past three decades is to court accusations of either elitist condescension or, more often, of fanning the flames of class warfare. In a rare break with tradition, both the Clinton and McCain camps opted to take the road less traveled by.
The furor Obama’s remarks have occasioned is what is truly stunning, not the remarks themselves. Admittedly, when asked to self-report how they feel about their situation in life, I suspect that most working-class folks will not reach for “bitter” as their modifier of choice: “frustrated,” “concerned,” “desperate” etc are the more likely face the working-class will present to the world than “bitter,” which–given its suggestions of resentment and rage–has the unfortunate effect of turning scrutiny back on the speaker rather than on the systemic problems that give rise to the complaint.
I suspect that this will come as no surprise to most readers here, but there is a way that lower-income and working-class people in America where the mask too. Admittedly, it is a different mask than that described by Paul Laurence Dunbar, but it too “grins and lies.” Clinton’s statement that throughout her travels in Pennsylvania she “meet[s] people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive” rather than “bitter” ought to be confirmation enough, confirmation that she is as out of touch on this issue as McCain.
Moreover, I suspect that one of the reasons neither she nor McCain want to acknowledge the reality of working-class bitterness is that to do so would not only reveal the failings of successive administrations on this issue (something that obviously carries more risks for Clinton than for McCain) but it would also involve us in the kinds of public discussions that American society has proven largely uninterested in or incapable of conducting: namely, discussion of class, race, and (let’s not forget) gender.
By any reasonable standard, Obama’s comments have to be judged extraordinarily mild. Unfortunately, reaction to them suggests that most American politicians still don’t trust Americans to be able to discuss class in any way that would acknowledge the real feelings of working-class people.
P.S. For those of you who would be inclined to read into this some endorsement of Obama as the answer to America’s many problems, don’t bother. My point is merely that Obama is right in his assessment of the feeling of some working-class people towards government.
The poorest county in Pennsylvania is Philadelphia County? Like, the birthplace of the American “experiment?” With the Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell and the Betsy Ross and stuff?
Holy shit - the “founding fathers” must be so f**king proud.
Naomi Klein in her book THE SHOCK DOCTRINE is right when she writes that the devotees of Milton Friedman’s philosophy have used the shock of 9/11 and war to destroy the middle class built up from the end of World War II until the early 1970’s. Of course they couldn’t have done it without he help of the Democratic Party who shunned the New Deal base and went for corporate money. To quote a recent movie: “There Will Be Blood” here in the U.S. before its all over as people get to the point where they have little left to lose. People died in the 19th and 20th centuries for the right to organize. That’s why National Guard armories were located in central cities.
Class? How exactly do you spell that? There are no classes in America. There are only races, and we all know who the lower-, middle- and upper-races are.
I can’t tell is zoya is being sarcastic. I hope so, because otherwise the comment is just wrong. I’m going to assume the comment is serious. Excuse me if it wasn’t meant that way.
It is very, very easy to find poor white people who are struggling. I grew up in Appalachia, so maybe that’s more obvious to me than it is to most.
Yes, if you look at the elite CLASS at the top of our society, they tend to be white. But if you try to extrapolate from that and say that all white people are in the upper-race, then you’ve reached pure nonsense.
It takes little to no effort to find poor white people struggling to get buy. Just because the people who go to Yale and run the country are white, that doesn’t mean that just being white yourself gets you into that club. Not a chance.
Poor white people are struggling to get by just like poor blacks and poor hispanics and poor immigrants and everyone else who’s poor. The one constant for a long time is that the elites try to keep all these groups separate and fighting each other. So, they put a lot of work into making the poor white people think that its the poor blacks that are causing their pain. Or more recently its been the anti-immigrant hysteria that does the same task. And, we’ve seen a lot of crap in the poor black communities trying to blame everything on ‘racism’. That’s just more of the same, trying to get poor blacks to blame their problems on poor whites.
The goal is to keep us all divided. If we all gang up on the rich CLASS that’s been screwing us over, we win. So the goal is to keep us divided. If they can focus our attention on race, and make us not realize that we are all getting screwed, then we lose. So, I’m sorry to see this showing up out here of all places.
Here’s the point I originally wanted to make before being distracted by the comments.
The one part of this article that is wrong is when they say the politicians don’t have the language to talk about class being the problem. That’s not correct and it helps to hide the real problem.
The problem is that all three of the main candidates that are left are all funded by the rich class. Both parties fund their campaigns on the contributions of this class. Obama has always been the largest recipient of Wall St money in this election.
Its Wall St and the others that fund these campaigns that are getting rich from this. They are the ones who closed the factories in PA and send the jobs elsewhere in a race to the bottom.
This is why they candidates can’t talk about this. Because to really honestly talk about this and to suggest solutions to the problems would be to bite the very hands that feed them.
Obama’s gone as far as he’s allowed to in even mentioning the problem. And if you notice, in typical Obama fashion, he completely avoids any discussions of what he might do to address the problem. That’s because he can’t. He’s the bought and paid for candidate of Wall St, and at least one faction of the rich and powerful in this country. He simply can’t talk about real solutions because if he did his campaign would immediately be over. If he started saying anything like the following, they’d pull the plug on his campaign so fast his head would spin.
Here’s the answers. These people don’t feel like they are listened to. That is correct. That’s because our political system is built entirely on money these days. What ordinary citizens think doesn’t matter because elections are won by the candidate with the most money. Its the money that counts. Check out every headline every time the campaign financial reports are analysed. That’s what tells you who’s winning.
The answer would be publicly financed election campaigns. That would remove the influence of big money. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Obama to propose this, as his backers would never allow it. The last thing they are going to do is to fund a candidate that is going to remove their control of the political system.
And, its the control of the political system that’s sent all the jobs from these areas off to first Mexico and now China. The political system responds to big money, because its big money who decides who wins or loses elections. What’s good for the people is not considered. So, if it makes money for Wall St to send the jobs in PA off to China, then the jobs in PA are going off to China. No one cares what’s good for the people in PA. That’s the way the system works these days.
That’s why the candidates can’t talk about this. Its not this BS that they ‘don’t have the language’. Its that they are bought and paid for by the people who are getting rich by screwing over these workers in PA.
That’s why I keep saying we must stop voting Democrat. We should never, ever vote for a candidate that has enough money to run lots of commercials on TV. That alone should be a clear sign that the candidate is on the side of big money, and opposed to us. The candidates we must support are the ones we never see on TV. The candidates that we must support are the ones who need a volunteer to meet them at the airport or to try them on to the next stop. If anyone is going to be on our side, that’s what its going to look like.
Somehow, we not only have to learn that for ourselves (and ignore the people who will tell us that there is no alternative), but we have to teach our fellow citizens this. The candidates with the money are on the side of the people who gave them the money. They are our enemy.
CO MARC: Good points about minorities and the “divide and conquer” strategy being propagated by the right wing TV luminaries to deflect the true place angst ought be aimed.
RUTH K: I have seen many shops close up, BUT the one exception are the places you can buy used clothing, toys, books, furniture, etc. Although the poor deserve the lesson least, there IS something to be said about breaking our U.S. habit for excess. Don Henley has a powerful song lyric about Americans, “Too many blessings, not enough APPRECIATION.” I find that true. The whole realization that life is good when we have enough to eat, and have shelter from bad weather is lost on most who seek more, and likely are never sated.
ERIC: As for the masking of issues and TRUE intentions, how about the typical greeting between two people, “How are you?” If you depart from the preferred script and respond with anything other than fine, and particularly if you elaborate on WHY you do NOT feel FINE, you are taken as a social misfit. The minuets of protocol, which remind me of the style of dance where a couple could only touch a single finger as they gracefull gyrated round one another, still rule “society.” And its mores and division of the great pie is anything BUT civilized, fair, humane or logical; but then those who draw up the rules and pay “experts” to promote their perspectives, could CARE less.
McCain offers nothing but more of the same market fundamentalism.
The people are confused when journalists label the right wing economic ideology as “market fundamentalism”. It’s market perversion through and through, and in the US, the market perversion is on a grand scale, a meta-perversion, with the industrial machine stomping on the fence that is supposed to separate industry and state, stomping on the state, stomping on the society and stomping on the people.
Market fundamentals INCLUDE and functional markets DEPEND on market demand serving the society’s better interests. Failing that the market is dysfuctional, perverted, sabotaged.
Remember the anti-trust laws? They have been dismantled. What do you think this signifies? Market fundamentals? Nope. Try market perversion. What about corporate personhood? Market perversion. What about corporate lobbies? Market perversion. What about predatory advertising? Market perversion.
Uniontown is joined by most small towns in the US as examples of cultivated dependence that went wrong but it’s not a new phenomenon of the past 25 years, just it’s been perpetrated on a much grander scale than ever before. Many an indigenous culture has fallen into dependence on the fly by night capitalist, then fallen into famine when “Mr. Big Time” moved on. Let’s cut the word “jobs” out of our vocabulary. Occupations and livelihoods, NOT jobs, no dependencies, no capital needed. People, it’s time to shift our individual exchange/association away from the capitalist and toward our local communities. Open a workshop and insist to your neighbors that they need your production, and you need theirs. Do it, NOW.
I have suggestion for this years election for those voting by paper ballot..
At the bottom put a little box and check it,then next to it write “None of the Above”.
This article is woefully off-base on several areas.
#1. “American Dream”. That phrase has become a propaganda soundbite lately. Will someone please explain what it means? If it means working 30 years as an indentured servant in order to “own” a suburban plot of land, then please explain why it is priced at 30 years’ arm reach?
#2. “Credit Crunch.” Again, why are we analyzing these problems as trouble with the banks — those great benevolent/generous/non-profit/philanthropic organizations that, when things are fine, enable all sorts of wealth and possibility? Bullshit. Their job is to profit on the gap between rich and poor — charge interest on the poor, reward interests on the already-wealthy. I’m not entirely sure that banks/credit are the problem, but they sure as hell are not the solution.
Guess what? There is no such thing as the middle class. There are the bosses - the top 1% - the ruling class and everybody else.
When Obama is delivering one of his inspirational speeches and he is hitting the part about bringing American together he mentions various races, ages etc. and then he says “rich and poor” and you can feel the air go out of the room.
The only way that contradiction works is if you bring the rich in by taxing them to make our society more egalitarian. An egalitarian society with better education for the masses and lack of the crime and animosity (bitterness) that drives fear would make life better for all. Materialism is not the key to happiness, it is only an illusion.
A recent study showed that the most dependable way to use money to bring happiness was to use it to help someone who was less well off.
I was having a discussion about the sad state of our legal system with some friends last weekend, and it came to light that years ago people with substance abuse problems were sent to state hospitals for recovery.
State hospitals were largely eliminated some 30 years ago. That happened in California first, directed by Governor Reagan. The motivation was to save money so taxes on the rich could be lowered.
We still have substance abuse, but now, instead of being sent for a few months to a state hospital to “dry out” in “detox,” people are sent to maximum security prisons for 10 ar 20 years.
This is an outrageously abusive way to treat people who are subject to human weaknessess, and it has to be astronomically more expensive than the old system of state hospitals.
While Paul Bramscher is certainly right to point out the inadequacy of any analysis of the current economic crisis that characterizes it as simply a problem of “credit crunch,” two things need to be kept in mind:
1) Younge nowhere states that the “credit crunch” is the fundamental problem.
2) Younge’s article is not an economic analysis of the problems facing working-class people.
Rather, it is a call for discussion of class in America.
My point here is that it makes no sense to criticize the article for not being an economic analysis when it makes no pretense of being anything other than a form of opinion piece on the need for greater discussion of class.
For those who are interested in some of the economic issues working-class and lower income Americans face, I recommend beginning with some of the material at the Economic Policy Institute particularly its report entitled “Pulling Apart: A State-by-State Analysis of Income Trends,” which provides some fine data that address these issues. I encourage people to give it a read, especially the section on the looming fiscal crisis state governments are facing–half of U.S. states are projecting large shortfalls in FY 2009–and why, unless voters as well as state governments address the problem of the current regressive state taxation system, lower to median income people are likely to feel the squeeze even more.
Eric Johnson-DeBaufre
P.S.
The larger problem of course is that the country needs to build a movement among lower and median income Americans that can begin to address these matters at all levels–from local through state and federal governments. Doing this will require an enormous amount of time, so it is imperative that short-term relief be sought in the interim in order to provide some measure of support for those at risk.
Ruth K April 14th 1:53 PM,
Your post moved me very much. We(I) tend to argue and analyze when we(I) post on CD, but what is really important is heart, and I’m sorry yours is bitter for “your golden years” as I am concerned for my own state of chronic remorse(Aldous Huxley warned against being consumed by this state of mind in his preface to a later edition of “Brave New World”.) I’m tempted to answer your question, “Where do we go from here?”. I’m tempted to offer you a world view you can believe in. But I’m not that great. I would only be adopting a hubristic pose of some sort. As for me, to keep reading and writing is the most important thing to believe in. I think we are making it up as we go along. There is no script handed down to us from the beginning of time.
Dear Ruth K - you still believe in helping your sister. That comes from a deep down place.
COMark is right, Without public financing of elections the chances of a dialog on class in an election are scarcer than a block of government cheese.Unfortunately so are the chances of a third party candidate winning the nomination.We have a Senate and House made up of mostly …millionairs.They all need to raise many more millions to run for reelection.At least a large part of the Obama war chest comes from small,and on line donations from working class people.Sadly class is a hot potato that none will touch,the author is pointing out what must be obvious to the rest of the world.Americans have been “classwashed” popular myths of upward mobility and unlimited opportunity have stifled debate.Meanwhile the suppression of labor,outsourcing jobs and the costs of higher education create a “class ceiling”.
We need to tax wealth not labor,support labor ,not capitol and invest in people not corporate “persons”. peace