|
I’m not concerned about the very rich. They’re doing just fine. ...
I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who, right now, are struggling. ...
We will hear from the Democrat Party (about) the plight of the poor. ...
And there’s no question, it’s not good being poor. ...
And we have a safety net to help those that are very poor. But my campaign is focused on middle-income Americans.
|
|
Assuming that there was some thought and consideration (at least on a minimal level) behind what Romney said the morning after his Florida win, he must have been thinking about the old notions from decades ago about “fighting poverty” and the concerns expressed by Democrats like Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson about the plight of the very poor. That’s old news and entirely out of date.
We have a new American poor and it doesn’t involve unwashed kids playing in the dirt on some backwoods farm. Nearly one half of Americans, according to recent studies, are members of the new poor. 47% of Americans own nothing. They have no assets. That means they have nothing to call on in time of emergency for medical bills, transportation to go care for a distant sick relative, nothing. Another survey recently showed that most Americans would have difficulty coming up with two thousand dollars in a dire situation.
These people are not poor in the way most of us have learned to think about the poor. They have jobs, they go to work, they pay bills, but whatever they do, they don’t progress to a point where they aren’t utterly dependent on the next pay check. Their lives are spent on the edge, hoping.
Just above the asset poor Americans is a large group of middle class who have the basic lifestyle but can barely afford to pay for it. This is one big reason that the housing/mortgage bubble came along and then broke in 2008. People were borrowing to keep up. Why? Because banks and finance companies came along and offered them money, loans. Far too many people didn’t consider how they would ever pay it back, because they needed the money and it was available.
In about a generation and a half, we have gone from a nation where 70 to 80% of the population could afford to live decently and pay their bills, anticipating the chance at a modestly comfortable old age, to a nation where 20% of the population owns most of the assets and gets the vast proportion of the pay and benefits from our successful, wealthy society. Romney and every other person seeking high office should endeavor to provide some answers as to why this happened and where we can go from here.
The crack about “we’ll hear from Democrats about the poor” seems to be a lame attempt to appeal to the lower middle class voters, who can always be counted on to worry about the needs and pleas of those just below them economically, people they see as taking more than they give. In other words, you don’t have to worry, voters, those dirty old Dems will be playing violins and shedding tears for the very poor, but not Mitt.
This guy really has a way with language. In a sense, he is kind of like the opposite of Newt, who comes out with very clever (too clever) formulations designed to, in just a few words, to divide the country, unite the far right and try to make himself look brilliant, a big, big strategic thinker. Mitt Romney manages to be clever and make himself look bad, sometimes very bad, on a regular basis, using about twice the number of words Newt does. Either way, trouble.
Something is clearly wrong about the key Romney message machine, the one that lies inside his brain. Perhaps it is his personality, maybe it is inexperience. He was a politician, in an elected sense, for only a little more than four years before trying for president in 2008 with spectacularly poor results. In the business world, you can say a lot of stupid things and no one really cares, especially if you are the boss and you are getting strong results. In politics, especially of the presidential type, everything matters. This is a transition to the big time with which a lot of highly experienced office holders have trouble. So far, Romney has done a great job of making himself look out of touch, way too rich and incapable of being verbally disciplined. Those are not good qualities for a president.
Doug Terry, 2.2.12
|
|
