Political theory

YOU KNOW we’ve arrived when the failure to call us by name becomes a national campaign issue.

That’s precisely what Barack Obama took issue with this week. John McCain failed to mention the middle class by name during the presidential debate last Friday.

“Not once did Senator McCain talk about the struggle that middle-class families are facing every day,” Obama told a largely middle-class crowd in Detroit Saturday.

“Who does he think I was talking about when I said people on Main Street?” McCain shot back.

Fact is, whether they call us by our name or by the mythical street where we live, the key domestic- policy issue of this presidential campaign is the “struggles” of the middle class.

But rarely mentioned in either candidate’s speeches is the class that’s really in the middle, between a rock and a hard place.

Call them poor or low-income families. The poor are those families of four who earn up to $20,000 a year. Low-income families earn up to $40,000 a year.

Middle is harder to define. But the U.S. Census Bureau’s report on “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage” reports that the median family income is $59,894 and the mean, or the number you get by dividing everyone’s salaries by working population, is $77,315.

Those in the rarely mentioned class don’t live on Main Street. Their struggles are about basics such as food and shelter.

One in eight Americans is in the poverty group. A third of working Americans are low-income. You’d think a demographic that large would be worthy of mention.

But, up to this point, not so much. Not so much in the discussions about the financial meltdown. Not so much in the high-falutin’ economic-policy debates on Wall Street or Washington.

Those poor and low-income families who have Internet access will be pleased to see that poverty is one of the issues categories on the Obama Web site. They won’t find their issue by name on McCain’s.

I will assume that McCain has touched on the issue of poverty in speeches, although I haven’t seen one on his Web site. Obama’s Web site does include an anti-poverty speech with detailed proposals.

Obama’s speech, delivered this summer in Anacostia, a largely poor neighborhood in D.C., listed proposals for an affordable-housing fund, to triple the earned-income-tax credit, to invest $5 billion for five years in job training and to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 next year to $9.50 by 2011.

Both campaigns talk about increasing access to health insurance, which would impact low-income families. But McCain opposes Obama’s subsidized national health insurance as too costly.

Point is that both campaigns talk about poor people only in places like Anacostia, if at all, because neither wants to raise the concerns of the middle class who might have to pay for anti-poverty programs.

This is not new. Poor folks have been out of vogue for years.

When Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council brain trust devised its winning strategy in the ’80s, they shifted their focus from poverty precincts and blue-collar workers to the middle-class suburbs.

While our backs were turned, the percentage of Americans living in poverty has doubled since 1980. Even the boom years of 2000 to 2005 had no appreciable effect on the poverty rate, according to census figures.

With the economy teetering on the brink of insolvency, it’s something to think about. Most of us are a factory closure or a pay cut or two away from low-income status.

So I’ll be watching the next debate to see if either of them makes the case that fighting poverty is a matter of enlightened self-interest for all of us.

The poor will know they have arrived when their struggle, the one we all want to avoid, becomes a national campaign issue. *

Send e-ma*l to sm*thel@ph*llynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.ph*lly.com/sm*th

 

THE NIELSEN RATING service reports that one-third of the households in America’s top TV markets watched Friday night’s presidential debate, while in our area it was half the homes. As a student of human nature, I ask myself why the event was such a draw.

Perhaps it was the novelty of being the first head-to-head contest between Barack Obama and John McCain.

Most of the audience, I imagine, were Americans seeking a thoughtful airing of issues. Another group would be the morbid, like people who watch Lou Dobbs expecting him to burst an artery.

A smaller group was partisans and bloggers waiting to pounce and announce their (predetermined) opinions of winners and losers. The next morning, left-wing Web sites (Daily Kos, Huffington Post) had Obama winning in a walk, while right-wing Web sites (Drudge, Townhall) awarded the laurel to McCain.

Look, neither candidate set off an IED. FactCheck.org shows only minor misstatements and mild distortions by each man, not head-exploding lies.

No honest person can say the debate was a game-changer. It didn’t reset the race. Neither man threw a haymaker, preferring to jab and move. Neither had a silver bullet, but I think there is one.

Before the debate, Democrats painted McCain as ignorant on the economy, out of touch, practically senile. Republicans called Obama an arrogant elitist who can’t string together two coherent thoughts without a TelePrompTer.

McCain “won” by walloping Washington and Wall Street, by not blowing his stack or wetting his pants. Obama “won” by going toe-to-toe with the senior senator, avoiding Sominex-like windy answers and not commanding the sun to rise at 9 p.m.

While moderator Jim Lehrer repeatedly urged the two to talk to each other, McCain fixed his gaze on Lehrer, while Obama looked at the camera, which is a technique to connect with viewers.

McCain’s repeated use of “you don’t understand” came across as condescending. Clips of Obama’s gracious concessions, “John McCain was right about that,” are already being used against him. Don’t expect a repeat. The debate was mostly civil, steering away from lipsticked pigs, bridges to nowhere and wacky ministers.

Since no one emerged with an undisputed win, don’t expect civility in the next two debates. The candidate who is down in the polls will put on the pads and the jockstrap and play offense. 

The debate unfolded against a backdrop of national economic angst so severe we’ve heard the “D” word, as in “Depression,” not “Democrat.” Our gut-punched economy has driven terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the back pages. It is Issue No. 1.

And Issue No. 1 occupied a long stretch of the debate’s opening, but Lehrer couldn’t get the candidates to say how the financial disaster would affect the promises they’ve already made. McCain would cut taxes, earmarks and pork, which he recited like rosary beads. Obama named the programs he would not cut, and there were a lot of them.

Lehrer was more interested in getting financial answers than the boys were in giving them. That may be because no one really knows the best way out of the maze. One thing is clear, though: In a CNN/Opinion Research poll, 77 percent of Americans think the looming bailout will reward Wall Street for bad behavior. They don’t like it.

The candidate who can tap into that will move into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in January.

E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns:

http://go.philly.com/byko.