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dan's blog

blah blah Middle Class blah blah

02/22/2009 17:06

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So one of the big elements of the last presidential election was the idea that the government needed to focus a little more on the “Middle Class” rather than just rewarding the administration’s rich friends. Since the election, one of the most positive things I’ve seen is the huge amount of web-based communication the new administration has started doing (or has committed to do) about its activities and their results.

I checked out the Vice President’s MiddlleClass Task Force, because it’s always hovering there on the top right of the screen at whitehouse.gov. I read Jared Bernstein's introductory blog post. (he’s the Executive Director and Joe Biden’s chief economic advisor) It was all well and good, as far as it went. But that was the problem.

35,000 people have already emailed the Task Force with questions and comments, so i went ahead and left mine. I think they're trying to paper over the big rift in American society. It isn't the split between the rich and the middle class, who often see eye to eye (as an example, the recent CNBC rant about not wanting to help fix the housing crisis). The big problem in America is the split between the rich/middle alliance (the administration and its main allies) and the working class.

The government and the media can pretend all they want that "the poor" are just people who've lost their “middle class” jobs. But I think deep down they know this isn't true, and at some point they're going to have to deal with the fact that they not talking to working people. Because the Repubs are going back to race-bating, using country and now hip-hop music to try to fool working-class people into thinking that just because the Dems can't see them, the Repubs are the party of the workers. That is a big mistake. It will come back to bite the administration and the Dems in general. They're institutionalizing the new class war.

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