This editorial will probably get a lot of attention but I think it’s horrible advocacy and hurts the people it’s intended to help:
More than three-fifths of the cuts proposed by Mr. Ryan, and eagerly accepted by the Tea Party-driven House, come from programs for low-income Americans.
Mr. Ryan’s budget “will hurt hungry children, poor families, vulnerable seniors and workers who cannot find employment,” the bishops wrote in an April letter to the House. “These cuts are unjustified and wrong.”
I don’t want to save Mitt Romney’s soul. I want to beat him. In order to do that I have to get around this kind of pious, useless saccharine moralizing and tell the truth about who benefits from the programs Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan told us they will cut. I have to tell that truth to working and middle class voters, not speak to Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan, because Romney and Ryan are beyond reaching. If you’re going to appoint yourself an advocate for “the poor” be a smart advocate, use your head, make an argument that reaches voters, and for God’s sake give up on trying to shame conservatives by beating them over the head with the religion they use to get elected. That’s a loser. It hasn’t worked once in 30 years. Try something else.
Going along with the nonsense that Romney-Ryan are selling, that these programs only benefit “the poor” harms “the poor”. Cutting “the poor” out of the herd and making them the objects of whatever charitable impulses Republicans may or may not have hurts “the poor”.
So lay off the poor and start telling middle class and working class people how these programs benefit them. The best way to protect the poor, who really are vulnerable, is to have working class and middle class people standing in front of them. Oh, and the next time I hear some elite pundit whining about liberals engaging in “class warfare” I would like them to explain why Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are permitted to set the working class and middle class against the poor every fucking day, but one liberal suggests raising taxes on the uber-wealthy and our elite pundit class go into a tizzy. You wanna see some real class warfare listen to Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney demonize the poor in an attempt to win over the working class and middle class. They’re doing it today. Right now. Where’s the outrage, pundits? This is class warfare!
Romney and Ryan want to drastically cut Medicaid. Who benefits from Medicaid? The poor, obviously, but also the children of the working class and the elderly parents of the working and middle class, who rely on Medicaid to pay for “long term care” (pdf):
Over 7 million of Medicaid’s 50 million beneficiaries are “dual eligibles,” low-income elderly and individuals with disabilities who are enrolled in both Medicaid and Medicare. While Medicare covers basic health services, including physician and hospital care, dual eligibles rely on Medicaid to pay Medicare premiums and cost-sharing and to cover critical benefits Medicare does not cover, such as long-term care.
Dual eligibles comprised 18% of all Medicare beneficiaries in 2000, but they accounted for 24% of total Medicare spending. Similarly, they represented 16% of all Medicaid enrollees but 42% of program spending.
Got that? 40% of Medicaid spending goes to elderly and disabled. They’re “the poor”, sure, but they’re also the children and parents of working and middle class people.
If you have an elderly parent who requires long-term care and cannot afford long-term care and Romney and Ryan cut Medicaid, you have two options. You can pay for that long-term care yourself (which you won’t be able to do if you’re a middle class wage-earner) or you can quit your job and care for that elderly parent. If you’re a working class or lower middle class parent and your children qualify for Medicaid under SCHIP or any other program, Romney and Ryan are threatening to take health insurance away from your children. Not “the poor”. You. Your children.
Medicaid benefits working class and middle class people, now, today, and Romney-Ryan want to gut it. That’s how I’ll be presenting The Romney-Ryan Plan to voters face-to-face in this white working class county because that’s the truth. “The poor” will thus benefit without being made the abstract objects of appeals to pity or charity, and we can finally start the long, slow process of telling the truth about who gets what in this country. We can start admitting that MOST of us benefit from federal programs, either directly or indirectly.
I benefitted directly from a federal-state program for poor pregnant women 22 years ago. I was temporarily poor. I’m no longer poor. The healthy baby that resulted from that excellent low-cost subsidized maternity care I received 22 years ago is now working and paying taxes. Soonergrunt wrote a wonderful, brutally honest piece where he told us he once (gasp!) received aid when his family was in a bind. Soonergrunt works and pays taxes. He was temporarily poor. He’s no longer poor. There are a LOT of us with these stories. If we want to help “the poor” we should tell these stories and stand in front of them, with them, not cut them off and set them apart and beg on their behalf. “The poor” will be better for it, and so will the rest of us, because we’ll be living in reality.
Baud
Preach it, Kay!
But don’t expect the New York Times to follow your advice. They have a certain audience who might not want to hear that message.
Hunter Gathers
If it’s any consolation, no one gives a flying fuck what the NYT has to say about anything.
Both Sides Do It
Angry Kay is the best Kay.
Nutella
Kay and Soonergrunt both got a helping hand from the government when they were temporarily poor and now they are taxpayers contributing to programs that will help others who need a hand.
An important part of that story is: Would Kay and Soonergrunt have been able to bounce back from their temporarily poor status WITHOUT that help? Or would it have been much more difficult or impossible for them to work their way out of their temporary problems?
How many people will fall out of the middle class into poverty and stay there if we don’t have those government programs?
Maude
We are once again in Reagan territory. Welfare Queen and all that.
Obama will prolly start on Mitt’s income tax returns again. Keep Mittens on the edge.
I don’t want to rant about how offensive the war on the middle class and poor has become.
Eljai
Kay, if I ruled the world, every Democrat who makes the pundit rounds on TV would be forced to memorize what you just wrote and recite it a thousand times. In the meantime, you’ve helped me articulate my thoughts for the next time I talk with my friends, co-workers and follow citizens.
Violet
Exactly. I think the Obama campaign gets this, hence the attacks on Romney they’ve been dishing out for the last month or so. I not only want to beat him, I want to pound him into oblivion.
Davis X. Machina
You don’t want to — but the bishops, they do.
Let the bishops do their thing. They’re bishops of a Church that preaches a preferential option for the poor. I don’t expect otherwise from them, and I don’t mind.
There are, or ought to be, other spokesmen speaking from other perspectives. And Obama took the Catholic vote 54%-45% in’08.
Kay
@Baud:
They keep whining that Obama needs to go out and make this thirty year loser of an argument that they’re in love with. The Moral Argument. Please ignore that while principled and pure, it has failed for 30 years.
He needs to ignore them, and run more Bain ads :)
mamayaga
Thank you, thank you, thank you for saying this. One underlying message of the radical right that has somehow taken hold is that the government doesn’t help middle class and working people, only those poors. The middle class somehow forgets that the safety net is there for THEM, and their children, should they need it. This point in history is a good time to reestablish this understanding, with so many formerly middle class families devastated by the housing bust, unemployment and sky-high medical costs. It’s worth pointing out that those awful govt programs will catch you if you fall, and it’s not at all unlikely that you will at some time in your life — one serious illness or accident in your family will do it.
Kay
@Davis X. Machina:
It’s a good point, but does it work? Catholic Republicans seem to be beating the shit out of the bishops, Davis, I hate to say it. Is Paul Ryan really up nights soul-searching on this?
Southern Beale
Yes exactly, we need to dump the “these cuts hurt low-income Americans,” because no one gives a fuck about the poor anymore. And it’s also not true. Of course cuts will hurt the poor but Ryan’s plan hurts the MIDDLE CLASS, hurts Joe Six Pack and Jane Soccer mom. I told on another thread about the Tea Party/Reagan worshipper/Rush Limbaugh devotee my husband works with whose mother needs round the clock nursing care. He is bitching and moaning about how he has to spend down his mother’s assets before he can get Medicaid assistance for her. Well … quit rallying against healthcare reform and all that Tea Party crap then. This guy isn’t low income, he’s a government employee as a matter of fact. He earns a great salary with good benefits. But even HE needs help for his mother’s healthcare needs.
Jesus fuck but people are stupid and the sanctimonious “oh the poor, the poor” stuff doesn’t reach people like this. They hear “the poor” and they think “black welfare queen with an Obama cell phone and Hawaiian vacation on her food stamp debit card.”
I know we’re supposed to give up on these people, that they’re lost causes. But I think debunking these myths that only the poor are hurt by these Tea Party crazies is a message the entire country needs to hear, not just social workers at the homeless shelter.
My .02.
Davis X. Machina
@Kay: It works in the exit polls, where it counts.
Jewish Steel
This is something I tell my lefty friends all the time.
Villago Delenda Est
@Southern Beale:
“The poor” are not white.
They are brown.
It’s good to keep the brown in their place.
At the feet of the white.
Baud
@Davis X. Machina:
It will be interesting to see how the Church handles the Ryan budget, given their recent conflicts with Obama on birth control. I wonder if the Ryan plan will cause the Church hierarchy to sit the election out, rather than pushing parishioners to vote against Obama.
eohippus
“Where’s the outrage, pundits? This is class warfare!”
Stopping the rich from screwing the poors = class warfare. Putting the screws to poor people is not class warfare. It’s a serious, bold, vision for the future.
Baud
@Kay:
He will. He has always focused on the middle class in his rhetoric.
c u n d gulag
An ad that would work:
Show a middle-class couple with a couple of kids, sitting at the table and eating dinner.
All of a sudden, the wife’s older parents show up.
When asked what they’re doing here, they tell about how President Romney followed VP Ryan’s plan, and they’ve privatized their Social Security, and they lost money, and can’t afford to live by themselves, so, can they move in?
And while the husband and wife sit and contemplate that, the husband’s parent’s arrive, too, saying that with Medicare now on a voucher system, they can’t afford to live by themselves, and can they move in?
And the husband turns to the kids and says, “Ok, well, you two will have to share a room from now on, since we need to free yours up for one set of Grandma and Grandpa, while the other set will share the living.
And that means you’ll have to go to your rooms earlier, which will be good, since, with your college funds having to help feed all of these extra mouths, you’d better study to get a scholarship, or else it’s no college for you!”
Vote Obama-Biden: Keep your parents in their homes, so you won’t have to keep them in yours.
Kay
@Davis X. Machina:
I have to say I love that the nuns told Mitt Romney they’d introduce him to some poor people (paraphrasing). What a great line. I think he’s a hollow shell of a person, so it’s not like it reached him, but I was chuckling away. Now they need to actually bring some poor people to his house.
Elizabelle
@c u n d gulag:
That would wake up a few people, for sure.
I don’t think many people know how much Medicaid funds long-term care for the elderly.
rikyrah
I’m with you, Kay.
Tell Grandma – your ass better find $7,000 pronto, cause that’s what you’re gonna have to pay more.
Tell the son/daughter/grandchildren – do you have the $4-6 k/A MONTH that Medicaid pays for grandma’s nursing home? If not, get your ass to a voting booth.
Tell the veteran – you ready to pay for your healthcare? No. Well, get ready, because Romney/Ryan will privatize the VA, and good luck for finding insurance.
You folks out there with a disabled family member who gets healthcare from Medicaid – do you have the money to pay for that healthcare..then get your ass to a voting booth.
it shouldn’t be this hard, but I think we’re just gonna have to be slapping folks upside their heads.
Violet
The majority of people think they’re middle class, even if they’re not and they’re richer or poorer. Any ad or message that shows how Romney/Ryan hurt the middle class will work.
This is a great piece, Kay. Thanks for it.
Davis X. Machina
@Baud: I wouldn’t expect more than ‘a pox on both their houses’ from the hierarchy, but you have to keep in mind the people in the pews.
The Catholic vote, such as it is, is increasingly Hispanic, and to a lesser extent, Asian and African/Afro- Carribean. Many of them are poor, and have been hurt disproportionately by the recession.
There are a few white social-justice Catholics out there, too.
(White Catholics are pretty much indistinguishable as a bloc from voters generally nowadays….)
mamayaga
@Baud:
Doubt it very much. The Ryan plan is just the culmination and codification of what the Repubs have been plainly saying for 30 years, and the bishops haven’t been sitting it out at all. It’s clear that controlling ladyparts is much more important than caring for the least among us. Just like it says in the Bible.
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah:
The thing is, these sums that would cause untold financial distress to the middle class are pocket change to guys like OvenMitt, who dismisses a quarter of a million in speaking fees as “not much money.”
We should all have that problem.
Brachiator
Tell it, sister. Tell it.
SBJules
I don’t watch the talking heads on Sunday mornings, but while waiting to see the men’s basketball final, I saw David Gregory. What a tool!! Axelrod & Rachel Maddow were good however.
PeakVT
@c u n d gulag: That would a great ad for an outside group to run (minus the explicit endorsement at the end, of course). (Even in Florida, or maybe especially in Florida, as I think the last thing most independent-living retirees would want to do is move in with their kids.)
arguingwithsignposts
I realize everyone here knows this, but those first two terms are not exclusive. Neither are the last two. Maybe some Venn diagrams.
NotMax
To further marginalize a not insignificant (and growing) group whose members are already severely marginalized, to excise them from the conversation and airbush them from the political picture as if they were out of favor apparatchiks, to all but dictate them to the back of the tent, is derisive and disgraceful. Shame.
Yes, appeals focused on and to the middle class are of high importance, but that doesn’t mean they must be carried out to the exclusion of the lower class or the deeply impoverished. Both sections of the populace can and should be addressed. The larger the universe of potential voters who can be swayed and who might pass on the information, the better.
Personalize the message, yes, but not at the cost of making or defining others non-persons, politically.
cckids
@arguingwithsignposts: No kidding. Medicaid, especially, helps many, many people who do NOT consider themselves poor.
For myself, due to cuts in my son’s Medicaid, I am no longer employed & paying taxes, I am doing the jobs of the nurse & nurse’s aides who used to help provide care for him. So, any taxes my college-degreed self would have paid are gone, the taxes the others pay are lower, etc. Whole home-health care agencies are gone because of Medicaid cuts, which here in NV have come because our last Repub governor decided to outsource managing the program to a private company.
As always, wingnut logic + math skillz = fail and pain.
Violet
@c u n d gulag: Rather than the parents showing up on their own (how did they get there? Are they rich? Own a car?), have the wife drive up with the parents and their luggage. Looks like they’re coming for a visit. Except husband also shows up with his parents and their luggage and maybe some furniture. They meet in the driveway or front door. Maybe a neighbor looks from a nearby house.
Older parents look defeated, plus cast them in such a way that they look like they don’t like each other/get along.
I think everyone can imagine their own terror if such a thing happened. Setting it outdoors adds the not-so-subtle embarrassment factor if their neighbors were watching. If it were designed right, it could start out looking like one of those nice car commercials or something like that and end up a nightmare.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
40 years ago my mom was suddenly single with 5 kids between the ages of 5 and 15. The house badly needed a roof, floor repairs and an electrical upgrade to code. Federal grant money made it happen and 6 people got to stay in their home. We also had food stamps until mom got a better job. Republicans would like to make sure that none of that ever happened again.
Those are some of the reasons I’m a liberal.
Emma
@Davis X. Machina: This. I know Catholics and Episcopalians who vote democrat because they see the Republicans as abusing the poor. That should be part of the message, but not all of it.
Hungry Joe
For some deep background (and good reading), check out Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class” (1990), on how the middle class has been manipulated into identifying with the upper class and perceiving the lower class as a threat.
Patricia Kayden
Kay, I’m glad that you and Soonergrunt have told your stories about being temporarily poor. Repubs scandalize the poor and make it seem that the poor are some hapless, useless group of scavengers who leach off the middle class.
and don’t want to work.
Kind of reminds me of the Bob Marley song AMBUSH IN THE NIGHT with the lines:
“Through political strategy;
They keep us hungry,
And when you gonna get some food,
Your brother got to be your enemy, we-e-ell!”
kay
@NotMax:
I disagree. I think constantly referring to a huge section of people in the abstract, as objects who must be cared for harms them.
When we talk about Medicaid, we should talk about ALL the people who benefit. I think my approach is more inclusive and mote respectful.
“The poor” are not static. I could be “the poor” tommorow. They’re a diverse group of individuals, and setting them apart does them no favors.
Emily
@c u n d gulag: http://youtu.be/ZZQlbtlErLo
They’ve already made the video.
Violet
@kay:
Agreed. I also think it damages the message of the Dems. People aren’t interested in helping a permanent class of unknown “poor people” who always need to be “taken care of”. It sounds defeatist and like it’s an ongoing burden. Also gets people thinking, “What’s wrong with those poor people that they won’t help themselves?” It’s the wrong way to approach the issue.
Far better to address the way middle class people benefit. Most people think they’re middle class anyway, so you include most people with that. Then frame it as, “When things happen and you need a helping hand or a hand up.” Frames it as if it’s insurance–there when you need it, but hopefully you don’t, but that’s what you pay for it. Most people get that concept.
WereBear
But it’s willful superstition to ignore that fact. “If I vote Republican I won’t need those awful government programs! I’ll be a Master of the Universe tooooooooooooooooooooooo!”
It’s like my Fox-News_Brainwashed brother; he makes good money, and parties with people who make even more money, yet NONE of them are in the bracket that will make out like bandits if the Ryan plan gets implemented.
But they don’t want to know that. They want to think otherwise.
HRA
This is a good thread, Kay.
I refer to them as people in need.
Lately I have been getting messages from friends and family who are Democrats about articles plus their comments making those snide remarks against people they know receiving aid. As we all know there are those who somehow beat the system and only they become the wrathful focus. Then there are those who have been denied when needing temporary help and saw a claimant removed the gold before she entered the office for aid. I need to mention those who say “I was poor and I was able to survive by myself”.
Please do remember that when the sh@@ hit the fan not too long ago, many elders kept on working and many either took their kids with families in to live with them or gave them money out of their earnings to survive.
kay
@NotMax:
Part of what conservatives have been able to do is make “the poor” the other. Liberals help them do this when they base appeals for safety net programs soley on “the poor”.
Safety net programs are also a direct subsidy for the middle class. Ignoring this promotes the lie that the poor are seperate from you and me and anyone else who ever got help.
It’s “pure” but it’s not true, and, IMO, harms those it seeks to help.
Robert Waldmann
The day before yesterday I was absolutely sure you were right. But then I read about the results of Greenberg Quinlan focus group research.
http://www.democracycorps.com/National-Surveys/serious-attack-on-ryan-budget-takes-toll-on-mitt-romney/
“• Concern for the most vulnerable has a ballot box impact. After hearing balanced facts about the Ryan budget and messages on both sides, we asked voters to weigh the two Presidential candidates based on their positions on the Ryan budget and its impact on the most vulnerable. Not only does focusing on the most vulnerable not hurt the President, it helps him – Obama’s margin widens to 9 points, with his vote climbing above 50 percent.”
OK so “most vulnerable” focus groups better than “poor” but it seems our countrypeople are not as bad as we thought (the day before yesterday)
Baud
@kay:
I was never that into Occupy Wall Street, but I’ll give them props for popularizing the idea of the 99%. I think it fits with what you’re saying and what the Dems are trying to do.
WereBear
@Villago Delenda Est: Isn’t it funny that he earned a quarter mil a year in speaking fees; and yet he’s a terrible speaker?
Baud
@Robert Waldmann:
Kind of a leading question to ask. I don’t think most people (outside of the 27%) specifically want to hurt the poor. The question is how they make decisions about whether and for whom to vote.
Violet
@Robert Waldmann: That sounds like people can identify themselves or someone they care about as vulnerable but they see “poor” as someone else. Maybe people see their elderly parents or their disabled brother’s kids or something like that as “vulnerable.” Whereas “poor” is always someone else.
tesslibrarian
I’m surprised more middle class baby boomers aren’t aware that Medicare does not provide nursing home benefits, or that finding space in a decent home can be terribly difficult. And if there are special issues (my grandmother’s doctor thought she might revert to speaking her childhood French), it can truly be a nightmare.
Of course, my uncles are still wingnuts despite the experiences with my grandmother, but they also never came through with promised help (just a couple weeks per year, each) for my mother, who ended up providing almost a decade’s worth of care while living alone with my grandmother, working full time, and completing her master’s degree. Terrible people will be terrible people.
Linda Featheringill
@Emily:
That is one cute video. :-)
liberal
@Violet:
Most likely those with the wrong skin color or accents.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
Maybe they want to do away with support for the vulnerable, disadvantaged and temporarily poor because the GOP intends that there be many more of them soon. The feed for the dancing horses has to come out of someone’s pocket.
raven
@tesslibrarian: I was interviewed as one of the boomers project.
rikyrah
another ad just waiting to be made against Ryan.
Opening, with Ryan holding his budget book,
Voiceover:
How bad is the Ryan Budget Plan?
so bad that American Nuns traveled across the country in protest of it.
Pics and videos of the nuns, and some of their comments.
You don’t have to be Catholic to get the picture of how bad you have to be to get Nuns out protesting in the streets against your ass.
Mr Stagger Lee
@tesslibrarian: And karma will visit them, amazing how some think their beliefs are solid as the granite they are standing on, only to discover it was an ice lake that is beginning to melt. I love it when my conservative buddies discover that the Forbes 400 are not their buddies and that Rush/Glenn/Sean consider them piss boys used to hold the bucket while they relieve themselves on them!
smintheus
Ryan’s plan to shut down the VA hospital system and replace it with vouchers is class warfare too. The vast majority of enlisted personnel now are from middle class and poor families. Most current veterans belong to the same demographic…certainly those who most depend upon VA care as their primary health provider.
And yet nobody seems to call that nice Mr. Ryan on this blatant attempt to renege on the nation’s promise to care for veterans no matter their station in life.
rikyrah
@tesslibrarian:
Actually, it’s MEDICAID.
While the physical NUMBERS of people on Medicaid, the plurality are poor children..
In terms of WHO GETS THE HIGHEST PERCENTAGE OF MEDICAID DOLLARS, it goes to two places:
1. People in Nursing Homes
2. Disabled adults
I don’t have any problem with these two groups getting the BIGGEST CHUNK OF MEDICAID MONIES..
but, I’m tired of Shanequa with her 3 children, or Rosa Maria with her 3 ‘anchor babies’, being made the scapegoat face of Medicaid, when the ACTUAL posterchildren for RECIPIENT OF MEDICAID DOLLARS
is a picture of a WHITE Senior Citizen
or a WHITE disabled adult.
just tired of the Black and Brown being used as the scapegoats, when a whole lotta WHITE FOLKS need to be stepping up to the plate saying, YES, MEDICAID WORKS.
rpl
Kay only quotes one paragraph of the editorial she is whining about. Readers of this post should follow the link and read the whole thing, which includes several other paragraphs, including these two:
Those are the kinds of reductions voters of all income levels would actually feel. People might nod their heads at Mr. Romney’s nostrums of smaller government, but they are likely to feel quite different when they realize Mr. Ryan plans to take away their new sewage treatment plant, the asphalt for their streets, and the replacements for retiring police officers and firefighters.
All of this will be accompanied, of course, by even greater tax giveaways to the rich, and extravagant benefits to powerful military contractors. Business leaders will be granted their wish for severely diminished watchdogs over the environment, mine safety and food quality.
Valdivia
Amen.
kay
@Robert Waldmann:
Okay, I love that, but I’ll tell you what the cynical me thinks. I think people DO realize that they benefit from these programs, I KNOW middle class people who have parents who “spend down”
and get Medicaid know, because I’m a
small town lawyer and it’s a huge issue.
I think they know they are vulnerable.
Which is why I want the NYTines to stop
corralling “the poor” in this sort of
rhetorical ghetto that is wholly apart
from “the middle class”.
It’s not just a bad argument. It’s not true!
It sucks as advocacy and it’s also
bullshit! A twofer.
There’s a reason the principled Mr. Ryan
Ommitted the safety net section of his biography yesterday. Because “The Poor” are “The Other”.
patrick II
This just drives me nuts.
This is not the 18th or 19th century. If you lack work, you are not “free” to pack up your things and move west, claim some land and be “free” to work based on your rugged individualism. The land is all owned. We all live in the context of the modern economy. If you are out of work and don’t have capitol to start a business and you can’t find work — you go hungry.
Living on 18 century economic ideals in the 21st century is bad for everyone except for the very rich. And eventually it’s bad for them to.
IowaOldLady
My middle class, widowed mother spent her last year in the Alzheimer’s wing of a nursing home at the cost of $8000/month.
Her social security, fixed pension, and long-term care policy covered about half that, and she paid the other half out of her approximately $40K in savings. Had she lived longer than that year, Medicaid would have picked up the extra $4000/month that her own income couldn’t cover. As a matter of fact, she was one of the few people in that wing who wasn’t on Medicaid.
No one I know has an extra $4000-$8000/month lying around to spend on an aged parent’s care. Thank God for Medicaid.
HEY YOU
Sorry Kay,
This is America. We only listen to sound bites,nothing over a couple of sentences. I couldn’t read your post. ROFLMAO
FlipYrWhig
Another aspect of the rhetorical/political problem regarding “the poor” is that by and large even cold-blooded conservatives pay lip service to helping the poor by governmental means — but they have a whole host of objections that arise when they perceive the government to be helping the not-quite-poor-enough. They’ll say that SOME people need help, but some unspecified large number of people are getting help that they don’t deserve; they haven’t suffered enough yet to deserve it.
Which makes me a bit leery about the “middle class” framing, because it almost concedes that the middle class is deserving and/or has earned benefits that the Republicans will unfairly take away. The fight over what it means to be deserving also needs to keep being fought. Republicans have settled on the idea that the country’s biggest economic problem is that the government helps too many people at the bottom live lives that are _too cushy_. (That’s the subtext to all the talk of cutting debt and deficits from that side.) We need to knock that down too.
kay
@rpl:
Not good enough. Sorry. 45% of food stamp recipients work.
I want the NYTimes to make the connection between the nail ladies and the babysitters the Romney donors rely on and how those Romney donors benefit from food stamps when they need a nail lady or a babysitter.
They’re setting poor people apart, and denying who benefits. We all do.
Cacti
The Bishops can make the pious arguments to the congregation.
Team Obama can continue to make the Romneyhood/Where are the Tax Returns arguments.
FlipYrWhig
@patrick II: And in those bygone days, you had things like “the village idiot,” which meant a disabled person who wandered around town all day while able-bodied, able-minded people pointed and laughed. The world with less government had more than a few flaws.
Mr Stagger Lee
I am 48 years old and I can see the math, but a large part of my age group does not or will not see the math, and to them they will gladly throw the unfortunates into a path of a subway train, while Mittens and and his sidekick the GrannyStarver will push them under next.
Or put it this way, America under Romney/Ryan will become like the TV series OZ on a grand scale. They will be the Vern Schillengers while the these Limbaugh worshipers discover to their horror they are the Tobias Beechers(first season)
Vico
OK. David Gregory really is as awful as you all have been telling me all this time.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kay:
Ryan is a lying sack of shit. He claims to be a Catholic and a Ryandian, those are utterly contradictory philosophies.
Cacti
@patrick II:
Maybe it’s the lack of living memory, but today’s rich seem to think they’ll be immune to the fate of the Bourbons and Romanovs.
I’m sure the $9/hr rent-a-cops patrolling their gated communities will keep the torches and pitchforks at bay.
/snark
MikeJ
@kay:
Nail ladies are just the start of it. How about soldiers?
JoyfulA
@kay: A lot of homeless people work, too. When I worked as a volunteer host at a homeless shelter, I had a dozen alarm clocks to lend to guests. The ringing started at 5. A lot of people just don’t make enough to pay rent.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was shocked.
becca
@Emily: Thank you.
mamayaga
@JoyfulA:
I think it was a few years back when we passed the point where federal minimum wage could not cover the rent in any metro area of the country. It’s literally true that if you work full time at only one minimum wage job and get no other help, then you are almost by definition homeless.
quannlace
Oh, for fuck’s sake. A lot of these programs are to help you get through a temporary bad time.
So Ryan’s statement is like telling somebody with a broken leg. “Hey, I’m taking away your crutches. Your leg will heal a LOT faster if you have to hop around a lot in pain.”
Valdivia
The US plutocracy is truly becoming a carbon copy of the Latin American Olygrachy of my youth. The dirty little secret of how those dictatorships succeeded was by pitting the middle class against the poor. And it many cases it wasn’t even racial (ie against the indigenous population)–it was simply ‘I got mine’ and ‘These people will take your hard earned rights away from you’ therefore we got to suppress them.
Obama has been very smart in making this about the middle class. It is also important to make ‘the most vulnerable’ who suffer if Medicaid disappears not the poor but the people we know: grandma, a kid who needs an operation with only one parent in the home who words but has no benefits, etc. Never use the word poor because as most of you say, it is too abstract.
Cacti
@quannlace:
Ryan’s also got one of those wondefully hypocritical Republican life stories. His father died when he was 16, and young Paulie was able to pay his way through school with Social Security survivor’s benefits.
Paul Ryan climbed up a ladder that he didn’t build, now he wants to pull it up behind him.
kay
@efgoldman:
I think I’m on perfectly firm moral ground. I want to include them in the general public and really abolish this phony idea of “makers and takers”.
I make, I take, things change over the course of a lifetime. .
Paul Ryan was a taker! Somehow or other he didn’t end up in a “hammock”, but instead drinks 300 dollar bottles of wine. There ya go. Proof.
Cacti
@Valdivia:
On the Medicaid argument, always start out with: Medicaid pays for nursing home care. Eliminate Medicaid and your 90 year old grandma will be moving into the spare bedroom.
Hill Dweller
This morning, Axelrod pointed out Willard would pay almost no taxes under Romney’s budget. There is no better example to use when juxtaposing Ryan’s devastating cuts to the safety net and the giveaways to the rich.
WaterGirl
@Emily: That video is awesome.
I have (conservative) family in Colorado. As we get closer to November, I may have to send that video to all of my sister’s children. And to my super-conservative-very-religious sister.
Don
@kay: @kay: I think this is the dangerous part of this whole debate. Thom Hartman has waxed eloquent on this topic, as well. Once we “break out” the poor, especially by, for example, means testing Social Security and Medicare, it becomes easier to make it something that can be reduced in order to make “my tax burden” lower.
Ben Franklin
@Hill Dweller:
I think the number is .82% give or take, a basis point.
Cacti
Has anyone asked Eddie Munster if Lurch wanted more than his last 2 years of tax returns?
Yutsano
@Cacti: The response was “several”. No further details given. And be happy with that you prole.
mamayaga
Another way to approach it with middle-aged wingnuts and glibertarians: Ask them if they themselves have long-term care insurance. When they say no, as most will, ask if they have an extra half-million or two stashed away for paying for a nursing home when they’re old. A lot of these idiots think they’re affluent enough, or at least will have enough to pay for what they need when they’re old, but have no concept of the dollar amount they’d actually need for long term care. And most don’t have enough retirement savings to pay for a new car, much less long term care. You might also like to remind them that the average SS payout is about $12,000/yr.
IowaOldLady
@mamayaga: Also, I’d point out that my mother’s long-term care policy paid $2000/month and was good for 5 years. Lots of old people need more than that, so even long-term care policies don’t take care of everything.
jl
@Valdivia:
I agree. The illusion created in a exploitative society is that some groups of people are inherently different than others, some groups are worthy and some are not.
But when dealing with oligarchical, or crony capitalist, rule the funny thing is that from the ruling group’s point of view, everyone not in their rich groups is exactly the same: just a group to use in order to get more power and money. Exactly how any particular group is used at a given time, or what differences the rulers want to exploit as wedge issues, all that is just a matter of tactics.
What the groups who perceive themselves as worthy do not understand is that no matter how worthy the oligarchs say you are for a given election, or whatever they want to get next, that is no guarantee that your group will not be on the list next time when the rulers need something else. And they will always need something else.
Some people in my family worked for periods of time in South America way back when the generals were in power in various places. They said sooner or later everyone got on the list to bow down. For the middle class and businesses, even big businesses, it was usually graft. Lots and lots of graft. We are developing our own system of graft, just with more refined terms.
Not sure if that is the correct PR way to approach middle class in US, but I think it is true.
D. Mason
The Republicans were handed an election that was a referendum on the economy. Not saying they had a great chance to win that honestly, but there was something for them to work with inside that narrative. They’ve managed to bring health care front and center through an austerity based economic plan. If the Democrats seize the opportunity to re-frame this into an ACA vs Vouchercare deathmathch they will be doing themselves a big favor. Ron Paul has never had such a legitimate chance (miniscule that it is) at being President as he does right now, and never will again.
Violet
@Cacti:
Your 90 year old grandma will be moving into your bedroom while you sleep on the sofa. This might be an especially effective framing for young adults who have moved back into their parents’ homes. Where do they think they’ll sleep when grandma takes their room?
liberal
@patrick II:
Yeah, but this fundamental piece of knowledge has profound implications that most of the center-left/left doesn’t really understand.
liberal
@D. Mason:
It’s definitely a big thing, but it’s not at all clear it’s bigger than “Why won’t you release your tax returns?”
Dennis SGMM
Kay, thank you and soonergrunt for sharing your stories. One of the most pernicious aspects of the Republican narrative is the implication that being rich or being poor is just a choice that people make. They like to suggest that the poor choose to be poor so that they can live the high life on food stamps, UI and welfare. Anyone who’s been poor (And I have) knows that it erodes your soul worse than anything. No one would volunteer to be in that predicament. I’m a pretty peaceful person these days, but I really do want to kick those smirking pols right in the junk when they put a moral onus on poverty.
NotMax
@Kay
As my comment was one which specifically advocated not setting any group apart, I have no idea as to what you refer.
Talk about ‘protecting the poor’ (as opposed to protecting programs and policies to ameliorate poverty or as tools to attempt making the poor less poor) verges on the Kiplingesque.
Violet
@mamayaga: Long term care insurance is an excellent point to make to anyone who doesn’t understand the system. A lot of people have heard of it. Most people have no idea how much it costs, what it covers, if they need it.
NotMax
@efgoldman
Abandoning or storing morals away just makes one amoral during that time. Elections have (and shall) be won without stooping to amorality as a tactic.
Morality should not operate like a light switch.
asiangrrlMN
Thank you, Kay, for this post – and thanks to the commentariat for the thoughtful comments that followed. I have always had difficulties with the framing of ‘we need to help the poor’, but could never quite articulate my dissatisfaction in a coherent manner. Kay gets to the heart of it with this post in that it’s too abstract and too ‘other’ for most people to connect with. Talking about the middle class and how people may fall on hard times and need a hand is much easier for most people to instinctively get.
Bottom line, most voters vote in their best interest. Showing them how the Ryan plan hurts them is the best way to get them to vote against it – and against Romney/Ryan.
P.S. I did not know much about Medicaid before I started reading this thread, so thanks for the info on that as well. These are great talking points for seniors who may be inclined to vote Republican.
kay
@NotMax:
Medicaid many times keeps people in the middle class. That’s a true statement.Food stamps can keep a lower middle class family from hitting poverty, because they shift income from food to housing, for instance.
Continuing to pretend that these programs benefit only the poor backs up the GOP lie that millions of us don’t or haven’t benefitted from them.
Why DON’T we ever talk about the middle class intergenerational subsidy aspects of these programs?
How does not talking about that benefit anyone?
tesslibrarian
@IowaOldLady: Amen.
D. Mason
@liberal: They’re not mutually exclusive. Obama can easily lead the charge on the healthcare angle while Reid continues to pound the tax question.
NotMax
@Kay
It obviously doesn’t, but who suggested not talking about it?
All segments of society can be talked about. Why in the cosmos’ name must it be only one at any time, to the exclusion of all others?
Danny
Brilliant post Kay.
LanceThruster
What happens when the firing squad reloads?
hoodie
You don’t have to appeal to compassion or raise fears of economic insecurity, as resentment can be a far stronger tonic. Go for the 45-55 age group that won’t get exempted under the Ryan plans: “you paid 30 years into Social Security and Medicare, taking care of someone else. Now Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney want to take care of their rich friends, not you.”
WaterGirl
@hoodie: I think you raise a really good point.
There have been studies done that show people respond more to the threat of something being taken away than they do to the likelihood of getting something good.
I’ll bet different people respond to different motivators, so they should probably do both: appeal to compassion on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and appeal to resentment on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Weekends they can just go with the feel of the crowd.
Matt McIrvin
One of the things I found most striking in recent Republican rhetoric was the attack on extensions to unemployment insurance, and health insurance for the unemployed.
You know, I’ve been on unemployment in the past. I may well be on it again sometime in the future. I think many middle-class and even quite comfortable Americans have probably had the experience of being on unemployment at some time in their lives, maybe even for an extended period, and they know full well that it’s not just some kind of sinecure for the undeserving lazy. (For that matter, it’s not even progressive, really; you get more if your income was higher.)
But Republicans couldn’t help themselves from opining that the reason unemployment had gotten so high was that unemployment payouts were just too darn generous. It doesn’t strike me as a winning position. The one segment of the electorate it might well appeal to, though, are retirees who aren’t in the workforce anyway, and for whom unemployment insurance is no longer a concern.