Image by Tim Mossholder.
“Why do they always refer to the middle-class and never the lower-class—or is it just inferred?” So emailed an angry friend about party luminaries on the first day of the Democratic national convention for formally nominating president and vice-president candidates in the November 5 federal election.
By the end of the second evening, her complaint had plenty of evidence.
Twice from lame-duck president Joe Biden :
“… you know what it’s like when that factory closed, where your mother, your father, your grandmother, grandfather worked, and now you’re back, providing once again, proving that Wall Street didn’t build America, the middle class built America and unions, unions built the middle class. ” And: “I also ran [in 2020] to rebuild the backbone of America—the middle class. I made a commitment to you that I’d be a president for all America, whether you voted for me or not.”
Former president Barack Obama emphasized the middle-class twice.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, given only 90 seconds to speak, did it once:
“In Kamela Harris, we have a chance to elect a president who is for the middle-class because she is from the middle-class.” Tim Walz, the vice-president nominee, mentioned it three times. And Harris in her acceptance speech as the presidential candidate, referenced it six times and vowed that the middle-class wood have her undivided attention domestically.
We in the lower class always seem to be considered chopped liver, our votes taken for granted not only at the national Democratic conventions, but out on campaigns. We’re sick of it.
Historically, Investopedia contributor Adam Hayes noted that:
“The birth of the American middle class, in some respects, has been linked to federal funding and support through programs such as the GI. Bill, which paid for education and business ventures created by veterans. The combination of incentives and salary increases helped elevate working-class citizens into the middle class.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders was way ahead of other candidates in his 2016/2020 runs for the presidency, regularly declaring the rise of the union movement further bolstered the size of the middle-class. Four years ago it contained almost half of U.S. adults.
But not these days.
Indeed, a recent Bernie Senate floor speech warned that the middle-class “has been shrinking for decades.” Hundreds of thousands have been expelled by significant tech layoffs (2022-23: 428, 449; 2024: 124,000). Count also the thousands from the auto industry, and those from business bankruptcies or mergers.
Those significant layoffs indicate the victims are boosting the ranks of our class—and that the Democratic campaign strategists better start playing to our growing bloc of “forgotten men and women.”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) certainly focused on us during the Great Depression nearly a century ago with total focus on our vital needs lest we vote for the Socialists and/or return a Republican to the presidency. His New Deal creating millions of temporary jobs in the WPA (Works Projects Administration) and CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) fixed infrastructure and environment. Other agencies aided public education, financed housing, instituted Social Security, regulated banks and the stock market, and more. He also was not spending billions on warfare abroad and foreign aid because charity had to begin at home.
Result: millions of lower-class voters made him a four-term president.
Yet what middle-classer with any pride wants to admit they’re now in the lower-class? To feel they’ve descended to the “lower depths” of society and rubbing shoulders with what Karl Marx called the “proletariat.” How many in the upper or middle-classes have committed suicide when forced by financial reverses to be regarded as inferiors?
One cynical friend said the purpose of the lower-class was to provide incentive to our betters for remaining in the upper classes. Some like theatre producer Mike Todd kept pride and prejudice intact by declaring: “During the many business risks I’ve taken, I’ve been broke many times. But I’ve never been poor.”
God forbid such a fate!
Now, millions of us lower-class folk in 2011 preferred Occupy’s label of the “99%” because it lumped the middle-class with us, whether they liked it or not. It was true democracy. And now it’s back, this time in the public domain.
At least savvy campaign strategists have taken the onus off sinking to our level by identifying us all as the “working-class,” a far more palatable term to them than “lower-class.” Even so, it was good to hear Nina Turner , former Ohio state senator and prominent political speaker, to be among those urging Harris and Walz to “shake off neoliberalism, shake off incrementalism, and go full throttle for the working class.”
For all the years Democratic leaders have clung to the belief that emphasis always has to be on middle-class voters, their steady hemorrhage into our class should tell them that in the time left before November 5, spend it on promising what FDR did. And carrying it out.
Though part of the American aristocracy, he demonstrated to party leaders for a decade that focusing on our class provided vital voters in presidential elections. Use of the “Working-class” term today may even attract thousands of dissatisfied Republican middle- and lower-class voters.
We won’t mind. We’re friendly.
So Democratic strategists: Stop considering us lower-classes as chopped liver. You desperately need our votes in this election. Give us some focus.
