http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1502&status=article&id=289699661705631

Well that’s the premise. “What’s the matter with Kansas?” eh?

I don’t think this is true. There are many single issue voters out there, who are simply passionate about their issue above all else.

But, if true, cannot the same be said of black voters? Gay voters?
Feminists?

Why not, “What’s the Matter with New Jersey?”

Hear me out:

There is a burgeoning ‘investor class’ in this country. As first generation college grads enter the workforce, they are able to invest in a wide array of finacial products never before known to them or their parents. “The stock market is for rich people.” Well, not any more.

My husband and I were able to buy our first home, 18 years ago, after prudently investing in the stock market, cashing out and using the money for a down payment.

Our investment in the economy through the stock market has helped to propel us to a level of financial security and prosperity not known to either of our parents.
Our financial situation is such that we have been able to give money to our relatives to help them through tough times, donate to charities, employ tutors, coaches, handy men, etc.

We have been truly blessed.

We have educated ourselves about investing and have set our parents up to gain more from their hard-earned money as well. We have stressed to our family members, all middle-class, the value of investing.

Now, let’s take the position of Barak Obama.

He was recently interviewed by Maria Bartiaromo about his position on the capital gains tax, which he wants to increase from 15% to 25%.

He cites mega-billionaire Warren Buffett, to say that we ‘can handle this’ type of increase. Sure, Warren Buffett can handle it.

But now, my brother, who is saving for a house, will see his down payment(now in the market)shrink.
He wants to put the maximum amount of money down, he’s shooting for 20% down. 30 year fixed rate. This is the safest way for him to go.

Economically speaking, for whom should he vote? BTW, he is gay.

We have also used the market to grow a college-fund for our 3 kids. With tuition rising, finanacial aid unavailable (we do not qualify) we our looking to send them to college with our returns from the stock market.

We have just seen one year of tuition go to the government.

So, for all those eager to improve upon the good fortunes of their parents and grand parents, many of whom came to this country with little or nothing, for whom should they vote?

Obama just completed a bus tour through small town Pennsylvania. It was the members of these communities themselves who told Obama how bitter they were and what they turn to in these devastating times.

Obama could have chosen his words more carefully (“cling to” was the big oops), but he hasn’t said anything that isn’t true.

In fact, I read a diary on Daily Kos by a person who lives in Western PA who reported that people say without flinching: “It’s half-breed niggers like him who make it bad for the rest of us.”

No, that particular sentiment will not allow those who hold it to cast a vote for Senator Obama for anything except maybe… well, I won’t go there.

Network is one of the most brilliant screenplays ever written. Listen to Peter Finch deliver this famous speech and listen carefully to the details. It’s from 1976, but it may as well be 2008:

I’m As Mad As Hell And I’m Not Going To Take It Anymore!!

The question is, are ther enough of them to send him to the White House.

Do most rural voters, and white males agree with his comments, actions and policy positions?

Will McCain be able to counter Obama’s defense of Wright, Obama’s belief in the ‘root causes’ of conservative leaning voters, his expansive view of the role of government, and his contrasting foreign policy and plan to end the war. Yes he will.

So, help Obama make the case. Why should rural voters and white males vote for Obama?

Yes, I’m angry and I’m bitter and that doesn’t upset me even in the very snarky tone that you’re saying it in. I’m able to support Obama because much like the real world things are not always black and white and no his message doesn’t annoy me. What annoys me is that in a serious political conversation instead of dropping your insanely condescending attitude, you’ve resorted to snark. People and ideologies are complex and really what I hope that we’re able to learn to do is to learn to stop being so polarized and understand that there are a myriad of issues and responses that are all perfectly human and acceptable.

You’re definitely advocating for “white” rural voters. Sorry, I shouldn’t have used farmers there. You’re making an observation and speaking up on their behalf. I should think that if this didn’t play well in Penn, then Hillary’s message wouldn’t play well there either because her message is incredibly paternalistic. It’s in the vein of GWB wackiness. The trope of the ennobled poor is terrible. I don’t want to hear that I’m plucky and I have moxie and I’ll struggle on, that’s a romanticization of poverty and lack of opportunity that I just cannot accept.

Keep looking on the bright side, but bright sides aren’t dangerous when you’re not looking at the stark reality of the dark side. One of the things that’s so interesting to me is that you get all of these people talking about handouts, and saviors and if you’ve ever been to a truly poor rural or urban area you see all these signs of people trying to participate in capitalism, no matter how little. They want to “American Dream”. Drug Dealers aren’t out selling drugs, because it’s awesome and an easy way of life! Sex Workers aren’t prostituting because it’s liberating.

It’s not that I’m saying I came from nothing, and look at me now. I’m saying I came from something that wasn’t a lot, and I will never forget where I cam from and that some of my family is left back there. That’s what I’m saying and I’m not going to listen to you or anyone else try to sell messages that are better left on carpets, when people are looking for real ways to change.

By the way, have you ever thought that maybe the reason you have a hard time interacting with black people is that you’re condescending? And the reason that you think Africans and West Indians are so nice to you is because you’ve already made a quality/value judgment on what type of people they’re likely to be? Because your elitism and classism shows through in pretty much every comment you type. Maybe you should consider visiting the other JackAndJill.. you know the one where they sit around and talk about all the terrible things “bad” black people do… never realizing that to the very people they’re trying to emulate they are the bad black people.

“Also, just because your screen name is kim doesn’t mean you’re female. Just because you say you’re black doesn’t mean you are.
Kim’s probably another male, Republican troll.”

Ha Ha, I was going to say the same thing!!

Nquest and B-Serious,

As usual, I agree with both of you!!!

I forgot to ask you something. How can a realist (or pessimist) such as yourself vote for Obama?

His main theme is hope.

Isn’t that antithetical to the way you see the world. His campaign is full of home-spun sayings that must annoy you.
“We’re the change we are looking for.”
“Yes we can”
“Fired up and ready to go”

Doesn’t that annoy you?

Snarky much?

and

When did I advocate for white farmers?? I said that Obama’s comments were condescending.

Anyway,

You write as if I live in a dreamland. Don’t kid yourself. I’m quite grounded in reality. We both agree that life can hard. You made the decision to see the worst in most things and believe that the worst will happen. You also seem very angry and I dare say, bitter. I’m an optimist to the core of my being. I look for the best of situations and in people. I have set-backs and let-downs, but I still maintain hope.

You speak your truth, I speak mine. (May I suggest you re-read what I actually wrote instead of what you wanted to read.)

I’ll be the first to admit that I have a little money now and a few letters behind my name, but I don’t see it as I came from nothing and look at me now. I came from something. The education and money are icing on the cake. If I lost it all, I wouldn’t be devastated. There is not one of my possessions that isn’t expendable.

You are right one account. I only recently come to fully realize that poor blacks in the hood and projects have a totally different existence than poor people like me and my family in places like rural AL and Mississippi.

I don’t know how I would have turned out if I had been raised in such hostile conditions. It’s difficult for me to built relationships with some black people I’ve met up North. No problem with Africans or West Indians. Sometimes I can’t relate to certain black people. I’m not sure I want to. I don’t understand the whole idea of “I don’t have anything so you can’t have anything” some people seem to have. It’s foreign to me. I grew up poor but always believed that “I don’t have much, you don’t have much, let’s put what we have together so we can have something”.

That doesn’t go over well in Philadelphia.

Look at how easily people were manipulated into voting against gay-marriage instead of asking the politicians to discuss why they allowed companies to not only ship their jobs oversees, but get a tax break [corporate welfare] AND not help re-train the workforce left behind for new careers or offer an educational incentive. They pushed for a war that was supposed to have been ‘won’ but didn’t want to show all the civilian casualties, didn’t want to pay for proper equipment for those fighting, don’t talk about all the women getting raped by fellow officers while serving, not supporting the GI Bill and allowing mid-to-lower income individuals to enlist and keeping them there, not talking about the REAL agenda with controlling the oil or how the US/UK assassinated the democratically elected leaders and redesigned the borders to cause strife AND allow the oil companies to accumulate their biggest windfall ever while we’re now paying $4.39/gallon [in my area]. And how they won’t let their children go over to fight but will gladly encourage yours to do so.

And while yes, some individuals can do their own internal work and try to find inner peace despite all the *hit they have to go through, it gets tiring after a while, esp. if it bleeds into the next generation, and it’s certainly understandable that someone could be frustrated about it and if it festers long enough become bitter. I live in a very expensive city and would love to continue my education in the hope that it could lend to a better job and standard of living. The $4000 Pell grant for undergrads doesn’t even cover one semester in today’s marketplace and it has not been increased in over 10 years I believe. There’s a cap on the guaranteed student loans which requires you to take out a private loan at a much higher interest rate and is subject to credit-worthiness. If I had enough money to begin with I wouldn’t have to borrow money!

Obama may have been focusing on certain PA voters but this issue affects many other people who don’t live in small towns. Some may immediately start carping about big gov’t and more taxes but I see the gov’t bail-out of Bear Sterns just like the Savings&Loan scandal of the 80′s as two sides of one coin. The few want the gov’t to let them do whatever they want and get a tax break and no regulation, oversight and freedom from prosecution. So they can be free to launder money, tie up retirement funds lower-to-mid income masses in their high-stakes investments, discriminate against hiring anyone who isn’t a particular white male, let the top executives earn hundreds of millions and let it all go to hell in a handbasket AND then use my money – what little I have to bail THEM out. The Bear Sterns CEO made $400 million and still gets to keep it, sold his stock before it fell and is not going to prison. Wasn’t Martha Stewart sent to prison over a $50,000 deal but this guy gets nothing!

And the Bush administration has companies in an official prosecution holding-pattern against very real crimes they have committed and this is intentionally under-reported by the traditional media. I’m bitter! And Obama is the only candidate that had the audacity to touch on this and people don’t like the message or the way he said it want to mad at him. HE is not the cause of the problem, so don’t shoot the messenger. Actually Clinton and McCain are in bed with these people so they’re not gonna do *hit about it! We have the real enemies to be mad at and we should hold them accountable.

Whether Obama ultimately wins or not this has been a very painful and enlightening wake-up call. I for one had no real idea of all the crap that goes on and how we the [little] people have been sold for a few pieces of silver. That’s the source of a lot of this nastiness because evil will not go down without a fight. We are confused because we have been asleep at the wheel. The old manipulations won’t work because they’ve already played that hand. Again, I’m not advocating Obama as a savior for he is still a politician but he encourages transparency and individual participation. We are the majority and we can take our country back. We don’t have to agree on every single issue but we can agree to work as a collective. I am grateful for that knowledge and it’s existing to join with others to make that happen.

It is striking that Obama makes clear that he believes that clinging to religion is no different than clinging to guns, (— we know his class of elitist Democrats has no respect for either the Second Amendment or deer-hunting —) racism, xenophobia, and anti-trade sentiment — as if they are all equivalent signs of lack of education and gullibility.

I now feel fully vindicated in my suspicion that Obama’s attendance at Wright’s church was entirely political and expedient. No one who has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ — or even moderate respect for other people’s religious views — thinks in these terms about why working class people might believe in God. Or believes that a more enlightened government will supplant that.

All you’re doing is giving me hackneyed “altitude determines aptitude” stuff that is completely and entirely the stuff of rhetoric. And obviously black people wouldn’t have considered mass suicide with my attitude because I’m still here and I’m still living. The part that you forgot to understand and didn’t take away from that is that through all of that hardness, I have never lost empathy for the people I left back there and I never will.

That’s real live empathy. I never said that anyone could save us, but yes people must advocate for each other and if you don’t think that, then why are you here advocating for rural white farmers?

That’s the hilarity of this, that you’re living homespun sayings, and I’m living reality. I’ve succeeded, what part of that don’t you get? I’ve come from nothing and I am now a member of the middle class and will likely be a member of the very upper middle class, but I didn’t do it alone, and I didn’t do it without people advocating for me, and I didn’t do it by myself. That’s me keeping it real and telling you that beyond all the cutesy little sayings you have there’s a real world that doesn’t work out…

So yes, your experience is quite different than mine and I will say it again. You’re exhibiting the exact same attitudes that you’re accusing Obama of, only because it’s to people in inner city areas and other black people it’s “the truth”. Why isn’t his truth just as truthful as yours if that’s the case? When he wasn’t even specifically talking about white people. I’ll tell you why, because with terribly simplistic attitudes like yours, who don’t understand work harder has broken the backs and hearts of struggling people there is always this idea that people want a savior. They don’t want a savior, or a handout, they want a chance and they want to be acknowledged and they want you to know that it’s real out here. There’s third world poverty in the United States, it existed in New Orleans before hurricane Katrina. It exists some NDN reservations, it exists in rural towns, and these people are working harder. They are bootstrapping. It’s easy to say that life isn’t fair when you don’t have to live through the unfairness and it’s even easier to sit back and make pronouncements on what those people “could” do if they only wanted to, when you have no idea what has to be done.

You are exactly the thing you proclaim to be fighting against. Here’s another thing that your mom should have told you, “When you don’t like people, maybe it’s because you’re looking at a part of yourself you hate.”

And even then I don’t agree with you on Obama’s comment, but I certainly think you’re projecting something onto him which exists in yourself.

The dialogue is decidedly one sided.

Truthseeker writes:
“There is a specific connection between who you vote for and your economic circumstances. Poverty is not fate. You don’t collect guns or to church to soothe your poverty…YOU VOTE DIFFERENT.”

I disagree with the premise that the government can effect your economic circumstances.

Only you can change your life.
Looking for the government to come to your rescue (financially, educationally, medically) is to surrender your right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

When you look to the government to make your life richer, easier, healthier, you give up your right of self determination.

Secondly, many people worship God, not as an ‘opiate’ as you and Obama surmise, but out of abject humility and reverence for the blessings and opportunities the Almighty has bestowed upon us.

Third, collecting guns is a hobby. It may be one with which you cannot identify, but is it cause for ridicule?

What is so wrong with wanting immigrants to enter the country legally? What is wrong with wanting to keep jobs here in the US?

We can debate ways to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” but to summarily dismiss those with whom you do not agree is arrogant and condescending.

If Obama wants Americans to be angry and bitter. He wants Americans to turn their anger and frustration into votes for him. He has much to gain by having us believe our economic demise is just an election away.

Democrats on the Economy in 1996:

“Our economy is the healthiest it has been in three decades.” (President Bill Clinton, State of the Union Address, January 23, 1996)

Democrats on the Economy in 2008:

“The bottom line is that this administration is the owner of the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover.” (Senator Charles Schumer, Press Release, March 7, 2008)

Key Labor Market Statistics in 1996 and 2008

1. U.S. Unemployment Rate:
March 1996 5.5%
March 2008 5.1%
2. Number of Long-Term Unemployed March 1996 1.33 million March 2008 1.28 million
3. Average Weeks Unemployed
March 1996 17.3 weeks
March 2008 16.2 weeks
4. Median Weeks Unemployed
March 1996 8.3 weeks
March 2008 8.1 weeks
5. Not in Labor Force because discouraged over job prospects
March 1996 451,000
March 2008 401,000
6. Democrats calling for Extended Unemployment Benefits?
March 1996 No
March 2008 Yes
7. President’s Party Affiliation
March 1996 Democrat
March 2008 Republican

Lastly, voting does not change your fate! Only you can change you fate.
God placed us on this planet with a free will to choose how we live our lives.

And if one truly votes differently, to change their economic circumstances, why are most black Americans ‘clinging’ to the Democrat party?

I’m certainly not going to sit around and wait for Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton or John McCain to decide my fate.

Frankly, I am skeptical of Obama, not for the truths you all see to hold as ‘self-evident’ but because under GWB the government has become an expensive, wasteful, inefficient behemoth.

Obama wants to make it even bigger, so that you all will continue to ‘cling’ to the Democrat Party.

That was the total and complete truth – please say it again!

Maybe that’s why our experiences are so different.

Why did you make the assumption I don’t give back? I like others from my circumstances are obligated to give back to break the chain of “generational abject poverty” (that’s not an elitist term is it?)

“Pretending to be happy?” What the hell? Has it ever occurred to you that what makes you happy might not interest anyone else.

Was I not supposed to have a happy childhood because I was poor? Poor people can’t be happy. They can’t have joyous lives. I hope that’s not what you’re suggesting.

America isn’t a meritocracy. No shit. I realize that there are some places that would never consider hiring me. There are some places that would never promote me. The goal post will continue to move. As my mom would tell me, “Big damn deal!!!” or “So fuckin’ what!!” Life isn’t fair. You learn to play that game or find a better one. You don’t sit around and whine. You either face the future with hope or lay down and die.

I don’t care how much money you make, life will always throw you curveballs. You can’t prepare for everything and you can’t be insured for everything. You will get knocked down. Life can beat the hell out of you. It’s up to you to get back up and start swinging.

You think that you are the only one who has made it and then suffered a set-back. I was 10 months out of grad school, no cash money or savings, living in boston, no family, 2 friends, the biotech company for which I worked went under.

You think I rolled up in a ball and lamented my situation. Did I cry about the fact I would be homeless when my severance ran out because the unemployment wouldn’t cover the rent?

Hell the Nah.

I saw it as blessing. I hated that job, I was only staying but the company had covered my moving expenses and if I left before 2 years I would have to pay it all back.

I had to make my own luck. I didn’t have anyone to bail me out. I worked my ass off and found a better job. If I hadn’t found that job,I was prepared to work two or three jobs until I found something comparable. I would have rented my futon out to students if I had to. I didn’t care. I didn’t have time to be bitter.

I’ll end with this, there is no leader black, white or other who can rescue anyone. If you are locked in the mindset that you need someone to lead from point A to point B, you will end up standing still. Ain’t nobody gonna carry you. If you lack the imagination to see beyond your situation, Obama can’t do anything for you.

And anon, your attitude determines your altitude. Has it ever occurred to you that your negativity, snarkiness and general pessimism regarding life and people contribute to your situation. I swear if black folk had your attitude, we would have committed mass suicide years ago.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

U can read this rest yourselves..