Just Wonderings

At a recent dinner with good friends the inescapable topic of the election came up.

Now you should know that i literally train myself to stay out of these discussions lately as i am so disgusted by what has been coming from the McCain and Palin camps that i get angry.  Prior to meeting friends i tell myself to stay calm if the election comes up and to avoid emotion should i be drawn into a conversation.

Once again, despite my best efforts to avoid the conversation i felt compelled to enter it when it was mentioned that Obama is “scary” and that increasing taxes for people making more then 250k are unfair. Now i really dont like paying taxes myself but i recognize the need and role they play in a democracy and country of our size.

The thing about this that dragged me in was the statement from a friend that they did not want to pay for “some fat lazy black person on welfare who did not want to work”.  Ok fair point.  Who wants to pay for anyone lazy.  But as you are probably already thinking in reading this, why characterize this lazy person as “black”?  So is my friend a racist?  I dont think so.  I just think he is the by product of years of carefully crafted Republican litany that softly and tactfully equates people of darker skin with laziness.

The challenge here for Democrats in the bigger picture, and one that has been a need for a long time is to change the conversation away from the extreme example of a welfare recipient and avoid slapping back with the extreme example of the super rich tax evader and instead focus on the plight and reality of the middle class.

This is where most of voting America, tax paying America and productive America lives and it is they who drive the country for better or worse.  For too long the Democratic party has leaned too far to defend the extreme poverty cases from republicans rather then focus more on the average American that is begging to associate with someone and be led.

In a democracy their will always be abusers of the system on the extremes of the right and left and rich and poor but that is not where the focus of the media and therefore America should be.  This makes for good television and passionate speeches and voter disgust but not where the root of the problems or the solutions for are country are located.  

The focus of the media should be directly on the Middle Class and the challenges and realities they face, forcing the conversation and thereby new and thoughtful policies onto the average middle class American and in so doing, improving the country.