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McCain at Debate: Middle Class? What Middle Class? |
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Seems Sen. John McCain never heard of America’s middle class. At least that’s the impression a viewer could get from watching last night’s presidential debate.
Despite the economic house of cards falling all around us, with working families reeling from hits to their pension funds, credit lines and home mortgages, McCain didn’t use the words “middle class” even once during the first presidential debate two weeks ago or the second presidential debate last night. Not. Once.
In contrast, Sen. Barack Obama offered details of his plans to revitalize America’s working and middle class and turn around America. Obama stated firmly how aid to struggling homeowners, expanding access to health care and investing in a new energy economy would take immediate priority in an Obama presidency.
And while McCain said health care is a “responsibility,” Obama asserted that health care should be a right, not a privilege. In his closing remarks, Obama drew together these issues and summed up the most important question in this election.
The question in this election is: Are we going to pass on that same American Dream to the next generation? Over the last eight years, we’ve seen that dream diminish.
Wages and incomes have gone down. People have lost their health care or are going bankrupt because they get sick. We’ve got young people who have got the grades and the will and the drive to go to college, but they just don’t have the money.
And we can’t expect that if we do the same things that we’ve been doing over the last eight years, that somehow we are going to have a different outcome. We need fundamental change. That’s what’s at stake in this election.
McCain offered a scattershot of small-scale proposals, while ignoring the bigger economic questions. He talked about the tax credit he proposes for his health care plan, but Obama pointed out that McCain’s plan also would create a new tax on workers’ employer-based health benefits.
McCain said his health care plan would roll back regulations, but Obama easily rebutted McCain’s assertion, saying deregulation would mean that insurers would have more power to deny coverage, without payment for care, and leave out those with pre-existing conditions. Obama also pointed out that McCain opposed expanding health care coverage for children by voting against the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
When it came to budgetary priorities, McCain had no real answer to one of Obama’s sharpest points: That with so many challenges to address, the last thing we need to do is give $300 billion in tax cuts to big corporations and the very wealthy. As Obama pointed out, the Bush administration tried that experiment over the past eight years, and it clearly hasn’t worked.
Obama reinforced how the best way to re-invigorate the economy is by helping families and small businesses deal with the skyrocketing costs of energy and health care. Investments in these areas will help create good jobs and allow the economy to expand. Further, under Obama’s plan, 95 percent of working families would get a tax cut and most would get a bigger tax cut from Obama’s plans than McCain’s.
Obama laid out the specifics about his health care plan and how it differs from McCain’s.
One of the things that I have said from the start of this campaign is that we have a moral commitment as well as an economic imperative to do something about the health care crisis that so many families are facing.
If you’ve got health care already, and probably the majority of you do, then you can keep your plan if you are satisfied with it. You can keep your choice of doctor….If you don’t have health insurance, you’re going to be able to buy the same kind of insurance that Sen. McCain and I enjoy as federal employees. Because there’s a huge pool, we can drop the costs. And nobody will be excluded for pre-existing conditions, which is a huge problem.
Obama said the need for a new energy economy represented not only a challenge, but an opportunity.
If we create a new energy economy, we can create 5 million new jobs, easily, here in the United States.
It can be an engine that drives us into the future the same way the computer was the engine for economic growth over the last couple of decades.
Viewers in a variety of polls agreed that Obama outshone McCain as the best candidate for president. A CBS poll showed Obama winning the debate over McCain 40–26, while respondents to a CNN poll said Obama won the debate by a 54–30 margin. Polls from SurveyUSA and MediaCurves showed Obama winning 56–26 and 52–34, respectively. Clearly, Obama’s attention to the economic issues at the heart of the election is resonating with voters.
Obama again demonstrated last night that he understands the real issues facing us and that he will fight for strong, working family-friendly solutions to those problems.
With 27 days left in this campaign season, the choice is clearer than ever.
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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
10 Comments
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McSame clearly stands for the interests of corporations and the wealthy. No doubt about it. As to Palin despite her folksy way of talking is just as bought off as is McSame.
What bothers me about this election are our sisters and brothers in the coal mining country, the farm lands of the midwest and our Latino brothers and sisters in California, Arizona and Texas who just cannot come to grips with voting for Obama because he is African American!
Come on people, hasn’t the last eight years of corporate dominated policies been enough? Have not the loss of over 4,000 Americans in an unjustified war been enough?
As a Latino worker I proudly support the Obama/Biden ticket! There is just NO other way!!
I just saw the video that AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka made about confronting racism and I have to thank him. He is a BRAVE and HONORABLE man and deserves our respect and thanks for taking the stand that will move this country forward to that better land we know America has been and can be again!
There’s just no room for hate and lately, John McCain has been showing his true hatred for the poor and middle class in all his lies, slander and bigotry.
Richard, thank you! It cannot be said enough. If you’ve not seen this video, watch it on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QIGJTHdH50
My respect, sir. I’m a grandma now, but when I was 25, I worked as a union laborer in Lake Charles, LA… as a white woman, I got a lot of laughs, I have to tell you, but one day, I told the BA to send me out on a job no one else wanted and if they sent me back, I’d give up my card.
I still remember that B.A.’s name: LaVerne Freeman. I went out on a job holding a small jackhammer overhead in a cat cracker, with dust and who knows what kind of pollutants churned up but I did it and didn’t get sent back. I was determined not to.
I think Barack Obama is a determined man, too. He’s determined that real reform and real change starts from the ground up, not the top down. He’s determined to end this “tinkle down” economics that Republicans (corporate libertarians) use to coerce more tax cuts for the rich.
No MORE. I look at Senator Obama and Senator Biden and I see men who CARE. I don’t see black or white. I see GREEN. Green jobs, green dollars, green environment… green for MY FAMILY and yours.
Obama/Biden!
McCain/Palin can go suck an egg. They are both liars and fakes and should just put on their white hoods and own up to their bigotry.
If McCain deregulates the health insurance industry, he is in effect regulating us the insurance buyers. The only thing is, it will be the insurance co’s. regulating us , and we can’t vote them out of office. He must really think the American people are idiots.
I cannot think of one instance where they have deregulated that helped me. They deregulated electricity cable tv. the insurance and banking industries, and don’t enforce whatever few regulations that are left.Every one of the afore mentioned deregulations has cost me lots of money, and will continue to do so.
I do notice that any type of regulation that governs workers is enforced, except when it is protecting working peoples rights.
I have also noticed that they will bail out Wall St., an the financial industry, but if it was one of us going broke, they wouldn’t bail us out. In fact, they have made it harder for people like us to declare bankruptcy.
Thank you
Middle Calss??? Don’t we mean all of our WORKING CLASS? Lower, middle and upper are all INCOME levels, not social and political power levels., both of which are in the hands of the wealthiest capital investors correctly named the capitalist class.
Why not cakll it like it is? Fear the “CLASS warfare” label…, and the “radical” putdown?
Wow, This site presents an outlet for All Americans—who can relate to the economic issues of the Poor, Working and decreasing Middle Classes of our Country.
It is great to see how these types of economic issues— can create solidarity amongst Americans, which goes far beyond the boundaries of skin color and racial/ethinic issues.
Remember, in 2008, As we cast our Votes—What is clearly written and spelled out in “black and white”—-goes far beyond skin color ans race.
Jamie C.
Health care is a responsibility not a right, just like driving a car is not a right but a privilege. Is it also a right to have life insurance or auto insurance? No, it is a responsibility.
45% of the people getting a tax cut under the Obama plan don’t even pay taxes which means they will get a welfare check from the government, looks like a redistribution of wealth to me not a tax cut.
James Carville is already suggesting that if Obama looses there will be race riots. What kind of civil disobedience will there be if he wins? There still is no definitive proof that Obama was born in the United States.
Did we watch the same debate? Sen McCain addressed middle class Americans 3 times and fact checker even reported it on Wednesdays NBC news. Just goes to show that when reading your correspondence, responsible, unbiased journalism is dead in America. You are right about one thing, it’s not about race, it’s about talking the talk and walking the walk, and that’s all Sen McCain has ever done for this country. Sen Obama is all talk and has nothing to back it up.
A search of the debate transcript shows McCain did not use the term “middle class.” Not. Once.
If you did in fact watch the debates, you would have seen that there was no substance in what McCain said. Obama put forth real ideas for real positive change. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but the only thing McCain has done of late is pander to corporate interests. I really, REALLY, do not trust him. Look who he picked as a running mate. Clearly, he is not thinking things through. When I see Palin talk, I think of one thing: now there is a person that wants power above anything else. She also appears to be very cold and calculating. It doesn’t seem to matter that she has no qualifications to be Vice-President (ei. she doesn’t seem very smart or informed). In fact, hearing what many of her constituents from Alaska have said, she has extreme views and she leads with no compromise or understanding. She, too, has said absolutely nothing of substance. A McCain-Palin win would be a disaster for this country. I’m with Obama-Biden all the way.
Both of these candidates are part of the problem.Neither can do what they are saying given the economic conditions in this country.Neither are addressing the ecomomy with anything that even resembles a plan.Did either of them answer who they would make Treasurary Secretary?They provided me with no reason to vote for either of them,I do not trust Obama and certainly don’t trust McCain.I just hope whoever wins gets enough flack from us in the public to force them to do what’s right for the country,but they are somehow going to have to get this bunch of MORONS in the Congress off their dead asses and work together on everyones problems.