Poverty: A Dirty and Missing Word at the Political Conventions

There seems to be a bipartisan consensus in Washington that the poor just don’t matter, President Obama is part of that…. We cannot abide another campaign for the White House where the issue of poverty isn’t raised higher on the American agenda

- PBS Talk Show Host Tavis Smiley, April 19-22, 2012 [[1]]

Poverty in this country arguably doesn't get enough attention and the middle class arguably gets too much attention from those of us in the media.

- New York Times economics reporter David Leonhardt, September 12, 2012 [[2]]

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

- Dr, Martin Luther King, Jr, 1963.[[3]]

“The true measure of a civilization,” Mahatma Gandhi once said, “is how it treats its weakest members.” Reviewing the recently concluded Republican and Democratic conventions, one has to wonder how the United States is supposed to act on Gandhi’s admonition when its political class can’t even recognize the existence of the nation’s millions of poor people. The conventions richly validated Tavis Smiley’s observation last April that poverty and the poor “just don’t matter” to the nation’s political class.

The Words They Used

A New York Times analysis last week [[4]] examined the key words used by speakers at the two quadrennial gatherings. It broke those word choices down as follows:

Democratic National Convention: Obama – 192 mentions per 25,000 words

Romney – 91; Jobs – 89; Women – 81; Families – 67; Economy- 60; Middle Class – 55

Health- 42; Fight – 42; Tax – 39; Business – 39; Education – 34; Leadership – 34;

Forward – 34; Ryan – 29; Medicare – 28; Vote – 28 Invest – 27; God -25; Success-24;

Choice – 23; American Dream – 22 Energy -19; Workers – 19; Hope – 14; War – 13;

Fair – 13; Auto industry – 12; Millionaires -6; Wall Street-4; Medicaid – 3; Unemployment – 2

Republican National Convention: Romney – 109 mentions per 25,000 words

Business – 86; Jobs – 80; Government – 66; Obama- 66; Families – 54; Success-44;

Leadership – 53; Economy – 41; God – 35; Tax – 32; Ryan – 31; Small business – 27;

Women – 26; Freedom – 23; Debt-21; American Dream – 20; Hope – 19; Unemployment – 17; Regulation – 14; Faith – 11; Obamacare – 11; War – 9;Church – 9; Middle Class - 7

Invest – 7;Job creators – 5;Workers – 4; Flag-4; Wall Street – 1; Fair – 1; Millionaires – 0

It is interesting that the Republicans, the more openly business-oriented policy, frequently mentioned the nation’s still high unemployment and the large number of jobless Americans while the Democrats, the supposed party of workers, labor, and the poor, largely avoided the issue. That reflects the Democrats’ partisan calculation that acknowledging the extent of the nation’s unemployment problem works against the president’s re-election.[[5]]

It is predictable that the G.O.P. didn’t use the word “millionaire” once and mentioned both “Wall Street” and “fair” just once per 25,000 words. The Republicans steer clear of these terms thanks in part to the remarkable financial wealth of their standard-bearer Mitt “Mr. 1%” (really Mr. .001%) Romney. At the same time, it might seem surprising that  the Republicans used the term “middle class” just 7 times per 25,000 words – an indication perhaps of just how radically plutocratic their party has become. By contrast, G.O.P. speakers mentioned “small business” again and again, seeming to absurdly believe that most of the nation’s working citizens are current of future capitalists instead of wage- and salary-earners (employees, that is).

A Deafening Silence on Poverty

What strikes me most in the Times’ breakdown of the conventions’ language, however, is the absence of the words “poor” and “poverty.” It seems possible that the Times did not even bother to search for those terms for I know that I heard “poverty” mentioned once in Mitt Romney’s RNC speech, which noted that “nearly one in six Americans is living in poverty” [[6]]). I heard “poverty” used twice (quite weakly) in Bill Clinton’s celebrated DNC oration [[7]], and twice (in very fleeting, and conservatively-framed terms) in Barack Obama’s DNC speech. [[8]]. Like Bill Clinton and unlike the arch-plutocrat Mitt Romney, it worth noting moreover, the president made no direct reference to the actual extent of poverty in the U.S. today.

Perhaps the mentions of poverty were so scarce as to seem statistically insignificant to the New York Times. Beyond the single reference in Romney’s address, the term was absent from other leading Republican addresses. “Poverty” got no references in either Michelle Obama’s heralded convention address or Julian Castro’s DNC Keynote Address.[[9]]

By sharp and by now standard contrast, the Democrats used the term “middle class” – mainstream U.S. political culture’s term for just about every American beneath the super-rich – fully 55 times per 25,000 words.

The deafening silence on poverty might seem unsurprising on the part of the Republicans, the officially plutocratic business party. For their part, the Democrats have obvious partisan reasons to avoid references to poverty and the poor. Their standard-bearer has held the White House for the last three years of recession and weak “recovery.” Rightly or wrongly, Obama now “owns” the nation’s poverty rate in ways that naturally make his campaign and party uncomfortable with reference to poverty and the poor. This discomfort is deepened by the record setting record-setting taxpayer bailouts he and his predecessor extended to the grotesquely opulent financial overlords who crashed the economy in the first place – the Wall Street elites who granted record-setting campaign contributions to Obama in 2008 (a small expenditure for top members of the notorious upper 1 percent that owns more than 40 percent of the nation’s wealth and a probably larger share of its elected officials).

All About the Middle Class

Beyond all this lay the disturbing fact that the nation’s political and media class have made poverty into a dirty and racialized word over the last 30-plus years. As Tavis Smiley and his ally the left Princeton professor Cornel West note in their widely read volume The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto:

“poverty is regarded [by many Americans] as a personal declaration of failure, a measure of fundamental unworthiness…as a blight on an upstanding community…Like a man with a knife in his back staggering along a crowded street without aid, the poor have been stabbed with the blade of indifference… Politicians have color-coded poverty, making it a black or brown thing [72-72]…..ignoring, denying, and dismissing the poor has become a multimillion dollar enterprise [so that even in the wake of the Great Recession] most [Americans], including the fragile middle class, still ignore the poor, and are defensively inclined to separate themselves from them.”[[10]]

As a result, the problem of poverty – a central concern alongside the inequality of wealth and power in John Edwards’ bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination [[11]], and in Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 campaigns for the same prize – is considered a losing proposition for the Democrats. Smiley and West again, from a chapter titled “Poverty of Courage”:

“What’s missing in today’s political arena are bold advocates for the poor who will risk careers, stature, and political office to be their brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. Also absent is the courage to stand against powerful multinational corporations, Wall Street elites, and a socio-political system that blindly favors the rich and the lucky over everyday people….Now, to be sure, most politicians campaigning for the 2012 election – from town councils to the White House – will offer perfectly phrased sound bites on the need to support the middle class. It’s the safest territory…Supporting the middle class has no inherent risk; it demands no special sacrifice. ‘Employing the poor and eradicating poverty’ is verbiage that has not been heard in the White House since President Lyndon Johnson occupied the Oval Office.” (emphasis added) [[12]]

Payback for Truth-Telling

In this context, it isn’t just the right that heaps scorn on those who dare to raise the difficult problem of poverty. Last May, the black Democratic Chicago Sun Times columnist and implacable Barack Obama fan Laura Washington published a venomous assault on Smiley and West. “The duo is calling for ‘massive’ jobs, education and social investment programs and a White House summit on poverty,” Washington wrote. “That’s not going to happen,” the columnist intoned – a depressing statement from a woman who for many years ran a journal dedicated to exposing and addressing poverty and racial inequality in and around Chicago (The Chicago Reporter).

“The last guy to do a poverty tour[[13]],” Washington added, “was 2008 presidential candidate John Edwards, the wealthy personal injury lawyer at the center of a seamy criminal trial. That worked out great for the poor” [[14]] – as if Smiley and West had anything to do with Edwards’ personal corruption.

It doesn’t get much more mean-spirited than that [[15]].

This is just one of many examples of the spiteful payback West and Smiley have received in return for their determination to hold a black Democratic president no less accountable than a white Republican one for ignoring poverty and its cousin inequality.Smiley and West don’t spend a lot of time mentioning the top Cowardly Lion Democratic Party poverty-denier by name in The Rich and the Rest of Us. Still, it is clear as day that they were thinking of the former community organizer Barak Obama when they fashioned the titles of four of their chapters: “Poverty of Affirmation,” “Poverty of Courage,” “Poverty of Compassion,” and “Poverty of Imagination.” 

A Very Big Problem to Deny

There can be no courageous, compassionate or imaginative new war on the blight of poverty as long the problem is not even affirmed in the first place.

American poverty is a big problem to deny, it turns out. A recent annual U.S. Census Bureau report was summarized as follows by Daily Beast reporter Matt Zeitlin last Wednesday:

‘1. Poverty was basically unchanged in 2011. In 2011 there were 46.2 million people living in poverty—defined as a family of four with an income of $23,021 or less. The poverty rate was 15 percent, which is basically flat from 2010…’

‘2.Median incomes declined—again. The real median household income in 2011 was $50,054, a 1.5 percent drop from 2010 and an 8.1 percent drop from 2007, the prerecession peak. This also represented an 8.9 percent drop from 1999, the all-time peak. The Census Bureau’s data show that typical households haven’t just experienced a crushing recession, but a lost decade in terms of stagnant incomes.’

‘3. Income inequality went up….In other words, it was a good year for the 1 percent. According to the Gini index, a measure of inequality in which 0 represents total income equality and 1 represents one household having all the income, income inequality was up 1.6 percent in 2011…The broad middle—the two quintiles that included the 40 to 80 percent—saw its share of national income drop from 38 percent to 37.3 percent.’ [[16]]

The Daily Beast might have said six more things. First, the U.S. continued in 2011 as in 2010 to consign more Americans to poverty than in any time since the U.S. government began measuring the problem. .

Second, a record number of Americans within the poverty population – 1 in 15 Americans in  2010 – struggle to get by on less than half the federal government’s notoriously inadequate poverty level (that’s less than $11,157 for a family of four).[[17]]

Third, we also now have a record number of officially designated “near poor” and “low-income” Americans. A Census Bureau report commissioned by the New York Times in the fall of 2011 showed that 1 in 3 Americans lived either in poverty or “near poverty”:  officially poor or at less than 150 percent of the poverty level. [[18]]. As CBS News reported last December, a record number of Americans – nearly 1 in 2 – had fallen into poverty “or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income” Half the population – 150 million – was either officially poor (50 million) or living at less than half the federal government’s notoriously inadequate poverty level (100 million).[[19]]

Fourth, the United States is now as unequal as it has been at any time since the late 1920s.

Fifth, the U.S. is and has for some time now been the most unequal country in the advanced industrial world [[20]]

Sixth, there’s an intimate relationship between the remarkable extent of poverty and the remarkable degree of inequality in the U.S. As Joshua Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute explained last year, millions of Americans are worse off because others are better off. Ever since the late 1970s, American economic growth has been slow and unequally distributed. It’s been a deadly combination as the rich have appropriated so much of overall wealth and income expansion that there has been little left over for the rest and the poor have become more numerous and worse off. [[21]]

Which brings to mind two other words the New York Times didn’t bother to check for frequency of mention at the two national conventions: inequality and exploitation. I doubt either word was mentioned more than once or twice at either of the two great capitalist parties’ gatherings.

Paul Street (paulstreet99@yahoo.com) is the author of numerous books, including The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama and the Real World of Power (Paradigm, 2010), Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), and Crashing the Tea Party (Paradigm, 2011, co-authored with Anthony DiMaggio). Street was proud to appear alongside Dr. Cornel West in offering a left critique of Obama’s first term on Al Jazeera English’s “Inside Story U.S. 2012” last August.  See a YouTube of this show at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLR_a-Kny90

Selected Notes