To republicans who "wonder" why poor people are overwhelmingly democrat?

Question

Look at the 1800's. People suffering starving and dying of preventable illnesses even though they labored all day. This is because in modern moneys' terms they made 1.25 an hour. Do you realize that conservatives (oh, the good old days!) including former senator Rick Santorum want to economically bring us back to that time? If it wasn't for the democrats, the corporations would have the same iron fist low wage control they had back then and countless Americans would be unnecessarily suffering. Democrats aren't communist, that is conservative propaganda from billionaires who have the money to spread around their lies. They stand for a balance between capitalism and fairness for people who weren't born into the top 10% of America. Look at the Clinton years when we had a SURPLUS our economy was growing and we as Americans were uniting to make our country and world a better place.

Most Americans wanted that in 2000 as well (Al Gore won the popular vote)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1110165.stm

Otto, like many other republicans, you are being delusional and only hearing what you want to hear. Democrats do not stand for full blown communism that would lose people jobs. They apply some much needed restraint on capitalism so it doesn't get out of hand and people don't unnecessarily suffer. I wasn't whining about Al Gore losing, I was proving a point that the majority of America doesn't want to kiss the top 10%'s ***.

Answer 1

Only one Republican in the last century cared about "the little guy" and that was Theodore Roosevelt, a progressive Republican.

Accusing Democrats or liberals of being Communists is as true as accusing Neocons or Republican conservatives of being Fascists or Nazis.

It is true that we have been spinning wheels, going nowhere lately and even backward a little on some issues. That is not always a bad thing. When progressives get things moving often things move so far and so fast it is hard to keep up and so the conservatives are around to put on the brakes and say slow down with the progress. Stop and take a breath. Savor what we have just accomplished before we go pall mall into another period of growth and progress.

We are now ending that rest period and find ourselves in great need of progress once again. Only through the cooperation of Democrats and progressive Republicans will we accomplish this. The closest the GOP has to a progressive Republican running for president is Giuliani but he has issues, as I understand from people in NYC, that make him undesirable nevertheless.

This is why it is extremely important that we elect a Democrat to the presidency and a legislative branch that will work with him/her to move foreward once again until we find ourselves having moved too far too fast and need another rest. At that point we will need a conservative to help us take that well deserved breather.

Answer 2

Where to start? OK, look Clinton had a republican controlled congress for the last 6 years of his administration. Congress controls the purse strings not the president. Result? Surplus thank you Nute Gingrich.

There are just as many Democrat billionaires as Republican.

You cannot look back in time and apply today's standards to what was acceptable in that time regardless of what country you are discussing. The industrial revolution was happening fast and the rules were being made up as we went along. There was no model to follow anywhere else in the world.

Back then, when Henry Ford bagan to pay his workers five dollars a week that was more money than any worker in any other business was making.

There was a lot of evil on both sides of the labor movement back then. The all powerful business owners and the mob controlled unions. Today, pretty much every large business is a publicly owned corporation. That means the owners are the stock holders like you and me. Unions have outlived their usefulness and are now responsible for pretty much running all heavy industry out of our country. The latest victims are the three major U. S. auto manufacturers. The labor and pension costs are so out of control and the companies' production costs are so high that hey are breaking even or loosing money on every sale. Compare that to Toyota which is setting record profits. (no union).

Al Gore won the popular vote but he was not running for popular votes. He was running for electoral votes and he lost. This is not the first time that has happened in America and it won't be the last. JFK lost the popular vote.

Democrats are not communists but they are increasingly socialists. They are all for huge federal government that has it's paws in everyone's business. If you want to live like that, move to Cuba, Nicaragua or China. This is America. Land of the free and home of the brave. Not the land of redistribution of wealth, not the land of welfare, not the land of handouts.

Your statement does not explain why poor people are overwhelmingly democrat. The reason is that the democrats are very good at keeping them poor, at keeping them dependant on the government and at keeping them on the democrat plantation by scaring them that they will starve without their democrat masters.


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Answer 3

I guess what people don't realize is there is a thing called working poor. There are jobs that need to be done but don't pay a lot of money. And when the price of housing, gas, electricity, health insurance, education, and food goes up and wages do not, the poor only get poorer.

And for those who say that "why don't the poor get better jobs?" Think about this, when that poor person gets a better job, another poor person will fill in for him in the last position. There are thankless jobs that need to be done but are not paid. Walmart needs cashiers and people to stock items, restaurants need waiters and cooks, and you're not going to become a millionaires doing it, but someone has to do it as the job needs to be done.

I think some people are "Republican" is because they are part of the "Christian Right" and they feel the Republican party supports their issues like abortion and gay-rights. Some people are "Democrat" because they feel that their party supports their issues.

If it weren't for Unions you wouldn't have a 40 hour work week, vacations, benefits or safe working conditions.

Sure there are some corrupt Unions. There are also corrupt companies as well. How fair is your job treating you?

Answer 4

The point you are missing is that obviously many working class and lower middle class people did vote for Bush, not just once but twice. I find this baffling that the Republicans got so many people to vote against their own economic interests. The only explanation I've heard is that those people voted on so-called social issues, but that seems insufficient. A more plausible theory is that most Americans are so ignorant of history and economics as to be unaware of where they fit into the economy and what policies might benefit them. For example people making $15,000 might have believed Bush gave them a tax cut when they received a check, not understanding that they turned around and paid that money back when they filed their taxes the next time. The only other explanation I can come up with is that uneducated people were attracted to the idea of president who was not too smart, a line of reasoning that I can only describe as self-destructive.

Answer 5

I really don't care that Gore won the popular vote since that isn't how it's done. I hope he runs in 2008 since he would LOOSE by a landslide! Why are you still claiming that Gore should have been elected. Please get over it.

Dems aren't communist. They are socialists that want to give everyone everything, even when there isn't the money to do it! They don't "stand for a balance between capitalism and fairness for people who weren't born into the top 10% of America." How is it "fair" that a small minority has to pay for the services that they don't get?

They forget that over 90% of the taxes are paid by the top 5% of Americans. They want to stick it to the higher income taxpayers to pay for more of their pork! They cut deductions from the "rich" that the middle class get to claim.

We have clients that pay more in California state tax than many people make in a lifetime. However, they earned it and they earned their position. It wasn't given to them.

I don't wonder about the fact that the poor generally vote for the liberal/socialist dems. They promise all sorts of social programs that cost taxpayers billions. Problem is that the GOP is doing the same thing.

Why do you think the deficit is so high? Besides the war, we have programs coming out the "wazoo" that help only a few people.

BTW, where do the employers come from? Do you think that they come from the poor? The so called rich employ the poor and to remain in business you must make a profit! Employers/rich people are double taxed. The business gets taxed and the "rich" person gets taxed on their income. NEVER CLAIM THE RICH DON'T PAY ENOUGH TAXES!

Answer 6

Funny, since we've moved away from the New Deal, beginning in 1981, people at all strata of the economy are better off, and economic mobility has increased dramatically.

If you truly care about the poor you should ask yourself which set of policies, Keynesian or Neo-Classical, results in more economic mobility - allows more poor people to move up, more middle class people to move up - - - - you're missing the point, you're seeing only a snapshot in time.

You want a world in which the difference between the top and the bottom is less, we want - and are creating - a world in which yes, the difference may be more, but the bottom is higher than it was and the ability to move up FROM the bottom - in absolute terms - is greater.

Ford Driver - what about the fact that 50% of the population enjoys the living conditions that the top 10% enjoyed a decade ago?

Answer 7

From the looks of things, enough "liberal" advances have been rolled back by the Bush White House to make these issues come back as political issues. Quite a few people understood at the beginning of the Bush administration that they were on a mission to dismantle the pro-public legislation from the New Deal forward.

Their assaults on Social Security may not have ended it's life, but they prevented any action to preserve the surplus Social Security withholding. Extra money is streaming in from the baby boomer paychecks in excess of payouts. (That money has been loaned back to the public as bonds - something the public is having to "repay" to ourselves in order to make Social Security solvent later, while we are also paying back the Chinese loans for the war in Iraq)

The success of legislation providing consumer protection, food inspection, workplace safety and environmental health provided a lack of issues for the Democrats, once they were law. Now many of these have been weakened and are back on the table - from food quality to public energy policy to public lands.

The tide has turned.

Answer 8

they do no longer look to be overwhelmingly Democrats. the super majority of unfavourable human beings stay in the Southern US and as all of us comprehend those states vote extra often than not Republican. And as a center classification person why could I vote for a occasion that desires to take 30-40% of the pay that I earn????

Answer 9

I'd say the Democrats capturing the poor vote has more to do with problems stemming from lower rates of literacy, no understanding of basic economics and, worst of all, the idea that they are entitled to things they are unwilling to work for.

I really doubt that you understand why we had a budget surplus in the 90's, or that you even know what that means. Do tell, what did President Clinton do to create it? Did he invent computers? Was he in control of interest rates?

Answer 10

I like how everyone here thinks that poverty is a result of laziness. Obviously people who have never volunteered at a soup kitchen a day in their lives