Getting the Vote of the People

Much has been made in this year's presidential campaign about fighting for "the people." Texas Gov. George W. Bush says he will leave no child behind and will end what he has termed the education recession in the midst of economic progress. Vice President (and newly anointed frontrunner) Al Gore '69 has laid his claim to represent "the people, not the powerful." And, ever-fading into the obscurity of low polling percentages, presidential hopefuls Patrick J. Buchanan and Ralph Nader claim that only their stands can represent Americans in the face of the Republicrat system.

Yet who are "the people"? And do they vote?

On Tuesday, the U.S. Census Bureau released its numbers on income and poverty for 1999, which showed a median household income of $40,816 and an 11.8 percent poverty rate--the lowest numbers since before the recession of the early 1990s. Good figures, and important affirmation of the strong economy's ability to reach deep into the American landscape, but, for 33 million people, still not enough to lift them out of poverty.

Following historic trends, the highest poverty rate and lowest median income were those of black Americans, followed closely in both categories by Latinos. Asian-Americans earned significantly better than the average median income, while whites hugged the national line.

To me, these are most obviously the people of the country--rural whites, urban blacks and Latinos. A call to the people should be a promise to these economically, socially and culturally marginalized Americans that the candidate will bring them along on the trip to the White House.

If a claim for the support of the people is anything more than rhetoric, it can be a gutsy one. Because these people are not those suburban independent voters, whom the campaigns are wooing somewhere between the private school door, the movie theater, and the gas tank of the SUV. These people are more likely to be the ones pumping that gas, taking the ticket, or mopping the schoolroom floor.

These are people who may not appear in the polls as likely to vote because the five minutes of civic duty may be five free minutes too many to ask of the shift manager, the childcare provider or the overworked spouse. For these men and women, undecided does not only describe their status on who to vote for--it describes their feelings on whether voting is worth their time at all.

Today, there are 33 million votes up for grabs--and no one is paying any attention.

Despite positioning themselves as men of "the people," Bush and Gore are ignoring the poor in favor of the shoppers at the suburban strip malls where they work and the commuters at the rail station where they make change. Gore has at least been to some of these places, on his marathon Labor Day tour, but no one since President Clinton took his poverty tour last year has focused on them. Since then, Evelyn Nieves recently wrote in the New York Times, "the poor have coped alone."

At one level, you can hardly blame the major party candidates. The shoppers, the commuters, the high-tech employees and, yes, the soccer moms--they are registered voters, likely to vote but unsure for whom. They may be fickle, but they have influence too; not quite like the AARP and its waving fields of gray, but a powerful constituency nonetheless. It's why Medicare, prescription drug importation and income tax credits fill the candidates' speeches, even when they are held in school auditoriums and on city streets.

At another level, however, you can hardly excuse the candidates. Understanding who "the people" are may be a Rorschach test of American social thought, but it is unfeeling and immoral not to include the needs of the nation's poorest in your plans. Policies that could help those at the margin include a rise in the minimum wage to a livable standard; guarantees of safety for their children and of a quality education; a reform of the penal system and its rehabilitation programs; and support for families, whether in helping them retain a family farm or reunite with relatives wishing to immigrate here.

Sure, the people to whom the candidates talk, who opine on private investment of Social Security funds and consider taking public funds to pay the local private school tuition, will vote in November, and will likely decide the contest's outcome. But wouldn't we be prouder as a nation if the people who languish at the base of our society would be the focus of such attention?

Adam I. Arenson '00-'01 is a history and literature concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.