McCain at Debate: Middle Class? What Middle Class?
By Seth D. Michaels (10/8/08)

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.  

Original article posted at blog.aflcio.org