Free Republic

PROSPERITY, S.C. - Erik Grantham walked out of Stable Steak House on Main Street, through a door hand-painted in bright yellow with "Jesus is the reason." "I have not been home in months," he said, leaning against his truck as if to emphasize his exhaustion. "I am a welder, but there is no work at home, so I travel, going from job to job across the state." Dressed in stained overalls and sipping a Coke, he said he would not be home for Saturday's Republican primary. He hopes to be there for November's election, to make his voice heard. "I...

CARROLL, Iowa -- The race is down to the wire and is still hard to call. When Iowa Republicans caucus with their neighbors on Tuesday. night, they will have scrutinized the presidential candidates more closely than ever before. "This is a head, not a heart, election. Voters are very serious this year, and they should be; there is a lot at stake in this country," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the Tribune-Review after an event at Santa Maria Winery in this West Central Iowa city. Experts predict he will take fifth place or worse. "We want to make sure...

Both are Republicans, leaning toward the party's libertarian wing. Chu said he attended Biden's speech "because I may never have the opportunity to see a sitting vice president again." He and Prescott said they respect the office, even though they strongly disagree with the Obama administration's policies. Each generation strives to do better than the one before. It is a point of pride for parents and grandparents to watch their family's newest members reaching for the American Dream. Is such progress uncertain for Millennials? If you watch the unrest in some of the "Occupy" tent cities, you might think that...

Brandon Chu thinks everything will be OK. The 20-year-old nutrition major at the University of Pittsburgh doesn't buy into the narrative that his generation is less likely to succeed, less likely to do better than their parents, or less likely to achieve the American Dream. "Absolutely false," he said. "I understand that the economy is amplified for our generation but certainly not the cause for us to collapse or not be successful." In fact, he said, his generation will be more successful "because we do not have the same reliance on government that previous generations have had." Chu is part...

TULSA, Okla. – “I don't say I am no better than anybody else but I’ll be damned if I ain’t just as good.” That line from the iconic Rodgers & Hammerstein musical pretty much sums up the character of Oklahomans. “It is quintessential frontier America,” said Frank Keating, the state’s Republican governor from 1995 until 2002. “That frontier work ethic has carried on in each generation, and so has a disdain for elites.” Both political parties here strongly distrust anything “big” – government, money, regulations, egos. Although a reliably Republican state in national elections, Democrats’ registration tops the GOP’s –...

Most of Western Pennsylvania's congressional delegation won't make it to President Obama's visit to Pittsburgh next week, saying their day jobs got in the way. Several blamed a vote and other duties. But at least one analyst noted that Obama is struggling in the polls as he tries to sell a jobs plan that Republicans don't want. On Tuesday, Obama will stump for the plan at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local No. 5 training center on the South Side. ... A Quinnipiac poll released Sept. 28 showed 54 percent of Pennsylvania voters disapproved of Obama's job performance. Altmire...

Every U.S. president needs people around him who are not afraid to tell him that his latest idea is terrible. Otherwise, he just keeps getting into trouble. "Presidents are cut off from reality when they don't have some trusted adviser willing to save them from their own worst instincts," said Mark Rozell, public policy professor at George Mason University. And if a president elevates himself too far above the people who were hired to help him out, then how can those people presume to challenge him? White House spokesman Matt Lehrich insists that the nation's current chief executive is not...

Where are the jobs? Not the stimulus signs, rhetoric about "shovel-ready" economic voodoo or propping-up of an anemic manufacturing sector, but the real jobs? Polls at the beginning of July showed President Obama in an increasingly hazardous position with voters on jobs and the economy. A McClatchy-Marist poll put his economic approval rating at just 37 percent among registered voters. A Gallup poll found U.S. economic confidence had plummeted by 7 percent since June. Last year, Obama used Pennsylvania's Allentown Metal Works as a backdrop to tout his stimulus and job-creation success. A couple of months later, the plant closed....

UNIONTOWN – On July 4, 1776, Henry Beeson put up a sign on what was part of the ancient Indian trail known as Nemacolin's Path: He had laid out a two-street town, humbly referred to as Beesontown, and had 54 plots for sale. The grist mill operator had no idea what was happening that day in Philadelphia, 300 miles east. Walk along Main Street in this county seat and you may cast your shadow where George Washington, another mill operator in the county, once did. You can walk into the majestic courthouse, sign the guest log, and look at the...

When national campaign strategists consider targeting an ethnic voting bloc to swing results in their direction, they typically consider blacks or Hispanics. Yet, an ethnic group they often overlook -- the Scots-Irish -- are the voters the Republican Party convinced in 2010 to swing back to GOP candidates, after they swung toward the Democratic Party in 2006, experts say. As the 2012 election approaches and both parties eye the White House and U.S. House and Senate seats, strategists from both parties say the Scots-Irish again could be critical to winning. "They could be the margins in a tight race," said...

WASHINGTON – The sweeping office of the Speaker of the House once housed the Library of Congress – more than 6,000 leather-bound tomes owned and beloved by Thomas Jefferson. A Christmas Day fire in 1851 destroyed nearly two-thirds of them. The House speaker then was southern Democrat Linn Boyd, who was critical in shepherding the passage of the 1850 Compromise that defused a showdown between slave states and free states and calmed sectional conflict for a decade. Imagine anyone trying to craft a compromise in today’s political minefield. Right- and left-wingers, bloggers and cable news go apoplectic just over the...

WASHINGTON – The only sound visitors hear on the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol on an early Sunday morning is the click of heels on the marble floor, echoing off the 20-foot ceiling. Hard to imagine that, less than 100 years ago, the men serving here weren’t elected by voters. “That is because the Framers did not want two chambers to be controlled by the frenzy of popular opinion,” said Senate historian Donald Ritchie. From 1789 to 1912, senators were elected by state legislatures. That changed in 1913 with ratification of the Constitution's 17th Amendment. The Senate joined the...

Sometimes all that putting the world in perspective takes is to stand in the shadow of where great men fell, even great men so tragically flawed by revenge that they foolishly participated in a duel to settle a political slight. Confrontational politics has been with us since our Founders. Many times, as happened here at the foot of the Palisades, the result was death. The most famous political and personal animosity of its time existed between Federalist Alexander Hamilton, primary author of "The Federalist Papers" and first Treasury secretary, and Democratic-Republican Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson's first vice president. "Hamilton particularly...

LEXINGTON, Ky. – If your attention is diverted for the briefest of moments as you walk along North Mill Street’s red-brick sidewalk, you easily could miss the former law office of Henry Clay. Barely 20 feet wide and closed to the public, the office is notable only for a historical marker hidden to its left, pointing out the modest headquarters of a young frontier lawyer who went on to become a revered statesmen known as “The Great Compromiser.” Clay earned that title in the 1820s when he temporarily pacified the U.S. government’s conflict with South Carolina, which was on the...

On a crisp November afternoon, people line the sidewalks of Baltimore Street and Steinwehr Avenue, waiting for the annual Remembrance Day Parade to begin. Hundreds and hundreds of Civil War re-enactors somberly line up, unit upon unit, behind the town's high school to march the same path that President Abraham Lincoln traveled the day he delivered the Gettysburg Address. The 14th Brooklyn, known as "The Red-Legged Devils" for their vivid red pantaloons, march proudly with other Union regiments, a healthy number of Confederate soldiers and members of a "U.S. Colored Troops" brigade. Civil War historian Michael Kraus, a curator at...

WASHINGTON – A friend once told me, after completing a cross-country drive, that he always thought you should feel somehow different as you crossed a state line. No doubt it was a feeling left over from grade-school geography classes, in which U.S. maps showed each state in different, vibrant colors. Instead, the difference is unnoticeable. Changes in terrain can be the most dramatic but usually are gradual; so are changes in dialect. Whether they live on Elm Street in North Platte, Neb., or Mulberry Street in Springfield, Mass., Americans remain the same at their very core. One consistent characteristic I...

INDEPENDENCE PASS, Colorado - A perilously narrow road, open only during summer, leads to the Continental Divide at 12,095 feet and a breathtaking peak. Nearly 2,000 miles east stands a different, equally symbolic peak at the heart of America's democracy: At just more than 555 feet, the Washington Monument honors the first president and Revolutionary War commander who gave up life as a gentleman farmer to lead a band of "scrabble" to win liberty and independence. More than distance and altitude separate "Main Street" Americans from those who govern them. The disconnect is so deep, so wide, that filling it...

EAST LIVERPOOL, Ohio – Travel west along the old Lincoln Highway to this one-time “pottery capitol,” and the landscape maintains Allegheny mountain vistas as the Ohio River curls through the hills and hollows of Columbiana County. In the place of a once-robust pottery industry, a museum is dedicated to the area’s ceramic plants. The 300 factories of old are now down to one that produces popular, colorful Fiestaware. “We are pretty much devastated,” says Mayor James Swoger of his town’s economy and the state in general. He describes East Liverpool as a stronghold of Democrats, including himself: “I am a...

BERKELEY SPRINGS, W.Va. As long as this country has existed, this charming Eastern Panhandle town has thrived, thanks initially to its abundant mineral water and proximity to the nation's capital. George Washington not only slept here in America's first official resort town, he bathed here. He came first as a teenage surveyor and later as president, seeking the medicinal springs' healing effects. Yet thriving is tough in this economy. Just ask Shannon DeLaunden, out of work for more than a year. A health care worker who first voted in 2008 -- for President Barack Obama -- she voices one problem...

BERKELEY SPRINGS, W.Va. – For as long as this country has existed, this charming Eastern Panhandle town has thrived, thanks initially to its abundant mineral water and its proximity to the nation’s capital. It was the country’s first official resort town. George Washington not only slept here, he bathed here. He came first as a teenage surveyor and later as president, seeking the healing effects of the medicinal springs. Yet thriving is tough in this economy. Just ask Shannon DeLaunden, who has been out of work for over a year. A health-care worker who voted for the first time in...

BIG BEAVER, Pa. – Voters throughout river towns like this one, from the Mid-Atlantic through the Mid-West and into the Deep South, are frustrated with Washington. Most are working-class Democrats and independents who placed their trust in Democrats in the past two election cycles. Interesting, then, that with all of the poll numbers and focus groups available to it, Washington’s ruling class still does not understand Main Street. In fact, it wants to know what is wrong with Americans. President Barack Obama, his advisors, congressional leaders and even many of the D.C. Beltway’s elite pundits collectively believe that voter anger...

BUTLER, Pa. – In a campaign office on the first floor of a Sons of Italy lodge, Republican Mike Kelly spoke confidently to a crowd of locals about his race for the U.S. Congress. Outside, a lone Joe Sestak supporter marched up and down with a handmade sign. Generating little attention, he left before Kelly’s rally began. If you want a perfect picture of a potential wave election, Main Street here paints it for you. Forty-odd miles north of Pittsburgh, Butler’s majestic county courthouse is across the street from a well-kept monument to fallen Civil War soldiers. Architecture from a...

Late last week the premier polling site, FiveThirtyEight, tweeted somberly: “I don't think people fully comprehend how scary the generic ballot numbers are for Democrats.” The biggest sway away from Democrats is coming from independent voters. The latest Gallup results give Republicans the broadest spread over Democrats in the history of generic-ballot polling. It’s also the first time the GOP has hit the magic 50 percent in the history of Gallup’s generic ballot. "For independent voters, it's like the rock-paper-scissors game,” says Democratic strategist Steve McMahon. “They want bi-partisan solutions and smart policy. But right now, a 'no' to more...

COLUMBUS – From the Great Depression to today’s recession, Ohio’s capital has weathered economic downturns marginally better than her Rust Belt neighbors thanks to a diverse economy. Now it is now ground-zero for Democrats to prove they really are connected to Main Street’s needs.President Obama came here on June 18 to prove just that, with a kick-off to his “Summer of Recovery” marking the 10,000th stimulus project. Hard to say what he proved by spending 58 minutes in the state – 12 of them speaking, 5 shaking hands, the rest getting back and forth from the airport.With use of Air...

LEADVILLE, Colo. – A handful of days after the opening of Independence Pass, the dramatic highway separating this old mining town from Aspen, 15-foot snowdrifts still line the narrow roadway even as the temperature climbs to 60 degrees. Below the 13,000-foot peaks ringing the pass, a large home-made sign grabs a traveler’s attention. “Vote Obama? Embarrassed Yet?” dominates the front-yard of a home on the edge of town. Welcome to “fly-over” country, that nation’s midsection which Washington only views from the air and never really experiences on the ground. President Obama may parachute in sporadically for invite-only town-hall meetings to...

The new normal for Democrats is losing 30 to 40 U.S. House seats in November. What’s driving these potential losses is simple: The message from the Obama administration and the party’s congressional leadership is not in sync with the American electorate. “Everyone is happy going to the sacrifice, except the lambs,” says a highly regarded Democratic strategist working on several House races. Congressional Democrats are in the unenviable position of defending a lot more House seats than Republicans, which means they have to reach across the political spectrum. Facing all of these challenges will cost them a lot of money....

When it comes to racism, our country remains awkward about trying to define what it is and when it really happens. Racism isn't what it used to be. Back in the day, it was horrible in-your-face humiliation hurled for reasons that included fear, insecurity, hate or an utter lack of decency. Today, the word "racism" is used so flippantly in politics that its true heinous intent often is diluted. Race has taken political center-stage once more with generalizations that all people who participate in tea party events are racists because they oppose President Barack Obama's policies. Racism also often is...

LATROBE – On paper, the nine counties meandering across Western Pennsylvania to form the 12th Congressional District numerically favor Democrats by a nice margin. In reality, people who live, work and pray here could not be more removed from the Democratic Party ruling out of Washington. More rural/suburban than urban/suburban, it is chock-full of conservative Democrats who believe in hard work, God and guns. It is a world that elite liberals fail to understand, as one Democratic strategist confessed in an e-mail: “Have to admit that America is about as foreign as France to me.” On May 18, ex-congressional aide...

WASHINGTON – If you are a member of the Obama administration, a congressional staffer or another elected Democrat working here, the outlook for the 2010 midterm elections appeared grand in the days following the health-care vote. Watching President Obama stroll confidently into the Cannon House Office Building two weeks ago to give an impassioned speech as to why the House vote was not important for him or Democrats but for Americans, reporters, staffers and House members swayed with the knowledge they were about to participate in or observe history. Too bad they forgot that not all historical moments have a...

As both political parties consider how to gain the fickle support of Tea Party activists and independent voters in the 2010 midterm elections, another increasingly dissatisfied tribe exists for both to lure: Hillary Democrats. No other candidate has captured their frustration better than U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Democrat trying to take out one-time Republican U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter in the state's May primary. A campaign web-ad for Sestak shows real Democrats who voted for Obama, set in a stark black-and-white backdrop, voicing their collective dissatisfaction with the president's support of Specter: "That's not change we can believe...

Pennsylvania soon may scrape the bottom of the federal pork barrel. The Feb. 8 death of U.S. Rep. Jack Murtha was "a major blow" to federal funding in the state, according to Jeff Brauer, a political science professor at Keystone College. The Johnstown Democrat, in Congress since 1974, held considerable clout as chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Subcommittee. Brauer foresees another blow when Ed Rendell ends eight years as governor this year. The Philadelphia Democrat's influential national connections also have brought federal money into the state. And if U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, another Philadelphia Democrat, survives a May primary...

WASHINGTON – It is probably fair to say that U.S. Senator Arlen Specter, D-Pa., started it all. He perceived, long before anyone else, that this will not be the year of the incumbent. Armed with campaign battle scars, a cantankerous personality and fairly long-in-the-tooth seniority (even by Senate standards), Specter has come to symbolize the end of the incumbent. A CNN poll last week showed that only one-third of U.S. voters (a record-low number) think their members of Congress deserve to go back next year. When Specter switched parties last spring, he was brutally honest why: He didn't want to...

"This is a warning sign on so many levels, when people like Evan Bayh walk way rather than serve their country," said Steve McMahon, a former Senate staffer for the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. "The moderate Democrat is a vanishing breed," said McMahon, a Democratic strategist on Capitol Hill. "It is the moderates that make the difference between being in the majority and being in the minority, a problem for the Democrats." Former Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum said Bayh did what he himself should have done when faced with a similar situation in the 2006 mid-term...

The person who serves the unexpired term of the late Rep. Jack Murtha could be the last to hold the 12th Congressional District seat, political experts say. "You could envision it," said Erik Arneson, press secretary for state Senate Republicans, on the possibility of slow population growth eliminating the 12th District in 2011. Murtha, who will be buried today near his hometown of Johnstown, died at age 77 of complications arising from gallbladder surgery. He served 36 years in Congress. His term expires at the end of this year. Franklin & Marshall College political analyst G. Terry Madonna says Murtha's...

You have to hand it to the White House: It is at least consistent in sending the absolutely wrong message to voters pondering whether to keep Democrats in control of Congress in the coming midterm election. Even the body language is all wrong. Receive news alerts Sign Up Salena Zito RealClearPolitics election 2010 pa sen Democratic Party Republican Party Barack Obama [+] More On Tuesday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs mocked Sarah Palin's crib notes on the palm of her hand. The next day, President Obama told Business Week that he didn't begrudge gazillion-dollar bonuses for executives of banks...

Family members, particularly spouses, assuming a late politician's seat is not unusual in American politics. Among possible candidates to replace Rep. John Murtha, the Johnstown Democrat who died Monday, is his wife, Joyce. "While people have been mindful that this is a difficult time for the family, many have called to suggest Joyce as the perfect person to hold her husband's seat," Murtha spokesman Matthew Mazonkey said. Murtha represented Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District. His term expires at the end of this year. Of the 260 women have who served in the U.S. House or Senate, 46 were widows who directly...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The realization that voters who live 15 minutes outside this city are completely disconnected from people who work and govern here has finally hit. At least it is resonating with the brains who must run the campaigns to retain the largest congressional majority ever held by a political party; the jury is still out with the Obama administration. “It’s bad. No, let me rephrase that – it’s toxic for any incumbent, especially for one that has a ‘D’ after their name,” one in-the-loop Democratic strategist admitted over coffee within the shadow of the Capitol. He’s not predicting...

Fair or not, voters have distaste and distrust this year for any candidate running under the “progressive” banner that was so wildly popular just last year. “I essentially believe that ‘progressive’ is the wrong “P” to be describing yourself as this cycle,” said a Democratic strategist working on congressional campaigns across the country. “ ‘Populist’ is the way to go.” Candidates, he said, should appear as an outsider who will fight for Main Street, not Wall Street. Because the concerns of independents will continue to dominate the electoral landscape, the best that progressive candidates can do is to emphasize the...

In a political year in which voters want to “throw the bums out,” the last thing any candidate should do is run as the bum. That’s why Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat, lost his seat in New Jersey in November. It’s why candidates such as Democrat Creigh Deeds in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, Republican Dede Scozzafava in New York’s congressional race and, yes, Democrat Martha Coakley in Massachusetts all lost. They ran as bums – slang for incumbent. One can only imagine President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, saying to anyone within shouting distance last Tuesday night: "The people...

In a political year in which voters want to "throw the bums out," the last thing any candidate should do is run as the bum. That's why Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat, lost his seat in New Jersey in November. It's why candidates such as Democrat Creigh Deeds in Virginia's gubernatorial race, Republican Dede Scozzafava in New York's congressional race and, yes, Democrat Martha Coakley in Massachusetts all lost. They ran as bums - slang for incumbent. One can only imagine President Barack Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, saying to anyone within shouting distance last Tuesday night: "The people...

Wise strategists need look no further than U.S. House races in Pennsylvania to gauge the country's political temperature. In the past decade, Pennsylvania has been a Democrat-leaning presidential battleground. It went for Gore (51-46), Kerry (51-48) and Obama (55-44). "Putting these numbers in perspective, the state tends to vote about 4 percentage points more for the Democratic nominee than the nation as a whole does," says Lara Brown, Villanova University professor. Democrats have been increasingly confident that trend will continue, given 2006 midterm and 2008 general election wins. But change can come quickly.

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- They said he couldn't be coached. James Traficant played quarterback for the University of Pittsburgh, and was drafted and released by the Steelers. But when his pro football career didn't pan out, he ended up in politics -- serving 17 years in Congress. "I got involved in politics, like a fool," Traficant said, sitting in the back booth of the Yankee Kitchen diner. "Made a lot of enemies. Found myself in prison and seen the underside, the underbelly, of the United States of America." The colorful Traficant, 68, is free after seven years in prison. He was...

And another one bites the dust. At least that’s what it must have felt like to Beltway Democrats in one 15-hour period last week. In a series of leaks and press releases, a domino of Democrats announced they were dropping out of races or retiring: Sens. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota retired, as did Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter; John Cherry, Michigan’s lieutenant governor also ended his gubernatorial bid. You’d think that would mean Democrats are in for a whole lot of hurt in a midterm election year, which are all about candidate retention, recruitment and...

Take President Obama’s poor timing in response to a failed terrorist attack on a U.S. jetliner, add the politicization of that event by his surrogates and a ridiculous message by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and what do you get? A complete failure when it comes to a commander-in-chief’s most important job: Protecting Americans from harm. “It was arrogant and stupid,” one Democrat strategist, who supported Obama the candidate, admits privately. “The president needed to set the initial tone on a matter of such importance,” said Mark Rozell, professor of public policy at George Mason University. “Press secretaries don't calm...

A congressman who oversees American intelligence operations, a former CIA operative and an intelligence official agree that Christmas Day's aborted attack on a U.S. airliner proves that the nation's anti-terrorism efforts are flawed. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano praised the nation's aviation-security system Sunday but backtracked Monday, admitting the system "did not work in this instance." "Clearly, the system did not work," Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., told the Tribune-Review yesterday. Hoekstra is the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. "Success is not a person on a plane with an explosive," he said. "That is a failure. The system designed...

What is the overriding lesson learned about this year of promised “hope” and “change,” given the politics, public scandals and shifting social behavior that have permeated American pop culture? I don't think Americans know yet what they want. But they are pretty clear on what they don't want. They don't want Bush, they don't want a bailout of Wall Street banks or Detroit automakers, and they don't want Washington to try to spend its way to some minimal recovery. They didn't want New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine and, now, they don't seem to want House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader...

Three weeks ago, I felt certain that this year that wouldn't feel a lot like Christmas. After 18 months of political road trips, press buses, press planes, hotels, motels, bad food, good food, two back-to-back conventions and the constant, sometimes desperate search for an electrical outlet to juice up my laptop computer, nothing thrilled me more than finally being back home. Call it fate, an act of God or really old electrical wiring, but "being home" wasn't in the cards. The day after the election, I made one more road trip: a 10-hour drive from Pittsburgh to St. Louis to...

In the predawn hours this morning, over 30 people loaded a chartered bus in a parking lot across from Ross Park Mall were seeing red and it had nothing to do with getting up before 3:00 a.m. "We want to let Washington know that we are not going to let them pass legislation without them knowing how we feel," said Pam Smith of Evans City. Smith was part of a group of grassroots activists and concerned citizens heading down to Washington, D.C., this morning to issue a "code red" alert to stop the health care overhaul legislation from advancing in...

NEW YORK - Eight years ago, President George W. Bush stood on a pile of rubble and told New Yorkers, "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." Perhaps President Barack Obama should take a cue from his predecessor and hear what New Yorkers say about his administration's decision to prosecute five Sept. 11 suspects here. Finding a New Yorker who is happy about that is difficult. "I don't see the upside," said Louis Polanco, a retired New York City cop. "The unprecedented...

Franklin D. Roosevelt understood what it meant to be a core Democrat and maintaining his party’s ranks. He built winning coalitions around his policies by empowering previously suppressed groups, such as labor unions and urban ethnics. In the process, he created a 40-year dynasty for Democrats. Today’s bunch? Not so much. The problem for FDR’s party is that it hasn’t adapted swiftly enough to two realities – that jobs are the most important issue to the nation, and that the middle class (which Democrats claim to champion) is dissolving under its watch. It seemed that Democrats may be starting to...