The forgotten middle class

When I first ran for the Senate in 1980, the middle class was going through one of its most trying times in history. People were frustrated. Inflation had skyrocketed. Crime was infiltrating our suburban neighborhoods. Property taxes were becoming stifling.

For the first time, a revolution was taking place in middle-class and working-class neighborhoods all over the country. Lifelong Democrats, union households and blue-collar workers were rejecting their party.

The middle class was looking for relief and new leadership. They found their savior in Ronald Reagan. It took them a little more time to warm up to yours truly, until “the commercial.”

I was down more than 20 points in the polls when I decided I need a little advice from Mamma D’Amato. I brought my campaign staff and publicity crew over to Mamma’s house on a Sunday morning when she was coming home from grocery shopping. She was carrying her heavy bags and lamenting how tough things were for the middle class. Just before she entered the house, she turned to the TV cameras and said, “Vote for my son, Al. He’ll be a good senator.”

Mamma represented the middle class. She was a mother trying to feed her family. I was her son, and I was someone who would fight for the forgotten middle class.
Thirty years later, the song is the same.

They tell us the recession has ended, but the middle class is angrier than they’ve ever been before. A Rasmussen poll shows that more than 60 percent of Americans think this country is heading in the wrong direction. More than 40 percent are “very angry” with the policies of the federal government.

Unemployment remains at 9.6 percent; in fact, it has been at 9.5 percent or higher for 14 months, the longest stretch since the 1930s. Private-sector job growth remains stagnant, and with no incentive to hire, this sector shed close to 40,000 jobs in September alone.