Why Don’t Politicians Discuss the Poor?

There’s an interesting essay on CNN this morning by Roland S. Martin that takes the stance that Republicans do not ever mention the poor even though the most important red states are heavily infected with poverty. While it’s a thought-provoking article, it’s obviously very partisan in its approach, almost as if saying (without actually saying it) that Democrats DO care about the poor while Republicans do not. While it’s easy to throw mud on the GOP over this particular issue, I’m going to take a different tact and introduce the question of: Why don’t politicians discuss the poor? Because, as much as Democrats like to see themselves as the party of the people, when it comes down to discussing issues that actually alleviate poverty, neither side really does a good job.

For those waging class warfare, you might disagree with me, thinking that Democrats have always been on the side of the poor, but honestly think back and try to figure out when was the last time Democrats actually went out of their way to do something to alleviate poverty, aside from talk about it or use it to get re-elected. When I was pursuing my Ph.d in political science, I remember putting forth the argument (to a group of Democrat-professors) that asked the same question but in terms of race. It was during a seminar on party politics, and I asked why the Democratic Party actually felt it deserved the votes of blacks. And the room went silent because it was one of those questions you don’t really ask. I tried to push away the “you must be a racist to ask such a question” responses quickly by indicating that while the Democrats may have more African-Americans making up its ranks, what exactly was the Democratic Party doing to help African-Americans when it came to either ending racial discrimination or anything that had to do with bringing all races into a sense of equality. Responses all seemed to point at Civil Rights legislation and other such issues, but I kept pointing out that much of these efforts were started in the 1960s by politicians who were either very old or dead. Recent attempts to actually “make things better for everyone” weren’t really being made. My argument was that the Democratic Party seemed to be expecting African-American participation and support solely on the basis of not being the Republican Party. Needless to say, this caused all sorts of negativity in the room, and to be honest, to this day I’ve never achieved a sense of anyone really going out of his or her way to address the issue. Instead, I often see race being treated as an issue with already decided expectations that make it so that no one actually discusses the issues but instead do a lot of scholarship that consists of doing what has been done before without much further effort.

I bring this up because the issue, for me, is the same when it comes to poverty. There are more poor people in this country now than there has been in a very long time (since the Depression itself), yet politicians don’t seem to really be focusing on it. Instead, the focus has been the deficit, getting people back to work (the middle and upper classes), and a couple of areas of foreign policy. The War on Poverty became a “war” in name only, as we haven’t really done anything to alleviate poverty, unless you look at current trends as a War on People in Poverty, which we seem to be conducting quite admirably as we cut money to shelters, food banks, food stamps, schools and practically every other area of society that has anything to do with the poor.

But no one really seems to care. On the local news website (MLive.com), I read daily scribes by the common citizens that attack anyone who is poor as lazy, a criminal and a drain on society. Whenever someone puts forth ideas to alleviate poverty, that person is treated as part of the problem, and the masses don’t even want to discuss the issue further. And this isn’t even some right-wing media outlet. It’s the outlet used by the majority of people who read the local newspapers on a daily basis.

I don’t know about you, but I would love to see every politician start talking about what he or she is going to do to get people out of poverty. That would be so refreshing. But that never happens, and the reason for that is because it’s so much easier to not do anything about it and make up other issues that aren’t important, but are easier to hold conferences about. One of the big issues going into the presidential election is most definitely going to be the deficit, but at the same time I would not be surprised to see other ridiculous issues become part of the common conversation, like same sex marriages, abortion, religion in schools and taxation. It would not surprise me if one of these issues becomes the reason why one politician wins rather than any other.

Another factor to look at is political power itself. Since the poor first became poor, they have never really had an advocate working on their behalf. Congress is constantaly barraged with lobbyists over every issue under the sun, except for those that have anything to do with poverty. And that’s because there’s no money in it, which is somewhat ironic because that’s the problem in the first place. Lobbyists exist mainly to push political interests that then serve economic interests as well. When the economic interest is in getting people out of poverty, there’s no basis for creating a political process behind it. It’s a game theoretic where there’s no payoff for anyone involved, so no one gets involved, and the poor are left to their own lives of poverty without anyone really caring about the struggles they go through.

Instead, we end up with people thinking they know what poverty is because they brushed with it somewhere in the past but never really experienced it. I used to see this all of the time in the academic environment whenever poverty was discussed, and some college student who once struggled to make a decision between buying a new CD and purchasing food because of a limited budget actually thinks he went through a bout of poverty, so he thinks he completely understands it. And that person, when living somewhat of a decent lifestyle, is confronted with the idea of poverty, immediatedly thinks of poor people as the lazy people who couldn’t sacrifice that CD to put food on the table that one day when in reality the idea of buying a CD is a luxury most of them wouldn’t even consider in the first place. So when a poor person actually owns a cell phone (because it’s the only way they can communicate, making it an immediate Maslowian need), that former student scoffs at them, saying stuff like: “Well, if they can afford cell phones, obviously they don’t need assistance.” Again, it’s an inability to completely understand the bigger picture brought about by the fact that no one is ever going to take the effort to want to learn in the first place.

So what is the solution? Stop ignoring it and do something about it. Write your leaders and say something about it. But we won’t because we’re as lazy as we claim the poor must be, and we rarely do anything about it. If a politician doesn’t have constituents yelling at them about poverty, it’s not an issue on their dashboard. Unless someone starts telling them about it, they’re never going to even be aware of it because they don’t travel in circles that requires them to have to see the homeless as they live on a daily basis other than the random one who happens to be begging on the side of the entrance to the interstate, and like most people, the politician probably ignores them, thinking that if they don’t look at them, they don’t have to worry about them; or worse, they give them a dollar to get some alcohol, and somehow feel like they’ve done their all to address the poor.

Asking politicians to do the right thing is the recipe for failure every time. Asking YOU to make them do the right thing IS the answer. But I suspect we won’t because it’s too much work, and we all know those poor people are really lazy people who just don’t want to work like the rest of us. Right?