Article Contributed on: 1/12/2008 11:33:07 AM
I got to thinking yesterday after reading up on voting records, and statements that each candidate for the presidency has made. After a lot of reading and trying to understand who I want to vote for, I realized that in reality there are no good candidates.
The reason is not because I do not agree with what any of the candidates are saying, but I remembered a key factor in how one becomes a politician. In order to become involved in the political sphere on a federal level one must be wealthy.
The wealthy represent the smallest minority that this country knows. Even when a palatitis comes from poorer backgrounds and works his or her way up to wealth they are still not understanding what it is like for the majority of our middle class.
Watching Bill Maher last night on HBO one of the guests was fmr. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow. He tried to say that the most recent polls were that 80% of America was happy with their financial situation. In a time where everyone has multiple jobs and foreclosures are happening all around us, how in the world could this be true.
Of course the other guests countered this with other polls, but the point is he was a former member of the white house.
How out of touch can you be with the American people, to think that with the falling dollar, the terrible housing market, the fact that most of us are very unhappy with the war in Iraq, the idea that education is clearly more and more underfunded each year, that the American people are happy.
Why would all these candidates being running on a platform of change if people were happy? These people, the 1% of the country are so out of touch with the common man that how can any of them accurately represent what it means to be an average American.
None of these people know what its like to have their house foreclose on them, or to struggle every month for years on end just to pay off your student loans. Most of these people were born into money and will die in money. A few of them worked for it, but they never struggled like the average American does for their entire life.
To be honest I feel I am at a loss. For the past few elections I have felt I have been throwing away my vote and I finally pinpointed the reason why.
Don't fall into the candidates traps. None of them are going to make real change. They are using that platform to appeal to "the common man" but none of them are just that.
Just remember the next time your in that voting booth, most of those people make more money in a month then you do in an whole year.