Middle America for Obama

Most of us are middle class main street Americans. Whether we come from bowling with beer in Pittsburgh PA or skiing with cocoa in Stowe Vermont, Bar Mitzvahs in Sacramento CA or Bible Studies in Wilson North Carolina, listening to blue grass in Richmond Kentucky or listening to a rap concert in New Haven Connecticut, we are the brothers and sisters in the broad main street middle. We have lost jobs overseas and someone else at the top of a business is reaping the profit. We have less or no health care and someone else at the top of the heath care industry is raking in the profits. We are emptying our pockets to pay four dollars a gallon for gasoline and someone else at the top of Exxon Mobile is raking in the largest profits ever in the history of America.

There is nothing that those someone else’s would like better than to see the “we’s” from main street America divided, viewing ourselves as “us vs. them.”. If the main street of Pittsburgh sees the enemy in the main street of Stowe then some one else has won. If the middle of Kentucky resents the middle of Connecticut then we have all lost to someone else, who will continue to get richer and richer, while all of us in the middle have less and less.

Obama has been in the heartland, that is where his mother is from. He has been from the inner city streets. He has lived in middle main street America from Hawaii to California to the midwest to the northeast. His Harvard education may have rendered him aloof at times, but he has been more “one of us” over the years of his life than Hillary, who was raised by a wealthy self-made businessman Republican father.

I have a lot of respect for the guttsiness of Hillary and would vote for without a moment’s hesitation if she were the nominee. However, I feel that Obama has the better chance of uniting middle America.