The Sleeping Giant in American Politics

Millions of Americans are quitting jobs, searching for better ones or refusing to look.  For many, contributing factors include low pay, the realization that staying home saves almost as much as the job pays, and/or jobs that offer little chance for advancement.  Our economic system fails these Americans as it also fails many ready or needing to retire who can’t afford to do so. Many young people despair of ever achieving their parents’ standard of living and see a gloomy future for their own children.

The lack of jobs that sustain a decent standard of living and enable a secure retirement is well documented:

·        One of every nine Americans (37 million) lives in poverty and almost the same number live in food insecure households.  For African Americans, the number in poverty is one in five and for Native Americans one in three.

·        Of those below the poverty line, 40 percent work full-time. Only 6.4% don’t work at all. 

·        More than 53 million Americans earn low hourly wages.  The federal minimum wage for restaurant servers and other tipped workers has been $2.13/hour since 1991.

·        51% of Americans have less than three months of savings for an emergency; 25% have no emergency fund at all.

·        Nearly half of Americans over age 55 have no retirement savings.

The gap between the rich and poor is growing and the American Dream seems out of reach:

·        Hourly compensation, up only 17% from 1979-2019, dramatically lags the increase in worker productivity, up 72% over the same period. 

·        Americans in the top 10% in income average more than nine times the income of those in the bottom 90%.

·        In 1980, the average large company CEO earned 42 times the average U.S. worker’s pay.  It’s now around 350 times that.

·        90% of children born in 1940 grew up to earn more than their parents; today it’s only 50%.

·        The percentage of low-income students in colleges that can propel them into greater economic mobility has fallen since 2000, and the percentage of low- and middle-income students in selective schools, compared to those from richer families, has fallen even when they have the same test scores. 

Addressing these issues is a complex task, but one key blockage is clear: nearly 80% of high-income citizens vote, compared to only 50% of low-income citizens.  Poor People’s Campaign co-chairs Rev. Dr. William Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis explain why the poor don’t bother to vote: It “is not because they have no interest in politics; but because politics is not interested in them.” 

Yet, as long as low-income Americans don’t vote, they take a key lever for change out of their own hands. Politicians can ignore them and focus instead on wealthier voters. The plight of the poor gets lip service not major legislation.  Politicians focus on hot-button topics such as taxes, guns, voter fraud, Critical Race Theory, immigration, abortion, LGBT rights and religious freedom. 

Knowing low income people can’t fund costly campaigns, candidates become beholden to wealthy donors, corporations with deep pockets and interest groups who flood the halls of legislative chambers with lobbyists.   Money and political pressure talk.  Americans on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder have weak voices.

Wealthier Americans are skilled at political organizing, fund-raising, campaigning and getting out the vote.  The relative lack of such political organization thus leaves low-wage workers, the un- or under-employed and the poor and nearly-poor comprise as a “sleeping giant” in the electorate. 

The economic plight of the poor and near-poor is a moral failing of the American Experiment.  Martin Luther King, Jr. grasped this but no leader of such power confronts this failing today.  King campaigned not only for desegregation but for “jobs and freedom” by invoking the social gospel. He argued that religion must not hide behind the “anesthetizing security of stained glass windows” but must be as concerned with conditions people face on earth as by what awaits in heaven.  Too many churches today are engaged instead in culture wars.

Those in economic distress in seemingly different situations must come to see their shared need for a more equitable society. Instead, they are marginalized by those willing to ignore them or pit them against each other.  Many low-wage, young Americans need better paying jobs and affordable housing, but so do those at middle age who face retirement unprepared.  The rural and urban poor both lack access to good health care and jobs with a future yet seem to live in two different political worlds. The poor education of low-income children, wherever they live, stunts their future prospects.  Rather than a zero-sum game in which they compete for government support, the poor and near-poor must find more common ground that enables them to exert greater pressure at the polls.

This “sleeping giant” of tens of millions of voters waits to be awakened.  The leadership to organize and awaken them is the “alarm-clock” missing in American politics.

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