Well, darned if Mittens didn't figger me out. Ya see, like Mitt said, I'm one of them welfare-mooching, subsidy-grubbing, fully-subsidized Obama voters.
Except, gosh, there one thing I don't quite see, Mitt. Here it is:
I ought to be one of your voters.
I'm white, male, married, kids, in my fifties. Protestant, even, although from one of the suspect denominations. Highly educated -- Ph.D. in Mathematics, time spent in the defense sector, spent the last almost-twenty-years as a job creator in the private sector. Heck, these days, I'm a
banker.
And I don't even fit in your, rather odd, definition of "the middle class". No, I'm afraid I'd actually benefit from your proposed tax cuts.
So, Mitt, why am I not voting for you? Well, you know, if you'll just follow me across the Great Orange Sigil of Moochery, I just might tell you.
First, you're an entitled jerk. I do know what it's like to actually not know where my next meal was coming from. I know how hard it was on my parents, and I've got close relatives who still worry about feeding their kids. I spent enough years knowing exactly how much I could spend at the grocery store -- and making sure that I got every deal available -- and learning how to eat cheap but healthy on a young family's schedule.
You don't. You haven't got a freaking clue. And, yes, I resent that.
Second, you and I -- we were lucky. Both of us were born into families with huge asset pools. Your father was rich. Mine wasn't -- but he had a Ph.D., as did my grandfather, and my grandmother. My other grandfather had an LL.B. You and I can both congratulate ourselves on having taken advantage of the environment in which we were born, to the extent that we did. But after that? We were both lucky. You started your career in finance just when the boomers started spending the money their folks had squirreled away. I started my career in computers just when the kinds of problems I liked to solve became tractable, and I was lucky to always be able to find another, harder, more demanding, and interesting job, even when things went wrong.
I recognize that, and I'm grateful for it. You don't. And, yes, I resent that.
By comparison, your opponent was born into poverty, the child of a mother not yet out of her teens. He worked his way through, and succeeded, on a combination of luck and smarts. He built a life and a family -- and he is grateful for it, and aware of his luck. His success is in every way more admirable than yours, and his humility in its face in every way more noble.
Even if your policies made sense, Mitt -- which they don't; neither you nor I need any more ways to aggregate money -- your life story is repulsive, and you, repellant. Frankly, Mitt, you're not qualified to be dog catcher (or, in your case, dog crater). And so, no, I won't vote for you.