Dear President Obama,
I am the guy with the five-year-old Obama/Biden bumper sticker on my Jeep. You know, the Jeep that gets flipped-the-bird by angry suburban climbers (the longest bird was for nearly a mile). I am the guy that has his conservative neighbors turn their backs to me while I approach my garage. The same guy that has been ostracized at work – and possibly transferred out of my department - for fighting the good fight. I am the guy that has been guilty of initiating long silent pauses at family gatherings with Republican brother-in-laws. I viewed donations to your campaign as monthly utility bills. That is me.
Working-class progressive white-guys – there are plenty of us that get no love from either party or the media - spend a bit more time alone relative to six years ago. This is all because we fought on the front lines, with no glory or recognition – FOR YOU. We are the grunts that went toe-to-toe with the enemy, took some damage, licked our wounds and persevered. At this point, we are suffering from battle fatigue. All this, because we bought into the notion of “Change we can believe in.”
Granted, you did not campaign on specifics, but each of us interpreted your slogan to fit our needs. The problem: I attached my hopes to you reversing the ill effects of Reaganomics, specifically, the pummeling of the working classes. Unfortunately, that was not the change you had in mind. You have been Superman on social issues and Clark Kent on middle-class economic issues. Many of us are proud to have leaped over racial and LGBT hurdles in a single bound with you, but regarding the widening gap in income disparity, the kryptonite has rendered you useless. We – the middle-class - need you to wage war for us, too.
Yet, the frustration continues. You appear to be sleeping with the enemy. Why the hell are you considering Larry Summers to run the Federal Reserve? Summers is the guy that lead the charge to deregulate Wall Street, overturn Glass-Steagall, pass trade policy that booted millions of hard-working American manufacturing workers out of their homes, and he spoke out against the auto-industry loan that kept hundreds of thousands in their homes.
For Summers and his ilk, America simply does not fit in their global business model. In their minds, America is like the horse and buggy – a roadside relic of capitalism, but on a grand scale. For Larry, the real money can be bilked in third world nations. Promoting Summers in your administration could be the final nail in the middle class’s coffin.
In a classic story about the late, great Franklin Delano Roosevelt (the man most responsible for creating a middle class that was the envy of the world), a poor working class American was weeping openly at FDR’s funeral. A journalist asked him if he knew the fallen president. The man replied, “I did not know him, but he knew me.”
Larry Summers knows us too, but he doesn’t care about us. Barack, due to your lack of passion or commitment toward working men and women, and your flirtation with the idea of Summers joining your team, who knows if you know us or how much you care.
Barack, I like you a lot. We probably could have been best buddies, but I voted for a president, not a virtual friend. The change that I hoped for was a FDR for today’s working stiffs, not Larry Summers at the head of the Fed. A primary duty of the Federal Reserve is to create conditions for maximum employment. Can you seriously be considering the guy who's awful economic beliefs cost America millions of jobs? FDR looked for advice from Vice- President Henry Wallace (a proud progressive) and you propose looking to Larry Summers (a multi-nationalist neo-liberal). Are progressives the Democratic party's equivalent to evangelicals in the Republican party? A voting block of fools being toyed with by a political party?
Everyone that follows politics understands the forces working against you, but FDR had equal (and arguably greater forces) pounding his aching body. No excuses please. Larry Summers? I cross my fingers and wait for 2016.